Scholars in the field are of the opinion that the early simultaneous bilingual and bicultural exposure not only does not harm the bilinguals, but also strengthens their social and cultural foundations and keeps them from getting vulnerable to external environment (Deuchar and Quay 1999, 2000; Genesee 1989; Genesee, Nicoladis, and Paradis 1995; Holowka, Brosseau-Lapre ́, and Petitto 2002; Lanza 1992; Meisel 1989; Petitto et al. 2001). Also it has been demonstrated that bilingual children have differentiated systems to provide them with the ability to distinguish between their two input languages from the beginning of language acquisition (Petitto & Holowka, 2002). However, the driver of the children’s language preference patterns at home needs to be further explored. The present study is indeed an attempt to answer the question of why it is that some children regularly exposed to their heritage language from a very young age actually continue to actively use it, and other children involving in similar parental policy about bilingualism do not? It aims to examine the impacts of parental language strategies during the childhood on children language preference at home after they achieve the key competences in each of the two languages. The foci are parental attitudes towards the patterns of language choice and their influence on child language preference. Data are collected from two Iranian immigrant families; one has been experiencing additive bilingualism, while the other has been involved in the process of subtractive phenomenon. Some implications for parent-child closeness, heritage language and the risk of language contamination are touched on briefly.

What makes one more or less likely to project a novel property from an item to that item’s broader category? Research on category-based induction has documented a consistent typicality effect: typical exemplars promote stronger inferences than atypical exemplars. This work has been largely confined to categories whose central tendencies are the most typical members of the category. Experiments 1 and 2, using natural and artificial categories, showed that central tendencies have greatest induction strength even for categories that are best represented by ideal exemplars. Experiments 3-7 investigate the role of familiarity in induction. Experiments 3 and 4 directly contrast statistical averageness against familiarity through category learning procedures. Experiment 5 creates this contrast through frequency differences across stimuli. Experiments 6 and 7 investigate how the familiarity advantage found in Experiments 3-5 can be modified through fluency manipulations, independent of actual experience. Taken together, these studies suggest that category-based induction is driven largely by a familiarity heuristic. / text

L’orientation essentielle de notre thèse concerne spécifiquement les relations intergroupes et les constructions identitaires en situation de pluralité culturelle, dans des contextes de changements sociaux importants et de ruptures idéologiques profondes. Nous nous intéressons au domaine particulier des sociétés post-soviétiques. Les changements politiques qui ont accompagné, au Kazakhstan, la chute du système en vigueur durant l’ex-URSS ont été à l’origine de nouvelles catégorisations sociales et ethniques : ethnie titulaire (Kazakhs) et non-titulaires (autres ethnies). Cette nouvelle classification a induit des changements importants au niveau des représentations de l’identité nationale et des rapports entre groupes ethniques. En effet, l’objectif idéologique du Kazakhstan est devenu celui de former une nouvelle nation sur la base de l'identité kazakhe mais celle-ci se heurte à l'opposition des groupes ethniques minoritaires et suscite l’élaboration des nouvelles stratégies identitaires destinée à réagir à la tendance d’unification de ce modèle Etat-Nation. Nous avons choisi pour notre étude la région centrale du Kazakhstan, où les contacts interculturels sont particulièrement soutenus du fait de la présence de plusieurs ethnies. Notre but est, en premier lieu, d’analyser les liens entre l’appartenance à un groupe ethnique donné et la construction de l’identité nationale ; et, en second lieu, l’effet de la construction identitaire sur les relations entre les différents groupes. Compte tenu de nos objectifs de recherche et des réalités du contexte sur lequel porte notre étude, nous avons retenu l’idée d’une méthodologie à la fois quantitative et qualitative : le questionnaire spécifiquement adapté à notre terrain et l’entretien semi-directif explicitant les variabilités interethniques. L’échantillon que nous avons retenu est composé de 371 jeunes âgés de 15 à 31 ans et représentatif des différents groupes ethniques en présence (Kazakhs, Russes et autres ethnies minoritaires). / Our thesis is mainly orientated on relations between groups and the construction of identity in a situation of cultural plurality. These mechanisms are studied in a context of important social changes and deep ideological fractures. We will focus more specifically on the post Soviet societies. The fall of the political system of the former USSR led to political changes in Kazakhstan. From these changes originated a new social and ethnic organization : appointed ethnic groups (Kazakhs) and non appointed ethnic groups (others ethnic groups). This new classification led to some considerable changes in the representation of the national identity and the relations between ethnic groups. The new ideological objective of Kazakhstan was indeed to build a new nation based on the Kazakh identity. However it encountered the opposition of minority ethnic groups which encouraged the development of new identity strategies so as to react to the unification tendency of this State - Nation's model. For our study, we have chosen the centre region of Kazakhstan where cross cultural contacts are particularly important due to the presence of several ethnies. Firstly, our goal is to analyse the links between the belonging to an ethnic group and the construction of the national identity. Secondly, we will interest ourselves to the effects of identity construction on the relationships between the different ethnic groups. Considering our research objectives and the reality of the context on which was based our study, we applied a both qualitative and quantitative methodology: the questionnaire is specifically adapted to our field and the semi – directive interview explains the interethnic variabilities. Our sample is composed of 371 young people aged from 15 to 31 years old, who represent the different ethnic groups in presence (Kazakhs, Russian and others minorities ethnic groups).

