Este estudo da expressividade pesquisa a interpretação musical como uma construção dialógica, diálogo entre “duas consciências” próprias do dialogismo bakhtiniano. O expressivo em música como vivência dialógica considera o tempo, o espaço e o sentido de cada intérprete em uma posição cambiável de valor, expressão e vontade do autor pessoa ao autor criador como também autor contemplador da obra de arte. Este tempo/espaço, cronotopo, termo primeiramente usado por Bakhtin no estudo da obra de arte literária é aqui considerado como um cronotopo musical: tempo, espaço e sentido do intérprete em um diálogo com o Grande Tempo, a composição e seu contexto universal; demonstrando como o eu dialógico interage com o eu/eu e o eu/outro em uma atitude responsiva. Na composição Rudepoema está presente uma dialogia musical entre o compositor Villa-Lobos, “O Rabelais Brasileiro” e o pianista Arthur Rubinstein, a quem a obra foi dedicada. Os elementos musicais do Rudepoema foram analisados com títulos simbólicos como cronotopos Brasil, Carnaval, Arthur e da Teresa, com adjetivos sugestivos nos cronotopos da alegria, espontaneidade, virilidade e sensualidade; assim como as questões da colocação do pedal, inserção das fermatas, considerando-se ainda aspectos da recursão no processo da composição e suas implicações semânticas na expressividade da obra. / This study on expressiveness researches musical interpretation as a dialogic construction, as a dialogue between the two types of consciousness presented in Bakhtin’s dialogism. In music, the ‘expressive’ as a dialogical experience considers time, space and the meaning of each performer in a interchangeable position of value, expression and will from the author as a person to the author as a creator as well as the author as on observer of the work of art. This time / space, chronotope, a term first used by Bakhtin in the study of literary art pieces is considered here as a musical chronotope: time, space and meaning of the interpreter in a dialogue with the Great Time, the composition and its universal context; demonstrating how the dialogic “I” interacts with the I / I and I / others in a responsive attitude. In the ‘Rudepoema’ musical composition there is the presence of musical dialogism between the composer Villa-Lobos, "The Brazilian Rabelais" and pianist Arthur Rubinstein, to whom the work was dedicated. The musical elements of the ‘Rudepoema’ were analyzed with symbolic titles as chronotopes Brazil, Carnival, Arthur and Teresa, with suggestive adjectives in the chronotopes of joy, spontaneity, virility and sensuality; as well as issues concerning pedal placement and fermatas insertion, considering also aspects of the recursion in the processes of composition and their semantic implications in the expressiveness of the work of art.

Cette thèse s'inscrit dans le cadre de la synthèse de parole à partir du texte. Elle traite plus précisément du procédé de création de voix en synthèse par sélection d'unités. L'état de l'art repose pour cela sur l'enregistrement d'un locuteur pendant une à deux semaines, suivant un script de lecture de plusieurs dizaines de milliers de mots. Les 5 à 10 heures de parole collectées sont généralement révisées par des opérateurs humains, pour en vérifier la segmentation phonétique et ainsi améliorer la qualité finale de la voix de synthèse.La lourdeur générale de ce procédé freine considérablement la diversification des voix de synthèse ; aussi en proposons-nous ici une rationalisation. Nous introduisons une nouvelle unité, appelée "sandwich vocalique", pour l'optimisation de la couverture des scripts de lecture. Sur le plan phonétique, cette unité offre une meilleure prise en compte des limites segmentales de la synthèse par sélection que les unités traditionnelles (diphones, triphones, syllabes, mots, etc.). Sur le plan linguistique, un nouvel enrichissement contextuel nous permet de mieux focaliser la couverture, sans négliger les aspects prosodiques. Nous proposons des moyens d'accroître le contrôle sur les phrases du script lecture, tant dans leur longueur que dans leur pertinence phonétique et prosodique, afin de mieux anticiper le contenu du corpus de parole final et de rendre automatisable la tâche de segmentation. Nous introduisons également une alternative à la stratégie classique de condensation de corpus en mettant au point un algorithme semi-automatique de création de phrases, grâce auquel nous accroissons de 30 à 40% la densité linguistique du script de lecture.Ces nouveaux outils nous permettent d'établir un procédé très efficace de création de voix de synthèse, procédé que nous validons à travers la création et l'évaluation subjective de nombreuses voix. Des scores perceptifs comparables à l'approche traditionnelle sont ainsi atteints dès 40 minutes de parole (une demi-journée d'enregistrement) et sans post-traitement manuel. Enfin, nous mettons à profit ce résultat pour enrichir nos voix de synthèse de diverses composantes expressives, multi-expressives et paralinguistiques. / This work falls within the scope of text-to-speech (TTS) technology. More precisely, focus is on the voice creation process for unit-selection synthesis. In a standard approach, a textual script of several thousands of words is read by a speaker in order to generate approximately 5 to 10 hours of useable speech. The recording time is spread out over one or two weeks and is followed by the considerable task of manually revising the phonetic segmentation for all of the