Thesis (MA)--Stellenbosch University, 2013. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: As South Africa is a culturally and linguistically diverse country, there is a great need for an accurate evaluation instrument that can identify children with specific language impairment (SLI) early, regardless of their language group. The language tests that are available in South Africa are mostly available in only English or Afrikaans (see Penn 1998). In the literature four repetition tasks have been identified as potential markers of SLI: nonword repetition (Coady and Evans 2008:11), sentence repetition and digit repetition (Ziethe, Eysholdt and Doellinger 2013:1) as well as real word repetition (Dispaldro, Benelli, Marcolini and Stella 2009:941). The purpose of this study was to compare the sensitivity of these four potential markers with each other in an attempt to compile an accurate measuring instrument of SLI for Afrikaans and English. The study also aimed to collect baseline data with isiXhosa-speaking children. The participants consisted of five groups of five-year-olds: The first three groups consisted of 20 typical developing (TD) Afrikaans-, 20 TD English-, and 20 TD isiXhosa-speaking children. The fourth and fifth group consisted of five Afrikaans-speaking and five English-speaking children with SLI. All four repetition tasks were performed with both Afrikaans- and both English-speaking groups; only digit repetition and nonword repetition were performed with the isiXhosa-speaking group. Refined and graded items were (i) selected from longer lists of items that were used in the pilot study, and (ii) based on the results of the pilot study, were recorded on a CD in a recording studio. This recording served as method of presentation of the items to each participant individually during the main study. There were no statistically significant differences between the performance of the TD Afrikaans- and the TD English-speaking groups. The TD isiXhosa-speaking group, however, performed significantly better on the nonword repetition task but worse on the digit repetition task than the other two TD groups. Both groups with SLI performed poorly, and significantly poorer than their corresponding TD group, in all four of the repetition tasks. For the Afrikaans-speaking children, sentence repetition followed by real word repetition distinguished best between participants with and without SLI. Sentence repetition, followed by nonword repetition, was shown to be most sensitive in distinguishing TD children from children with SLI in the English group. The percentage sounds/words correctly repeated per word/sentence, for both the nonword repetition task and the real word repetition task, was more accurate than the raw scores for the Afrikaans- and English-speaking groups. Some items did prove to be more sensitive for the difference between the performance of the TD and the SLI groups in Afrikaans and English. These more sensitive items may be appropriate for inclusion in a screening tool for SLI for use with five-year-olds. In conclusion, the results of this study confirm all four repetition tasks to be markers of SLI. Sentence repetition and nonword repetition were more sensitive markers of SLI in English-speaking five-year-olds, with sentence repetition and real word repetition being the more sensitive markers of SLI in Afrikaans-speaking five-year-olds. The isiXhosa-speaking group performed similarly to the Afrikaans- and English-speaking groups in the nonword repetition- and digit repetition tasks. Based on these results, recommendations are made regarding the content and presentation mode of a screening test comprising repetition tasks for the identification of possible SLI in Afrikaans- and English-speaking children. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Aangesien Suid-Afrika ‘n kultureel en linguisties diverse land is, is daar ‘n groot behoefte aan ‘n metingsinstrument wat kinders met spesifieke taalgestremdheid (STG) , uit alle taalgroepe, vroegtydig en akkuraat kan identifiseer. Die taaltoetse wat wel in Suid-Afrika gebruik kan word, is bykans slegs in Afrikaans of Engels beskikbaar (kyk Penn 1998). In die literatuur is daar vier herhalingstake geïdentifiseer wat potensiële merkers van STG kan wees: onsinwoordherhaling (Coady en Evans 2008:11), sinsherhaling en getalherhaling (Ziethe, Eysholdt en Doellinger 2013:1) asook regtewoordherhaling (Dispaldro, Benelli, Marcolini en Stella 2009:941). Die doel van hierdie studie was om die sensitiwiteit van hierdie vier potensiële merkers met mekaar te vergelyk in ‘n poging om ‘n akkurate metingsinstrument van STG vir Afrikaans en Engels op te stel. Basislyndata oor herhaling deur isiXhosasprekende kinders is ook in hierdie studie ingesamel. Die deelnemers het uit vyf groepe vyfjariges bestaan. Die eerste drie groepe was 20 tipies ontwikkelende (TO) Afrikaans-, 20 TO Engels-, en 20 TO isiXhosasprekendes. Die vierde en vyfde groep het uit vyf Afrikaanssprekende- en vyf Engelsprekende kinders met STG bestaan. Al vier herhalingstake is met die twee Afrikaans- en die twee Engelssprekende groepe uitgevoer; slegs getalherhaling en onsinwoordherhaling is met die isiXhosasprekende groep uitgevoer. Verfynde en gegradeerde items geselekteer (i) uit die langer itemlyste gebruik in die loodsstudie en (ii) op grond van die loosstudieresultate, is op CD opgeneem in ‘n klankateljee, en dié opname is gebruik as die metode van aanbieding van die items aan elke deelnemer individueel tydens die hoofstudie. Daar is geen statisties beduidende verskil tussen die prestasie van die TO Afrikaans- en TO Engelssprekende-groepe gevind