Texture segmentation is an effortless process in scene analysis, yet its neural mechanisms are not sufficiently understood. A common assumption in most current approaches is that texture segmentation is a vision problem. However, considering that texture is basically a surface property, this assumption can at times be misleading. One interesting possibility is that texture may be more intimately related with touch than with vision. Recent neurophysiological findings showed that receptive fields (RFs) for touch resemble that of vision, albeit with some subtle differences. To leverage on this, here I propose three ways to investigate the tactile receptive fields in the context of texture processing: (1) performance, (2) development, and (3) analysis. For performance, I tested how such distinct properties in tactile receptive fields can affect texture segmentation performance, as compared to that of visual receptive fields. Preliminary results suggest that touch has an advantage over vision in texture segmentation. These results support the idea that texture is fundamentally a tactile (surface) property. The next question is what drives the two types of RFs, visual and tactile, to become different during cortical development? I investigated the possibility that tactile RF and visual RF emerge based on the same cortical learning process, where the only difference is in the input type, natural-scene-like vs. texture-like. The main result is that RFs trained on natural scenes develop RFs resembling visual RFs, while those trained on texture resemble tactile RFs. These results again suggest a tight link between texture and the tactile modality, from a developmental context. To investigate further the functional properties of these RFs in texture processing, the response of tactile RFs and visual RFs were analyzed with manifold learning and with statistical approaches. The results showed that touch-based manifold seems more suitable for texture processing and desirable properties found in visual RF response can carry over to those in the tactile domain. These results are expected to shed new light on the role of tactile perception of texture; help develop more powerful, biologically inspired texture segmentation algorithms; and further clarify the differences and similarities between touch and vision.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between receptive oral expressive vocabularies. It was hypothesized that receptive discrimination pretraining has a greater influence on the reate of acquisition of its expressive vocal counterpart as compared to the reate of vocal acquisition of words without receptive pretraining.

A research review of eleven studies pertaining to receptive language performance among nonverbal, school-age children with cerebral palsy was completed. The purpose of this review was to identify components and predictor variables of receptive language growth among the target population. The studies were analyzed to further explore how limited verbal output related to comprehension level and to determine appropriate expectations for receptive abilities within the target population. Results suggested that language performances within the domains of verbal and written comprehension were generally lower compared to children matched for chronological age. However, performances were also highly variable among the target population, indicating the potential for typical receptive language development despite impaired expressive abilities. In addition, the following variables demonstrated predictive patterns across subjects: type of cerebral palsy, home literacy environment, and reading status. Clinical implications, including assessment and treatment planning considerations that are sensitive to unique developmental patterns demonstrated in the target population, are discussed. The empirical focus on language output and the use of mixed age groups in current studies on cerebral palsy warrant future research. Additional investigations of receptive language growth as it relates to specific age groups within this clinical population are needed. / text