speech.Such a costly and time-consuming process presents a major obstacle to diversifying synthesized voices. In order to increase efficiency in this process, we introduce a new unit, called a "vocalic sandwich", to optimize coverage of the recording texts. Phonetically, this unit better addresses the segmental limitations of unit-selection TTS than state-of-the-art units (diphones, triphones, syllables, words...). Linguistically, a new set of contextual symbols focuses the coverage, allowing for more control and consideration of prosody. Practically, in order to automate the segmentation process, better anticipation of the phonetic and prosodic content desired in the final database is required. This is achieved here by increasing the readability and consistency of each sentence included in the script. As a side, these properties also help to facilitate the reading stage. Furthermore, as an alternative to the classic corpus condensation, a semi-automatic sentence building algorithm is developed in this work wherein sentences are built rather than selected from a reference corpus. Ultimately, the sentence building provides access to much denser scripts, specifically allowing for increases in density of between 30 and 40%.In incorporating these new approaches and tools, the voice creation process is made very efficient, as is validated in this work through the preparation and evaluation of numerous synthesized voices. Perceptive scores that are comparable to the traditional process are achieved with 40 minutes of speech (half-day recording) and without any manual post-processing. Finally, we take advantage of these results in order to enhance our synthesized voices with various expressive, multi-expressive and paralinguistic features.

As interactive systems are now used to perform a variety of complex tasks, users need systems that are at the same time expressive, efficient and usable. Although simple interactive systems can be easily usable, interaction designers often consider that only expert practitioners can benefit from the expressiveness of more complex systems. Our approach, inspired by studies in phenomenology and psychology, underscores that non-experts have sizeable knowledge and advanced skills related to various expert activities having a social dimension -such as artistic activities-, which they gain implicitly through their engagement as perceivers. For example, we identify various music-related skills mastered by non-musicians, which they gain when listening to music or attending performances. We have two main arguments. First, interaction designers can reuse such implicit knowledge and skills to design interaction techniques that are both expressive and usable by novice users. Second, as expert artifacts and expert learning methods have evolved over time and have shown efficient to overcome the complexity of expert activities, they can be used as a source of inspiration to make expressive systems more easily usable by novice users. We provide a design framework for studying the usability and expressiveness of interaction techniques as two new aspects of the user experience, and explore this framework with three projects. In the first project we study the use of rhythmic patterns as an input method, and show that novice users are able to reproduce and memorize large vocabularies of patterns. This is made possible by the natural abilities of non-musicians to perceive, reproduce and make sense of rhythmic structures. We define a method to create expressive vocabularies of patterns, and show that novice users are able to efficiently use them as command triggers. In the second project, we study the design and learning of chording gestures on multitouch screens. We introduce design guidelines to create expressive chord vocabularies taking the mechanical constraints and the degrees of freedom of the human hand into account. We evaluate the usability of such gestures in an experiment and we present an adapted learning method inspired by the teaching of chords in music. We show that novice users are able to reproduce and memorize our vocabularies of chording gestures, while our learning method can improve long-term memorization. The final project focuses on music software used for live performances and proposes a framework for designing "instrumental" software allowing expert musical playing and having its elementary functionalities accessible to novices, as it is the case with acoustic instruments (for example, one can easily play a few chords on a piano without practice). We define a design framework inspired by a functional decomposition of acoustic instruments and present an adapted software architecture, both aiming to ease the design of such software and to make it match with instrument-making. These projects show that, in these cases: (i) the implicit knowledge novices have about some expert activities can be reused for interaction; (ii) expert learning methods can inspire ways to make expressive systems more usable novices; (iii) taking expert artifacts as a source of inspiration can help creating usable and expressive interactive systems. In this dissertation, we propose the study of usability as an alternative to the focus on immediacy that characterizes current commercial interactive systems. We also propose methods to benefit from the richness of expert activities and from the implicit knowledge of non-experts to design interactive systems that are at the same time expressive and usable by novice users.