This thesis investigates the experiences and strategies of queer migrants seeking asylum in Sweden due to sexuality and/or gender identity. By conducting ethnographic fieldwork and biographical interviews within the RFSL Newcomers support network, the thesis analyses how queer migrants navigate the Swedish asylum apparatus. Building on recent research in queer migration studies, it explores how power relations related to class, gender and race affect queer migrants’ strategies. Applying Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network theory, the thesis furthermore analyses the queer migrants in an actor network together with RFSL Newcomers and the asylum apparatus as independent actors. This thesis additionally aims to contribute to the sociological debate on categorization and construction of identity using Ian Hacking’s concept of the looping effect. Lack of social capital, of not having the right networks, gendered possibilities of visibility and speaking about sexuality can establish obstacles for queer migrants in the credibility assessment and the success of the asylum claim. The asymmetric power relation forces queer migrants into conflicting strategies. Forced visibility and hyper hiding are strategies that are specifically produced in relation to the asylum apparatus creating gendered risk and precarious living conditions. This thesis concludes that queer migrants and the RFSL Newcomers network, in their asylum activism both challenge the asylum apparatus and Western narratives of LGBTQ identity. Nevertheless, RFSL and the queer migrants become complicit in the production of official essentialistic LGBTQ identities when navigating the asylum apparatus. By exploring the Swedish context of LGBTQ asylum and categorization of LGBTQ identity in the asylum process, this thesis contributes to the somewhat undertheorized field of queer migration in Swedish academia.

From the very creation of the term by Czech writer Karel Capek in 1921, a "robot" has been synonymous with an artificial agent possessing a powerful body and cogitating mind. While the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotics have made progress into the creation of such an android, the goal of a cogitating robot remains firmly outside the reach of our technological capabilities. Cognition has proved to be far more complex than early AI practitioners envisioned. Current methods in Machine Learning have achieved remarkable successes in image categorization through the use of deep learning. However, when presented with novel or adversarial input, these methods can fail spectacularly. I postulate that a robot that is free to interact with objects should be capable of reducing spurious difference between objects of the same class. This thesis demonstrates and analyzes a robot that achieves more robust visual categorization when it first evolves to use proprioceptive sensors and is then trained to increasingly rely on vision, when compared to a robot that evolves with only visual sensors. My results suggest that embodied methods can scaffold the eventual achievement of robust visual classification.