The University of Manchester, PhD by Published Work, 2018 For several reasons, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are an important group of firms. In most market economies SMEs contribute significantly to wealth and job creation, economic growth, and product and service innovation. At the same time, SMEs are said to produce environmental impacts that are significant and that need managing and regulating. Their importance, from an economic and environmental perspective, is reflected in the fact that SMEs have become an established subject for research, with a distinct area of analysis focusing on how they manage their environmental impacts. Despite considerable interest in this area, aspects of their behaviour are in need of further examination, for there are still misunderstandings and gaps in knowledge. An area where gaps exist is how SMEs respond to different forms of environmental regulation (e.g., command-based or market-based approaches) and different forms of regulatory pressure (e.g., such as those pressures from civil society that might induce compliance-related activities or market forces that might flow through, and affect, the value chain). Why the gaps? On the one hand, and generally speaking, a common claim among those who have considered issues affecting smaller firms is that regulation is an important driver of environmental behaviour. There is a well-documented set of linked claims and empirical findings that smaller firms tend to be motivated by compliance with regulatory standards, yet owing to their scarce resources can find themselves hovering on the edge of compliance. Typically, SMEs will attempt to do no more than the law requires of them. They tend not, as it were, to go beyond compliance. Of course, this is an important observation - one that might say much, even if indirectly, about the motivations and intentions of smaller firms. It might indicate that SMEs, rather than addressing environmental issues, are more concerned with making cost savings and efficiency gains, or with satisfying the requirements of customers over such matters as product or service quality and delivery. While significant, there are at least three reasons why this view remains incomplete as an explanation for the interaction between SMEs, regulation and the environment. Firstly, this view tends to over-homogenise smaller firms. By treating them as a standardized group, the inference is that SMEs view and respond to regulation - i.e., they are all driven by regulation - in a broadly similar way. Secondly, it says little about how and why regulation drives behaviour. Claiming that regulation drives behaviour is helpful, but the claim is unduly narrow and leaves several important questions. In what ways does regulation drive behaviour? Does regulation drive all smaller firms in the same way? Thirdly, and finally, it suggests that different forms of regulation drive SME behaviour and that different forms of regulation drive this behaviour in broadly similar ways. That is, it is incomplete as it lacks appreciation of the widening scope of regulation and governance, and the nature of smart mixes of regulation. It fails to properly consider whether and how SMEs might respond differently to command-based regulation, market- or information-based measures, or self- or so-called civil regulatory pressures. On the other hand, and again in general terms, while those who have examined regulation have looked at how it can influence firms, they have tended to pay too little regard to how firms of different size may respond to different approaches or to how the factors and characteristics relating to size may shape the effectiveness of regulation. SMEs particularly are often discussed as an unusual sideshow that might raise different issues in relation, say, to the impacts of regulation on performance or innovation. That we often pay too little regard to how firms of different size may respond raises difficulties, particularly given our increasing understanding that there is no guarantee that a particular instrument will work in all situations. In other words, we are becoming more aware of the fact that the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of regulation is likely to be context-sensitive, and that the size of the enterprise is likely to be an important determinant of context. This thesis does take, and provides evidence for, the view that the organisational context is crucial to understanding how regulation functions. The thesis does not claim to provide all answers, but it does adopt the position that, in aggregate terms, a firm's size, or the factors that can be associated with size (e.g., resources, skills, knowledge, visibility, profile, stakeholder relations), and related factors concerning a firm's mind-set, can affect two things; first, the types of regulatory influences that may affect organizational behaviour and, second, how firms will respond to those influences. By focusing on SMEs, the thesis in some ways reinforces the dominant view that regulation is a driver of behaviour. Nevertheless, it goes much farther than this by showing, both theoretically and empirically, that there are important differences across SMEs and that these differences determine how and why they respond to regulation. It extends the common view by showing how SMEs differ not only in terms of the types of regulatory influences that shape their behaviour, but also in terms of how they react to these different influences. The emerging picture thus shows that the responses of firms are determined by their particular characteristics. The term used in this thesis is 'receptive capacity', which is shown to be a composite measure that includes the capabilities (e.g., resources, skills, knowledge) and orientations (e.g., views) of firms. It is suggested here that the range of receptive capacities across firms is enormous, since no two firms will be identical. Yet, it is argued - and demonstrated - that firms can be grouped according to certain identifiable characteristics, and that these groups of firms will respond to regulatory pressures in broadly similar ways; that is, there are groups of firms that have broadly similar resources and broadly similar worldviews. Thus, as well as suggesting that differences can be found at the micro level, it is demonstrated that there are sufficient commonalities across some firms that we can understand them as groups - groups of individual firms with some common characteristics. In conclusion, it is the differences across firms that provide us with a more sophisticated view of how SMEs are influenced by, and respond to, regulation. It is the nature of differences that is the main contribution of this research to both the fields of regulation and organisational and management studies. It is suggested finally that these differences have implications for how we design regulation, for how we may expect regulation to work or indeed not work, and for issues such as regulatory complexity and smart mixes.

This study maps compensation strategies in English as a foreign language used in immediate receptive situations by students of English and other modern languages. By mapping these strategies, language learners’ thinking processes are made visible, which in turn may assist teachers in modifying teaching methods. The study is comparative and highlights the difference in the use of strategies between learners who exclusively study English and learners who study at least one other modern language apart from English. The focus is on two major components of second language acquisition, viz. grammaticality and unknown words in context. Two major strategies have been used: (1) a quantitative analysis, and (2) a qualitative analysis, of sentences and words in context. Data have been collected from two surveys and two sets of recorded introspection with ten informants. This study proposes a classification of receptive compensation strategies including a division of achievement and avoidance strategies. The findings from the comparative study point out the major differences between learners of English only and learners of other modern languages. Finally, a discussion about what these results may imply for teaching is given.

To date, no studies have established the relationship between early communication characteristics for young children with significant disabilities and later language development. This study characterized communication for toddlers (n = 60) fitting this profile and their parents prior to a language intervention utilizing an observational coding scheme and tested whether child and parent communication characteristics were predictive of performance on oral language measures. Language transcripts were coded for child mode and pragmatic function and parent response to the utterance child utterances. Results indicated that children used contact gestures, answering and commenting at the highest rates relative to other communication characteristics. Parents utilized a related response type for 52% of child utterances. Hierarchical regressions revealed that sophisticated gesture usage, word usage, and sophisticated function rate were predictive of expressive oral language performance. Sophisticated gesture usage, sophisticated function rate, and parent MLU were predictive of receptive oral language performance.