Fundação de Amparo a Pesquisa no Estado do Rio Grande do Sul / We come upon critical about to dance and doing dance through techniques or "nontechnical" based in the repetition and copying movements, studies that warn us to the necessity of theoretical insights to legitimize dance and to dance as an expression and communication. Thinking about Wheelchair Dance (DCR) as a manifestation of increasing dance in search of spaces beyond the standardization of movements and gestures, we traced as the central objective of this study was to establish relationships between the Theory of "Self - Move Human" with the DCR teaching. To do this, we long constitute theorists deepening about the Dance that originated notes on aspects inherent the theme, as expressiveness, sensitivity, perception, body and creativity. From this we outline of intervention possibilities for DCR teaching. We understand that they ought not to study, research, write about Dance, one consisting phenomenon of imperceptible variables, by following a predefined method, based on certain assumptions. We commit to develop a theoretical research, a reflection on Dance, incited to argue and write about this phenomenon, enabling new syntheses go to meet the sense and meaning from our study, of our work. We find, in the dialogic relationship movement, possibilities for "doing dance" of expressive and communicative way, taking into account the senses and meanings intertwined in the movement of the subject danceable. / Deparamo-nos com as críticas acerca do dançar e do fazer dança por meio de técnicas ou não técnicas embasadas na repetição e cópia de movimentos, estudos que nos alertam à necessidade de aprofundamentos teóricos para legitimar a Dança e o dançar enquanto expressão e comunicação. Pensando na Dança em Cadeira de Rodas (DCR) enquanto uma manifestação de Dança crescente em busca de espaços para além da padronização de movimentos e gestos, traçamos como objetivo central deste estudo estabelecer relações entre a Teoria do Se-Movimentar Humano com o ensino da DCR. Para isso, ansiamos constituir aprofundamentos teóricos sobre a Dança que originaram apontamentos sobre aspectos inerentes ao tema, como expressividade, sensibilidade, percepção, corpo e criatividade. A partir disso, delineamos possibilidades de intervenção para o ensino da DCR. Compreendemos que não convém estudar, pesquisar, escrever sobre a Dança, um fenômeno constituído de variáveis imperceptíveis, seguindo um método predefinido, alicerçado em pressupostos determinados. Comprometemo-nos a desenvolver uma pesquisa teórica, uma reflexão sobre a Dança, incitados a argumentar e a escrever sobre esse fenômeno, possibilitando às novas sínteses ir ao encontro do sentido e do significado do nosso estudo, do nosso trabalho. Encontramos, na relação dialógica de movimento, possibilidades para um fazer dança de forma expressiva e comunicativa, levando-se em consideração os sentidos e os significados imbricados no movimento do sujeito dançante.

Este estudo da expressividade pesquisa a interpretação musical como uma construção dialógica, diálogo entre “duas consciências” próprias do dialogismo bakhtiniano. O expressivo em música como vivência dialógica considera o tempo, o espaço e o sentido de cada intérprete em uma posição cambiável de valor, expressão e vontade do autor pessoa ao autor criador como também autor contemplador da obra de arte. Este tempo/espaço, cronotopo, termo primeiramente usado por Bakhtin no estudo da obra de arte literária é aqui considerado como um cronotopo musical: tempo, espaço e sentido do intérprete em um diálogo com o Grande Tempo, a composição e seu contexto universal; demonstrando como o eu dialógico interage com o eu/eu e o eu/outro em uma atitude responsiva. Na composição Rudepoema está presente uma dialogia musical entre o compositor Villa-Lobos, “O Rabelais Brasileiro” e o pianista Arthur Rubinstein, a quem a obra foi dedicada. Os elementos musicais do Rudepoema foram analisados com títulos simbólicos como cronotopos Brasil, Carnaval, Arthur e da Teresa, com adjetivos sugestivos nos cronotopos da alegria, espontaneidade, virilidade e sensualidade; assim como as questões da colocação do pedal, inserção das fermatas, considerando-se ainda aspectos da recursão no processo da composição e suas implicações semânticas na expressividade da obra. / This study on expressiveness researches musical interpretation as a dialogic construction, as a dialogue between the two types of consciousness presented in Bakhtin’s dialogism. In music, the ‘expressive’ as a dialogical experience considers time, space and the meaning of each performer in a interchangeable position of value, expression and will from the author as a person to the author as a creator as well as the author as on observer of the work of art. This time / space, chronotope, a term first used by Bakhtin in the study of literary art pieces is considered here as a musical chronotope: time, space and meaning of the interpreter in a dialogue with the Great Time, the composition and its universal context; demonstrating how the dialogic “I” interacts with the I / I and I / others in a responsive attitude. In the ‘Rudepoema’ musical composition there is the presence of musical dialogism between the composer Villa-Lobos, "The Brazilian Rabelais" and pianist Arthur Rubinstein, to whom the work was dedicated. The musical elements of the ‘Rudepoema’ were analyzed with symbolic titles as chronotopes Brazil, Carnival, Arthur and Teresa, with suggestive adjectives in the chronotopes of joy, spontaneity, virility and sensuality; as well as issues concerning pedal placement and fermatas insertion, considering also aspects of the recursion in the processes of composition and their semantic implications in the expressiveness of the work of art.