nie. Die TO isiXhosa-sprekende groep het egter beter as hierdie twee groepe gepresteer in onsinwoordherhaling maar swakker in getalherhaling. Die twee STG-groepe het beide swak, en beduidend swakker as hul ooreenstemmende TO-groep, op alle herhalingstake gevaar. Vir Afrikaanssprekendes het sinsherhaling, gevolg deur regtewoordherhaling, die beste tussen die deelnemers met en sonder STG onderskei, terwyl die mees sensitiewe take vir die Engelssprekende deelnemers sinsherhaling gevolg deur onsinwoordherhaling was. Persentasie klanke/woorde korrek herhaal per woord/sin was in die geval van onsinwoordherhalings- en regtewoordherhalingstake vir beide Afrikaans en Engels meer akkuraat as wat roupunttellings was. Sommige items in elk van die herhalingstake was beide vir Engels en Afrikaans meer sensitief vir die verskil tussen die prestasies van die TO- en STG-groepe. Hierdie meer sensitiewe items mag toepaslik wees vir insluiting in ʼn siftingstoets vir STG vir gebruik met vyfjariges. Opsommend: Die resulate bevestig al vier herhalingstake as merkers van STG. Sinsherhaling en onsinwoordherhaling is meer sensitiewe merkers van STG vir Engelssprekende vyfjariges, met sinsherhaling en regtewoordherhaling wat meer sensitiewe merkers van STG vir Afrikaanssprekende vyfjariges is. Die isiXhosasprekende groep het soortgelyk aan die Afrikaans- en Engelssprekende groepe ten opsigte van onsinwoordherhaling en getalherhaling presteer. Op grond van die resultate word aanbevelings gemaak vir die inhoud en aanbeidingswyse van ‘n siftingstoets bestaande uit herhalingstake vir die identifisering van moontlike STG in Afrikaans- en Engelssprekende kinders.

Context. A clear software process definition is important because it can help developers to share a common understanding and improve the development effectiveness. However, if the misconceptions or misunderstandings are introduced to the team during the process definition, it will bring numerous uncertain problems to the projects and reduce the productivity. Scrum is one of the most popular Agile development processes. It has been frequently used in software development. But the misunderstanding of usage of the Scrum method always leads to situations where teams cannot achieve the hyper-productivity even failure. Therefore, introducing a reasonable graphical language for describing the Scrum process may help learners to gain a correct and common understanding of the Scrum method. Objectives. In this study, we introduce a graphical Domain Specific Language for modeling the Scrum process and specific Scrum projects. Further, we evaluated the proposed language to figure out if and how this language can help developers learn Scrum method and understand the specific Scrum projects. For the first, we decide to extract the essential elements and their relative relationships of the Scrum process, and based on that, we define and specify the graphical language. After that, we evaluate the proposed graphical language to validate whether this language can be considered as useful to help developers to learn Scrum method and understand the specific Scrum projects. Methods. In order to define the graphical language, we studied and reviewed the literature to extract the essential elements and their relationships for describing the Scrum process. Based on that, we defined and specified the graphical DSL. With the aim of evaluating the proposed graphical language, we performed the experiment and survey method. This experiment was conducted in an educational environment. The subjects were selected from the undergraduate and master students. At the same time, we carried out a survey to capture the developers‘ opinions and suggestions towards the proposed language in order to validate its feasibility. Results. By studying the literature, we listed and specified the essential elements for describing the Scrum process. By executing the experiment, we evaluated the efficiency and effectiveness of learning Scrum in using the proposed language and the natural language. The result indicates that the graphical language is better than the natural language in training Scrum method and understanding specific Scrum projects. The result shows that the proposed language improved the understandability of the Scrum process and specific Scrum projects by more than 30%. We also performed a survey to investigate the potential use of the proposed graphical DSL in industry. The Survey results show that participants think the proposed graphical language can help them to better understand the Scrum method and specific Scrum projects. Moreover, we noticed that the developers who have less Scrum development experience show more interests in this proposed graphical language. Conclusions. To conclude, the obtained results of this study indicate that a graphical DSL can improve the understandability of Scrum method and specific Scrum projects. Especially in managing the specific Scrum project, subjects can easily understand and capture the detailed information of the project described in the proposed language. This study also specified the merits and demerits of using the graphical language and textual language in describing the Scrum process. From the survey, the result indicates that the proposed graphical language is able to help developers to understand Scrum method and specific Scrum projects in industry. Participants of this survey show positive opinion toward the proposed graphical language. However, it is still a rather long way to applying such a graphical language in Scrum projects development because companies have to consider the extra learning effort of the graphical DSL.

