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This study investigated the Internal State (IS) language input of parents, IS language use by children, and children’s performance on perspective taking and false belief Theory of Mind (ToM) tasks. Two groups of participants were included: children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (N = 12, M chronological age = 7; 4, M language age = 6;0) and typically-developing (TD) children (N = 13, M chronological age = 6;0, M language age= 6;5), matched on language age. Independent means samples t-tests showed that the transcripts of the two groups of parents or the two groups of children did not differ in regards to total number of words, utterances, or mean length of utterance. ANOVAs were used to test for differences in IS language category or elaboration in the two groups (ASD, TD), in parents and children. For the parent data, no statistically significant differences emerged. For the analysis of child talk the ANOVA revealed that the main effect of group approached significance, with a trend towards TD children using more IS language than children with ASD. ANOVAs were also used to test for differences in ToM task performance (perspective-taking, false belief) in the two groups of children; TD children performed significantly better on ToM Tasks overall than the children with ASD. Partial correlations found that for the TD group, there were no significant correlations between the parent’s or the child’s use of IS language with the child’s performance on ToM tasks when chronological age was controlled for. For the ASD group, after controlling for chronological age and language age, the parent’s use of elaborated affect terms was significantly positively correlated with their child’s performance score on perspective-taking tasks, and the parent’s use of elaborated cognitive terms was significantly negatively correlated with their child’s performance on false-belief tasks. Also for the ASD group, the child’s use of simple affect terms was significantly positively correlated with their performance on false belief tasks after controlling for chronological age and language age. Findings are discussed in relation to prior research and clinical implications.

Nowadays, probabilistic models are playing a significant role in various areas in- cluding machine learning, artificial intelligence and cognitive science, etc. How- ever, as those models are becoming more and more complex, it shows that the corresponding programs are really hard to maintain and reuse as well. Meanwhile, the current tools are not feasible enough to enable probabilistic modeling and ma- chine learning to be accessible to the working programmer, who has sufficient do- main expertise, but perhaps not enough expertise in probability theory or machine learning. Probabilistic programming is one possible way to solve this. Indeed, probabilistic programming languages are powerful tools to specify probabilistic models directly in terms of a computer programs. While programmers writes normal procedures, everything will be automatically translated into statistical distributions and then users can do inferences upon them. This project aims at exploring and implementing a probabilistic programming language, for which we name as Shelang. We use Scheme, a dialect of Lisp lan- guage which is originated from λ-Calculus, to implement a embedded probabilis- tic programming language. This paper mainly discusses about the design, algo- rithms, details of this implementation and several usages of Shelang and make a conclusion in the end.

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This thesis discusses the relationship between the experiences particular to the female body, namely pregnancy and childbirth, and the language employed to voice these experiences. This thesis is set up to reflect the physical cycle of pregnancy and birth. It is divided into three chapters. The first chapter discusses the desire for and the conception of a new use of language, a language equipped to carry the messages, creations, and voices of women. The conception of an expansion of language and the physical conception of a child are paralleled. In this chapter, poetry about wanting to write, wanting to become pregnant, and conception are used as examples of the emergence of the expanded language. In Chapter Two, the incubation of this new language is discussed, its many components and characteristics are described, and the discussion of the possible existence of a womens language is continued, by again analyzing a selection of poetry written by women. In this chapter, poetry about pregnancy and childbirth are used to exemplify the use of this language. The discussion of the gestation and birth of the expanded language with the physical gestation and birth of a child are paralleled. In Chapter Three, this notion of a womens language is further discussed, using poetry about new motherhood to demonstrate the effectiveness and existence of new ways to employ our given language. The discussion of what comes after the birth of a new, expanded language is paralleled with the experiences of a mother after the birth of her child. The ultimate conclusion of this thesis is that there is no one language that women do or should employ when writing, but a movement toward writing through the body when writing about the body, about experiences solely experienced by women.