Este estudo da expressividade pesquisa a interpretação musical como uma construção dialógica, diálogo entre “duas consciências” próprias do dialogismo bakhtiniano. O expressivo em música como vivência dialógica considera o tempo, o espaço e o sentido de cada intérprete em uma posição cambiável de valor, expressão e vontade do autor pessoa ao autor criador como também autor contemplador da obra de arte. Este tempo/espaço, cronotopo, termo primeiramente usado por Bakhtin no estudo da obra de arte literária é aqui considerado como um cronotopo musical: tempo, espaço e sentido do intérprete em um diálogo com o Grande Tempo, a composição e seu contexto universal; demonstrando como o eu dialógico interage com o eu/eu e o eu/outro em uma atitude responsiva. Na composição Rudepoema está presente uma dialogia musical entre o compositor Villa-Lobos, “O Rabelais Brasileiro” e o pianista Arthur Rubinstein, a quem a obra foi dedicada. Os elementos musicais do Rudepoema foram analisados com títulos simbólicos como cronotopos Brasil, Carnaval, Arthur e da Teresa, com adjetivos sugestivos nos cronotopos da alegria, espontaneidade, virilidade e sensualidade; assim como as questões da colocação do pedal, inserção das fermatas, considerando-se ainda aspectos da recursão no processo da composição e suas implicações semânticas na expressividade da obra. / This study on expressiveness researches musical interpretation as a dialogic construction, as a dialogue between the two types of consciousness presented in Bakhtin’s dialogism. In music, the ‘expressive’ as a dialogical experience considers time, space and the meaning of each performer in a interchangeable position of value, expression and will from the author as a person to the author as a creator as well as the author as on observer of the work of art. This time / space, chronotope, a term first used by Bakhtin in the study of literary art pieces is considered here as a musical chronotope: time, space and meaning of the interpreter in a dialogue with the Great Time, the composition and its universal context; demonstrating how the dialogic “I” interacts with the I / I and I / others in a responsive attitude. In the ‘Rudepoema’ musical composition there is the presence of musical dialogism between the composer Villa-Lobos, "The Brazilian Rabelais" and pianist Arthur Rubinstein, to whom the work was dedicated. The musical elements of the ‘Rudepoema’ were analyzed with symbolic titles as chronotopes Brazil, Carnival, Arthur and Teresa, with suggestive adjectives in the chronotopes of joy, spontaneity, virility and sensuality; as well as issues concerning pedal placement and fermatas insertion, considering also aspects of the recursion in the processes of composition and their semantic implications in the expressiveness of the work of art.