A compreensão da relação entre linguagem oral e escrita tem se concentrado nos estudos sobre o processamento fonológico (PF). Limitações neste processamento são apontadas como responsáveis pelas dificuldades fonológicas, lexicais, de compreensão e de escrita das crianças com Distúrbio Especifico de Linguagem (DEL). Os objetivos desta dissertação foram: verificar a ocorrência de alteração nas habilidades da linguagem escrita e nas habilidades do PF em crianças com DEL; comparar o desempenho entre crianças com DEL e com Desenvolvimento Típico de Linguagem (DTL) quanto as habilidades do PF e verificar se ha associação entre as habilidades do PF e as de linguagem escrita em crianças com DEL, e ainda, se ha uma habilidade do PF que se destaca nesta associação. Participaram deste estudo 40 sujeitos: 20 com diagnostico de DEL (GE) e 20 com DTL (GC) com idades entre 7 e 10 anos de ambos os sexos. Para avaliação das habilidades do PF foram aplicados os seguintes procedimentos: prova de repetição de não palavras para avaliação da Memória de Trabalho Fonológica (MTF), Teste de Nomeação Automatizada Rápida (RAN) para avaliação do Acesso Lexical (AL) e Perfil de Habilidades Fonológicas para avaliação da Consciência Fonológica (CF). Para avaliação da linguagem escrita os seguintes sub-testes do Teste de Analise de Leitura e Escrita (TALE) foram utilizados: leitura e compreensão de texto, ditado e escrita espontânea. Para analise estatística foi utilizado o teste Qui Quadrado, sendo adotado nível de significância estatística 0,05. A ocorrência de alterações na linguagem escrita na grande maioria dos sujeitos com DEL na amostra estudada foi constatada. As crianças deste grupo apresentaram desempenhos significantemente piores nas provas do PF quando comparadas as do GC. A existência de associação entre desempenho em provas de leitura e escrita e o desempenho em provas do PF foi confirmada. As analises estatísticas evidenciaram que a MTF foi aquela que apresentou maior nível de significância com as provas de leitura e de escrita. Pode-se concluir que a grande maioria das crianças com DEL apresentam alteração nas habilidades de linguagem escrita e do PF; elas apresentaram desempenho significantemente pior em relação aquelas com DTL nas habilidades do PF; ha associação entre desempenho em provas de leitura e escrita e provas do PF, sendo que as dificuldades nas habilidades do PF podem justificar as dificuldades de linguagem escrita; a MTF foi aquela que apresentou maior associação, o que reforça a hipótese de que defasagem na MTF e um forte marcador psicolingüístico nos quadros de DEL. / The understanding of the relationship between oral language and written language hás focused on studies on the phonological processing (PP). Limitations in this area have been identified as one of those responsible, in addition for lexical difficulties and comprehension difficulties, for the phonological disorders of children with specific language impairment (SLI) and the consequent alteration in the written language. This study aimed: verifying the occurrence of alterations in the written language skills and abilities of the PP in children with SLI; compare the performance between children with SLI and typical language development (TLD) and the abilities of the PP; check the association between the PP and the skills of written language in children with SLI, and, if there is one skill of the PP that stands out in these association. Participated of these study 40 subjects: 20 with SLI (EG) and 20 with TDL (CG), with ages between 7 and 10 years old, of the both sexes. For evaluation of the PP the following procedures had been used: non words repetition proof of the Prova de Memoria de Trabalho Fonologica, Teste de Nomeacao Automatizada e Rapida (RAN), for evaluation the lexical acces, and the Perfil de Habilidades Fonologicas, for evaluate the phonological awareness. For evaluation of written language the following subtests of the Teste de Analise de Leitura e Escrita TALE had been used: reading and understanding of text, dictated and spontaneous writing. Statistical analysis was performed using the Qui Quadrado test, and adopted level of statistical significance 0.05. The occurrence of alteration in the written language in most of the subjects with SLI in the sample was found. Children in this group had significantly worse performance in tests of PP when compared to the CG. The existence of the association between performance in tests of reading and writing and performance in tests of PP was confirmed. Statistical analysis showed that the phonological working memory (PWM) was one that showed higher level of significance with the proof reading and writing. It was observed that the majority of children with SLI have alterations in the skills of written language and the PP, they performed significantly worse for those with skills in TDL of PF; there is association between performance in tests of the PP and evidence reading and writing, and that difficulties in the abilities of the PP may explain the difficulties of written language. The PWM was what stood out most in this association, which reinforces the hypothesis, that deficit the PWM is a strong psycholinguistics marker of SLI.