This study contributes to what is known about the nature of unbalanced bilingualism that emerges in language contact situations by examining the morphological knowledge of Spanish receptive heritage bilinguals (RHBs). RHBs were exposed to Spanish in their homes and communities but received formal schooling in English. These bilinguals have been described as being "on the verge of culminating the language shift towards English monolingualism" (Beaudrie, 2009a, p. 86), although despite this they report the ability to understand but not speak their heritage language. While the interpretation and production of inflectional morphology are difficult for more proficient heritage bilinguals (Montrul, 2008, 2009), little is known about the extent to which knowledge of morphology is measurable in HRBs or how it contributes to their ability to comprehend spoken Spanish. To answer these questions, 33 adult Spanish RHBs completed four, aurally-presented on- and off-line experimental tasks designed to assess their underlying grammatical competence, their receptive comprehension skills, and their proficiency without requiring that participants speak, read or write in Spanish. These tasks and the skills they assessed are listed below. 1) A self-paced, aural grammaticality judgment task examined whether RHBs have access to the rules that govern the well-formedness of specific inflectional morphemes, including gender and subject/verb agreement, as well as tense, aspect, and mood morphemes. 2) A morpheme interpretation task assessed whether RHBs interpret the meaning supplied by bound morphemes and distinguish between semantic contrasts. 3) A contextualized listening comprehension task measured the listening comprehension abilities of RHBs. 4) An elicited imitation task measured the proficiency of RHBs. The results of this study show that RHBs do have underlying morphological competence and are able to distinguish between grammatical and ungrammatical morphemes despite their limited language skills in other domains. Additionally, these bilinguals interpret the meaning supplied by bound morphemes, although access to the rules governing both the structure and the semantics of these morphemes decreases in accordance with the order in which they were acquired in childhood. RHBs understand the majority of what they hear when listening to spoken Spanish, and on average their proficiency ranges from low to intermediate levels. An analysis of the linear relationship between the results of the four experimental tasks revealed that the extent to which listening comprehension abilities and proficiency correspond to morphological knowledge in Spanish RHBs is dependent on the degree of access that these bilinguals have to the semantic information provided by functional morphemes. The results of this study show that while the core syntax of Spanish RHBs is intact, semantic knowledge may not have been mapped to certain morphemes during the acquisition process. These results are analyzed in tandem with various hypotheses that have been recently put forth to account for the linguistic outcomes of contact bilingualism, and an argument is made for considering heritage grammars as completely acquired but distinct language varieties.

Learning to comply with parental commands and requests is an important developmental achievement during toddlerhood. Although more responsive parenting often is associated with increases in children's compliance during the toddler years, the role of mothers' and toddlers' language abilities on change in compliance has largely been ignored. The current study addressed this gap using a sample of low-income, primarily African American mothers and toddlers (N = 55). Two models examining the role of receptive vocabulary were evaluated. First, mothers with higher receptive vocabulary scores were hypothesized to display more warm responsive communication in a teaching situation, which would be related to higher children's receptive vocabulary scores, and increased child compliance from age 2 to 3. Conversely, mothers with lower receptive vocabulary scores were expected to use more hostile intrusive communication, or communication patterns that would predict lower receptive vocabulary scores in children and increases in noncompliance over the third year. While direct associations were supported linking mothers' communication style with mothers' receptive vocabulary and change in compliance and noncompliance from age 2 to age 3, mediational hypotheses were not supported. The results of this study, while limited by small sample size, indicate that mothers' use of warm responsive or hostile intrusive communication in teaching situations affects their toddlers' development of compliance and noncompliance during the third year of life.

<p>The main purpose of this paper was to construct and try out a test that could measure the size of both the receptive and productive vocabulary. This was a joint project, done by three students at the C-level in English in 1997. Before the test was constructed the students looked into previous investigations and different test methods used. The project group chose the Yes/No method as their test format. 23 students in their second year of their education at a theorectical programme in upper secondary school and 16 adult students at Komvux took the test in this paper. The results of the test taken by the students showed that it is impossible for a language teacher to construct a reliable and valid test for measuring vocabulary size using the Yes/No method.</p>

Integration of inputs by cortical neurons provides the basis for the complex information processing performed in the cerebral cortex. Here, we propose a new analytic framework for understanding integration within cortical neuronal receptive fields. Based on the synaptic organization of cortex, we argue that neuronal integration is a systems--level process better studied in terms of local cortical circuitry than at the level of single neurons, and we present a method for constructing self-contained modules which capture (nonlinear) local circuit interactions. In this framework, receptive field elements naturally have dual (rather than the traditional unitary influence since they drive both excitatory and inhibitory cortical neurons. This vector-based analysis, in contrast to scalarsapproaches, greatly simplifies integration by permitting linear summation of inputs from both "classical" and "extraclassical" receptive field regions. We illustrate this by explaining two complex visual cortical phenomena, which are incompatible with scalar notions of neuronal integration.