Dans le présent travail, nous souhaitons montrer que pour affronter le problème suivant : comprendre l’inscription de la conscience dans la nature en échappant à l’idéalisme et au matérialisme, Ruyer ne s’est pas seulement engagé sur la voie d’une interprétation spéculative de données scientifiques principalement puisées dans l’embryologie et la physique quantique. Ruyer est avant tout un héritier de ce qu’il nomme lui-même «la grande voie naturelle de la philosophie», tradition qui consiste à penser le psychologique comme un échantillon à partir duquel peut être élaborée une ontologie de la nature. Comment, ayant commencé par défendre un panmécanisme dans les années 1930, Ruyer en est-il venu à s’inscrire dans cette« grande voie » et à réactualiser le panpychisme ? Dans ce travail, nous nous penchons aussi sur la manière dont Ruyer aborde la question du dualisme de la conscience et du corps, de l’être et de sa manifestation, de Dieu et de sa création. Enfin, nous parions que l’analyse de la structure de pensée que sous-tend sa fidélité à l’idéologie eugéniste permet de mettre en lumière un geste qui commande la majorité de ses décisions philosophiques, geste que lui-même ne théorise nulle part et que nous nommons l’«escamotage du symbolique». Chez Ruyer, la Nature est«humanisée» parce que l’homme est «naturalisé» et cette naturalisation s’entend sur un plan ontologique non moins que sur un plan politique. / In this work, I intend to demonstrate that, in order to face up to the issue of understanding the embeddedness of consciousness into nature escaping both idealism and materialism, Ruyer did not only commit himself to a speculative interpretation of scientific data (most of them originating from embryology and quantum physics). Indeed, Ruyer is first and foremost an heir of what he calls “the great natural way of philosophy,” namely a tradition which consists in thinking psychological elements as samples from which an ontology of nature is to be setup. How, starting during the thirties, with the claim of a general mechanism, did Ruyer come to bring himself to this “great way” and to launch once more panpsychism ? I also pay attention to the way Ruyer addresses the questions of mind-body dualism, being and his manifestation, God and his creation. In the end, I venture to say that the analysis of the speculative feature supported by his affiliation to eugenic ideology is a way to enlighten a turn of thinking from which most of his philosophical choices result. Ruyer never analysed this turn of thinking for itself and I chose to call it the “obliteration of symbolic.” Within Ruyer’sphilosophy, Nature is “humanised” because man is “naturalized” and this naturalization is both an ontological and political claim.

Les systèmes interactifs étant utilisés pour réaliser des tâches toujours plus complexes et variées, les utilisateurs ont besoin de systèmes qui soient à la fois expressifs, efficaces et utilisables. Si des systèmes simples peuvent être instantanément utilisables, l’expressivité accessible avec des systèmes complexes est souvent considérée comme réservée aux experts. Cependant, notre approche, inspirée par la recherche en phénoménologie et en psychologie, souligne que certaines activités expertes ayant une portée sociale, comme les activités artistiques, permettent aussi aux non-experts d’acquérir des compétences et une connaissance considérables de façon implicite. Dans ce manuscrit, nous évoquerons notamment la connaissance et les compétences avancées développées par les non-musiciens lors de l’écoute de la musique et de l’observation du jeu instrumental. Nous défendons deux idées. Premièrement, les concepteurs de systèmes interactifs peuvent profiter de ces compétences et de cette connaissance implicites pour créer des systèmes expressifs qui soient utilisables. Deuxièmement, les méthodes d'apprentissage expertes et les outils experts, qui ont été perfectionnés à travers le temps et ont fait leurs preuves dans des situations complexes, peuvent servir de sources d'inspiration pour améliorer l’utilisabilité des systèmes complexes pour les utilisateurs novices. Nous proposons un cadre de conception pour étudier l'utilisabilité et l'expressivité des techniques d'interaction, comme deux nouvelles mesures de la qualité de l'interaction, et présentons les trois projets de cette thèse. Dans le premier, nous étudions l'utilisation de motifs rythmiques pour l'interaction, et nous montrons que des utilisateurs novices sont capables de reproduire et de mémoriser efficacement de grands vocabulaires de motifs rythmiques. Une telle interaction tire parti des capacités naturelles des non-musiciens pour percevoir et reproduire des structures rythmiques. Nous définissons des règles pour créer des motifs rythmiques adaptés à l’interaction, et montrons qu’ils peuvent être utilisés efficacement pour déclencher des commandes. Dans le deuxième projet, nous étudions la conception et l’apprentissage de postures multi-doigt sur des écrans multi-tactiles. Nous prenons en compte les contraintes mécaniques et les degrés de liberté de la main pour créer des vocabulaires expressifs de postures multi-doigt, dont nous évaluons l’utilisabilité lors d’une expérimentation. Nous présentons une méthode d’apprentissage adaptée aux postures les plus complexes, inspirée par l’apprentissage des accords en musique, et nous montrons qu’elle peut améliorer la compréhension et la mémorisation. Dans le dernier projet, nous nous intéressons aux applications de création musicale en temps réel, et tentons de les faire profiter des qualités instrumentales des instruments acoustiques. Nous voulons créer des applications qui permettent un jeu virtuose et expressif, et dont les fonctionnalités élémentaires sont accessibles aux novices (comme on peut jouer quelques accords au piano sans apprentissage). Nous proposons un cadre de conception et une architecture logicielle qui aident à considérer la conception d’applications musicales comme une lutherie à part entière. Avec