Informational privacy of individuals has significantly gained importance after information technology has become widely deployed. Data, once digitalised, can be copied and distributed at negligible costs. This has dramatic consequences for individuals that leave traces in form of personal data whenever they interact with information technology. The right of individuals for informational privacy, in particular to control the flow and use of their personal data, is easily undermined by those controlling the information technology. The objective of this thesis is the measurement of informational privacy with a particular focus on scenarios where an individual discloses personal data to a second party, the data controller, which uses this data for re-identifying the individual within a set of others, the population. Several instances of this scenario are discussed in the appended papers, most notably one which adds a time dimension to the scenario for modelling the effects of the time passed between data disclosure and usage. This extended scenario leads to a new framework for inter-temporal privacy metrics. The common dilemma of all privacy metrics is their dependence on the information available to the data controller. The same information may or may not be available to the individual and, as a consequence, the individual may be misguided in his decisions due to his limited access to the data controller’s information when using privacy metrics. The goal of this thesis is thus not only the specification of new privacy metrics, but also the contribution of ideas for mitigating this dilemma. However a solution will rather be a combination of technological, economical and legal means than a purely technical solution.

Procedural learning abilities have been shown to be deficient in children who meet criteria for Developmental Dyslexia (DD) and those who meet criteria for Specific Language Impairment (SLI; Lum et al., 2010; Menghini et al., 2006). Further, grammatical understanding has been linked to implicit sequence learning abilities across SLI and typically developing children (Lum, 2012). The present study examined implicit sequence learning, measured by the Serial Reaction Time Task (SRTT), in children who met criteria for DD with or without SLI. Implicit sequence learning was modeled using multi-level growth models of initial reaction time and learning slope across the repeated sequences of the SRTT. We further examined the predictive contributions of grammatical understanding, vocabulary abilities, phonological awareness, and diagnostic groups on implicit learning performance on the SRTT. Results showed language abilities and diagnostic group did not relate strongly to rates of implicit learning.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de déterminer si le déficit auditif des enfants dysphasiques est spécifique au domaine verbal et d’étudier les liens qu’entretiennent les habiletés verbales et musicales chez ces enfants. Nous avons testé 18 dysphasiques et des enfants au développement du langage typique (DLT) âgés de 7 à 12 ans. Dans la première étude, nous avons étudié leurs capacités de détection des syllabes dans des phrases chantées et parlées. Nos résultats ont confirmé les déficits de détection des syllabes chez les dysphasiques. Nous n’avons toutefois pas observé d’effet facilitateur du chant sur la détection des syllabes. Dans une seconde étude, nous avons exploré leur perception musicale à l’aide de la MBEMA (Peretz et al., 2013). Une part importante de ces enfants a montré des troubles de perception mélodique et rythmique. Une corrélation positive a été retrouvée entre les scores aux tests de perception rythmique et de conscience phonologique, étayant les liens entre le traitement temporel et la perception verbale chez les dysphasiques. Dans la troisième étude, nous avons exploré leurs capacités de chant avec une épreuve de reproduction de notes et de mélodies. Les dysphasiques montraient des troubles importants dans ces deux conditions. Des troubles de production et de perception musicale ont été mis en évidence chez la plupart des dysphasiques et les capacités de conscience phonologique semblaient liées au traitement temporel en musique. Ces résultats en faveur d’un déficit auditif plus global chez la plupart des dysphasiques suggèrent l’importance d’évaluer les capacités auditives non verbales