Cette recherche s'intéresse au fonctionnement des mécanismes de catégorisation orale de haut niveau dans l'aphasie. Elle s'inscrit dans le cadre théorique de la catégorisation cognitive, pierre angulaire de la cognition humaine, notamment en ce qui concerne la théorie du prototype. Le logiciel utilisé (TCL-Lab, 0.25) permet d'observer les stratégies de catégorisation implicite et explicite de manière graduelle : une tâche de catégorisation libre, suivie d'une tâche induite, et pour finir, une tâche de catégorisation guidée. Les stimuli sont composés de phrases partageant des traits linguistiques communs aux niveaux sémantique, prosodique et syntaxique. Les expériences ont été menées auprès d'une population de trente sujets sains et de vingt-et-un patients aphasiques. Au total, sept expériences ont été proposées : une tâche de catégorisation libre, trois tâches de catégorisation induites et trois tâches de catégorisation guidées, chacune correspondant à l'une des composantes langagières évaluées. Les résultats ont été analysés pour chaque composante et comparés aux données psycholinguistiques et démographiques complémentaires. Des données procédurales ont été également prises en compte dans l'analyse. Globalement, les résultats favorisent l'hypothèse d'une distinction entre les mécanismes déclenchés pour la catégorisation dans les pour la catégorisation dans les trois domaines : sémantique, prosodie et syntaxe. Des différences importantes, qui se dégagent de la comparaison des résultats inter-tâches, font également partie de la discussion. Les résultats sont interprétés à partir des postulats théoriques des travaux récents dans le domaine. / This investigation assesses higher-order auditory categorization mechanisms in aphasia. The theoretical background builds upon the basic premises of the prototype theory and on recent studies on cognitive categorization, considered to be one of the core mechanisms of human cognition. A computer program interface (TCL-lab.025) was used to observe categorization in a graded manner, ranging from unrestricted to guided tasks, as a means to explore implicit vs. explicit categorization mechanisms. The stimuli consisted of sentences displaying multidimensional commonalities across three linguistic components: semantics, prosody and syntax. The experiments were conducted on a population of thirty healthy controls and twenty-one aphasia patients. In total, seven experiments were designed as follows: one free sorting task, three induced categorization tasks and three guided tasks, each concerning one of the above mentioned linguistic components. Results were analyzed for each component and compared to complementary psycholinguistic and demography data collected. Procedural results were also included in the analysis. Global results point to a distinction between the mechanisms engaged for categorizing through meaning, form and structure. Important differences across tasks are also discussed. Results are interpreted according to the theoretical premises emanating from previous investigations in the field.

Cette thèse cherche à approfondir la culture des Muinanes à travers leur histoire et leur langue. Nous décrivons, en premier lieu, certains aspects ethnographiques et historiques du groupe muinane. En second lieu, et en ce qui concerne la langue, nous abordons le problème de la catégorisation lexicale et établissons des comparaisons entre les caractéristiques du muinane et celles des langues apparentées bora et miraña. En d’autres termes, dans une perspective typologique, notre but est de définir les classes de catégories lexicales du muinane et de déterminer des critères phonologiques, morphosyntaxiques et discursifs à utiliser pour la définition des catégories. Nous abordons aussi la question de la présence ou de l’absence d’une classe adjectivale. Nous décrivons les outils employés par les locuteurs de la langue pour exprimer l’attribution et la qualification et finalement nous proposons un rapport entre l’absence d’une vraie classe adjectivale et le système saillant de classification nominale, dans un ensemble de langues de la région amazonienne appartenant aux familles bora, tukano orientale, uitoto et andoke. / The objective of this doctoral thesis is to approach the culture of the Muinane people through their history and language. We describe some ethnographic and historical aspects of the indigenous muinane group living in the colombian Amazon. We are concerned with the study of their language and particularly with the lexical categorization and with the comparison between the muinane, bora and miraña, all classified as integrating the bora linguistic family. In other words, our goal is to define the classes of lexical categories of the muinane from a typological perspective, and to determine the phonological, morphosyntactical and discursive criteria, which allow us to define this categorization. We debate here the question of the existence or the absence of an adjectival category in the bora languages and the strategies used by their speakers to express qualification and attribution. Finally, we propose a relationship between some languages spoken in the northwest Amazon, which don’t exhibit an adjectival class but have a rich and salient system of nominal classification such as the languages from the bora, uitoto and eastern tukanoan linguistic families.