ces projets, nous montrons que, dans ces cas : (i) la connaissance et les compétences implicites des non-experts peuvent être réutilisées en interaction ; (ii) les méthodes d’apprentissage expertes peuvent permettre de rendre les systèmes expressifs plus utilisables ; (iii) s’inspirer des outils experts peut aider à concevoir des systèmes interactifs expressifs et utilisables. Nous proposons l’étude de l’utilisabilité comme une alternative à l’immédiateté prônée par les entreprises d’informatique, et nous présentons des méthodes pour tirer parti de la richesse des activités expertes et de la connaissance implicite des non-experts pour créer des systèmes interactifs expressifs et utilisables par les novices. / As interactive systems are now used to perform a variety of complex tasks, users need systems that are at the same time expressive, efficient and usable. Although simple interactive systems can be easily usable, interaction designers often consider that only expert practitioners can benefit from the expressiveness of more complex systems. Our approach, inspired by studies in phenomenology and psychology, underscores that non-experts have sizeable knowledge and advanced skills related to various expert activities having a social dimension –such as artistic activities–, which they gain implicitly through their engagement as perceivers. For example, we identify various music-related skills mastered by non-musicians, which they gain when listening to music or attending performances. We have two main arguments. First, interaction designers can reuse such implicit knowledge and skills to design interaction techniques that are both expressive and usable by novice users. Second, as expert artifacts and expert learning methods have evolved over time and have shown efficient to overcome the complexity of expert activities, they can be used as a source of inspiration to make expressive systems more easily usable by novice users. We provide a design framework for studying the usability and expressiveness of interaction techniques as two new aspects of the user experience, and explore this framework with three projects. In the first project we study the use of rhythmic patterns as an input method, and show that novice users are able to reproduce and memorize large vocabularies of patterns. This is made possible by the natural abilities of non-musicians to perceive, reproduce and make sense of rhythmic structures. We define a method to create expressive vocabularies of patterns, and show that novice users are able to efficiently use them as command triggers. In the second project, we study the design and learning of chording gestures on multitouch screens. We introduce design guidelines to create expressive chord vocabularies taking the mechanical constraints and the degrees of freedom of the human hand into account. We evaluate the usability of such gestures in an experiment and we present an adapted learning method inspired by the teaching of chords in music. We show that novice users are able to reproduce and memorize our vocabularies of chording gestures, while our learning method can improve long-term memorization. The final project focuses on music software used for live performances and proposes a framework for designing “instrumental” software allowing expert musical playing and having its elementary functionalities accessible to novices, as it is the case with acoustic instruments (for example, one can easily play a few chords on a piano without practice). We define a design framework inspired by a functional decomposition of acoustic instruments and present an adapted software architecture, both aiming to ease the design of such software and to make it match with instrument-making. These projects show that, in these cases: (i) the implicit knowledge novices have about some expert activities can be reused for interaction; (ii) expert learning methods can inspire ways to make expressive systems more usable novices; (iii) taking expert artifacts as a source of inspiration can help creating usable and expressive interactive systems. In this dissertation, we propose the study of usability as an alternative to the focus on immediacy that characterizes current commercial interactive systems. We also propose methods to benefit from the richness of expert activities and from the implicit knowledge of non-experts to design interactive systems that are at the same time expressive and usable by novice users.

No description available.

Research has shown that the caregiving environment and the type of parent-child interactions that occur during development can have significant impact on future child outcomes for positive as well as negative outcomes (Ruffman, Slade, Devitt, & Crowe, 2006; Fonagy, Gergely, & Target, 2007). Language and emotional expressiveness are common themes that past research suggest are aspects of healthy and open parent-child interactions, and which may have associations with positive child outcomes (Carlson, Mandell, & Williams, 2004). Participants included 1359 children from the longitudinal NICHD Study of Early Child Care—variables were measured at 54 months, 3 rd , 4 th , and 6 th grades and at age 15. The early caregiving environment was found to predict 4 th grade language skills, but this relationship was not mediated by family emotional expressiveness in 3 rd grade. Family emotional expressiveness was found to predict 6 th grade social skills, but this was not mediated by 4 th grade language skills. Evidence of an indirect effect of language skills on social skills was found. Fifth grade language skills were not found to predict adolescent problem behavior, however, an overall significant indirect effect was found. Finally, family emotional expressiveness was found to predict adolescent problem behavior, and this relationship was partially mediated by 6th grade social skills. Direct, indirect, and total effects of the various predictors of adolescent problem behavior are discussed in the final chapter.