dans la prise en charge diagnostique et thérapeutique de ces enfants. / The aim of this thesis is to determine whether the auditory deficit of children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) is specific to verbal stimuli, and to examine the relation between language and musical abilities in these children. We tested 18 children with SLI and groups of children with Typical Language Development (TLD) aged from 7 to 12 years. In the first study, we examined syllable detection in sung and spoken sentences. Results confirmed the detection syllable deficit in children with SLI. However, we did not observe a facilitation effect of sung over spoken stimuli. In the second study, we explored musical perception abilities in the same children with the MBEMA (Peretz et al. 2013). Our results showed that a large proportion of the children with SLI present deficits in melodic and rhythmic perception. A positive correlation was found between scores in Rhythm and phonological awareness tasks, documenting a link between language and temporal processing in children with SLI. In the third study, we assessed singing abilities in children with SLI: we created a singing reproduction task and tested the pitch matching condition and the melodic reproduction condition. The SLI showed deficits for both conditions. These results suggested deficits in music perception and production in children with SLI for most of them and that development of phonological awareness abilities seems related to the auditory temporal processing in music. The findings seem to support the existence a more general auditory dysfunction in a majority of children with SLI emphasizing the relevance of systematically assessing nonverbal abilities for the diagnostic and rehabilitation of SLI.

In the thesis I am presenting a plugin in the integrated development environment Eclipse. Plugin is designed to support writing code in JCL programming language. In the first part of the thesis I am focusing on the mainframe platform from the IBM corporation on which the JCL language is used. I also focus on the z/OS operating system and it`s components required for adequate runtime environment for JCL language. In the next section I am discussing the Eclipse environment which is used as runtime platform for the plugin. As a base for the plugin is used an Xtext framework. The framework is specifically designed for development of custom domain specific languages.

Denna studie gjordes för att få mer kunskap om hur området energi behandlas i svenska läroböcker i NO för mellanstadiet. Teorin utgår från tidigare forskning om olika aspekter av undervisning och lärande om energi, samt om olika kunskapsemfaser i undervisningen. Studien är således en deduktiv läromedelsanalys. Resultatet visar att det abstrakta begreppet energi vanligen beskrivs genom metaforer, vilka används för att underlätta steget mellan vardagliga föreställningar och vetenskapliga begrepp. En sak som också framgår är att läroböckerna utöver faktakunskaper även tar upp sådant som naturvetenskapens vägar till kunskap och dess plats i samhället. / This study was conducted in order to get more knowledge about how the area of energy is treated in Swedish science textbooks for grades 4-6. The theory is based on previous research on different aspects of teaching and learning about energy and different curriculum emphases in education. The study is, therefore, a deductive analysis of teaching material. The result shows that the abstract concept energy is often described through metaphors, which are used to facilitate the step between everyday conceptions and scientific concepts. Apart from targeting factual knowledge, the textbooks also bring up themes like the process of how scientific knowledge is formed, and the role of science in society.

Access control policies typically take the form of a set of static rules pertaining to individual entities under control. This can be impractical in real-world scenarios: authorization invariably depends on wider situational context which often tends to be highly dynamic. This leads to increasingly complex rules, which have to change over time to reflect the evolution of the controlled system. Ensemble-based architectures allow dynamic formation of goal-oriented groups in systems with large number of independent autonomous components. Because of the ad-hoc and situation-aware nature of group formation, ensembles offer a novel way of approaching access control. The goal of this work is to design a Scala framework and internal DSL for describing access control related situations via ensembles. In particular, the framework will define ensemble semantics suitable for evaluating the ensembles and establishing access control at runtime.

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