Traditional theories of vision assume that object segregation occurs before access to object memories. Yet, behavioral evidence shows that familiar configuration is a prior for segregation, and electrophysiological experiments demonstrate these memories are accessed rapidly. A behavioral index of the speed of access is lacking, however. Here we asked how quickly behavior is influenced by object memories that are accessed in the course of object segregation. We investigated whether access to object memories on the groundside of a border can slow behavior during a rapid categorization task. Participants viewed two silhouettes that depicted a real-world and a novel object. Their task was to saccade toward the real-world object as quickly as possible. Half of the nontarget novel objects were ambiguous in that a portion of a real-world object was suggested, but not consciously perceived, on the groundside of their borders. The rest of the nontargets were unambiguous. We tested whether saccadic reaction times were perturbed by the real-world objects suggested on the groundside of ambiguous novel silhouettes. In Experiments 1 and 2, saccadic reaction times were slowed when nontargets were ambiguous rather than unambiguous. Experiment 2 set an upper limit of 190 ms on the time required for object memories in grounds to influence behavior. Experiment 3 ruled out factors that could have produced longer latencies other than access to object memories. These results provide the first behavioral index of how quickly memories of objects suggested in grounds can influence behavior, placing the upper limit at 190 ms.

This study employs conversation analysis (CA) and membership categorization analysis (MCA) in an exploration of the interactional organization of talk between doctors and the mothers (or the female guardians acting as “proxy mothers”) of HIV-positive child patients being treated at a paediatric hospital in the Western Cape, South Africa, in 2003. The analysis focuses on how the HIV paediatric consultation is co-constructed between the doctor and the mother/guardian, and how interactional choices on the part of the participants shape the course of the consultation. Specific attention is placed on how participants orient to, hear, respond to and coconstruct the category of “mother”, along with the emergent inferences of what constitutes “good mothering” in the context of pursuing the wellbeing of the HIV-positive child who - as it emerges in certain cases - has evidently been infected by the mother in the first instance. As its core focus, this study examines how orienting to “good mothering” is done - in a moment-bymoment, collaborative and co-constructed manner – in the immediate course of the doctor/mother/guardian consultation. This involves considering the interplay of shifts in orientations to “motherly responsibility” and “doctorly responsibility”, and how these shifts are collaboratively activated, negotiated and responded to, as the consultation proceeds.

O grande volume de informação textual sendo gerado a todo momento torna necessário o aprimoramento constante de sistemas capazes de classificar textos em categorias específicas. Essa categorização visa, por exemplo, separar notícias indexadas por mecanismos de buscas, identificar a autoria de livros e cartas antigas ou detectar plágio em artigos científicos. As técnicas de classificação textual existentes, baseadas em conteúdo, apesar de conseguirem uma boa performance quantitativamente, ainda apresentam dificuldades em lidar com aspectos semânticos presentes nos textos escritos em língua natural. Neste sentido, abordagens alternativas vem sendo propostas, como as baseadas em redes complexas, que levam em consideração apenas o relacionamento entre as palavras. Neste estudo, aplicamos a modelagem de textos como redes complexas e utilizamos as métricas extraídas como atributos para classificação, utilizando um problema de reconhecimento de autoria para ilustrar a aplicação das técnicas descritas ao longo deste texto / The large volume of textual information being generated at all times makes it necessary to constantly improve systems capable of classifying texts into specific categories. This categorization aims, for example, to separate news items indexed by search engines, identify authorship of old books and letters, or detect plagiarism in scientific articles. Existing textual classification techniques, based on content, despite achieving good quantitative performance, still present difficulties in dealing with semantic aspects present in texts written in natural language. In this sense, alternative approaches have been proposed, such as those based on complex networks, which take into account only the relationship between words. In this study, we applied text modeling as graphs and extracted metrics typically used in the study of complex networks to be used as classifier attributes. To illustrate these techniques, a problem of authorship recognition in small texts was chosen as an example