This thesis discusses the relationship between the experiences particular to the female body, namely pregnancy and childbirth, and the language employed to voice these experiences. This thesis is set up to reflect the physical cycle of pregnancy and birth. It is divided into three chapters. The first chapter discusses the desire for and the conception of a new use of language, a language equipped to carry the messages, creations, and voices of women. The conception of an expansion of language and the physical conception of a child are paralleled. In this chapter, poetry about wanting to write, wanting to become pregnant, and conception are used as examples of the emergence of the expanded language. In Chapter Two, the incubation of this new language is discussed, its many components and characteristics are described, and the discussion of the possible existence of a womens language is continued, by again analyzing a selection of poetry written by women. In this chapter, poetry about pregnancy and childbirth are used to exemplify the use of this language. The discussion of the gestation and birth of the expanded language with the physical gestation and birth of a child are paralleled. In Chapter Three, this notion of a womens language is further discussed, using poetry about new motherhood to demonstrate the effectiveness and existence of new ways to employ our given language. The discussion of what comes after the birth of a new, expanded language is paralleled with the experiences of a mother after the birth of her child. The ultimate conclusion of this thesis is that there is no one language that women do or should employ when writing, but a movement toward writing through the body when writing about the body, about experiences solely experienced by women.

In this thesis, we investigate the complexity of the membership problem for pattern languages. A pattern is a string over the union of the alphabets A and X, where X := {x_1, x_2, x_3, ...} is a countable set of variables and A is a finite alphabet containing terminals (e.g., A := {a, b, c, d}). Every pattern, e.g., p := x_1 x_2 a b x_2 b x_1 c x_2, describes a pattern language, i.e., the set of all words that can be obtained by uniformly substituting the variables in the pattern by arbitrary strings over A. Hence, u := cacaaabaabcaccaa is a word of the pattern language of p, since substituting cac for x_1 and aa for x_2 yields u. On the other hand, there is no way to obtain the word u' := bbbababbacaaba by substituting the occurrences of x_1 and x_2 in p by words over A. The problem to decide for a given pattern q and a given word w whether or not w is in the pattern language of q is called the membership problem for pattern languages. Consequently, (p, u) is a positive instance and (p, u') is a negative instance of the membership problem for pattern languages. For the unrestricted case, i.e., for arbitrary patterns and words, the membership problem is NP-complete. In this thesis, we identify classes of patterns for which the membership problem can be solved efficiently. Our first main result in this regard is that the variable distance, i.e., the maximum number of different variables that separate two consecutive occurrences of the same variable, substantially contributes to the complexity of the membership problem for pattern languages. More precisely, for every class of patterns with a bounded variable distance the membership problem can be solved efficiently. The second main result is that the same holds for every class of patterns with a bounded scope coincidence degree, where the scope coincidence degree is the maximum number of intervals that cover a common position in the pattern, where each interval is given by the leftmost and rightmost occurrence of a variable in the pattern. The proof of our first main result is based on automata theory. More precisely, we introduce a new automata model that is used as an algorithmic framework in order to show that the membership problem for pattern languages can be solved in time that is exponential only in the variable distance of the corresponding pattern. We then take a closer look at this automata model and subject it to a sound theoretical analysis. The second main result is obtained in a completely different way. We encode patterns and words as relational structures and we then reduce the membership problem for pattern languages to the homomorphism problem of relational structures, which allows us to exploit the concept of the treewidth. This approach turns out be successful, and we show that it has potential to identify further classes of patterns with a polynomial time membership problem. Furthermore, we take a closer look at two aspects of pattern languages that are indirectly related to the membership problem. Firstly, we investigate the phenomenon that patterns can describe regular or context-free languages in an unexpected way, which implies that their membership problem can be solved efficiently. In this regard, we present several sufficient conditions and necessary conditions for the regularity and context-freeness of pattern languages. Secondly, we compare pattern languages with languages given by so-called extended regular expressions with backreferences (REGEX). The membership problem for REGEX languages is very important in practice and since REGEX are similar to pattern languages, it might be possible to improve algorithms for the membership problem for REGEX languages by investigating their relationship to patterns. In this regard, we investigate how patterns can be extended in order to describe large classes of REGEX languages.

Managers spend 75% of their time actively communicating with employees. Effective leadership communication is fundamental to employee job satisfaction. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore how communication strategies that government agency leaders use may motivate greater employee job satisfaction. Twenty employees of a government office in Florida were the general population sample. The motivational language theory helped explore the nature of job satisfaction by focusing on leadership and employee communication strategies. Leadership communication influences employee motivation through incorporating 3 categories of utterances: empathetic (illocutionary) language, direction-giving (perlocutionary) language, and meaning-making (locutionary) language. The Van Manen selective approach helped code and the Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method helped analyze the participants' transcribed face-to-face interviews. Member checks and data saturation ensured the findings trustworthiness. The findings developed from coding and analyzing data led to the discovery of 4 themes: empathetic language, direction-giving language, meaning-making language, and job satisfaction. The 2 most important themes, direction-giving language and meaning-making language, help motivate job satisfaction by explaining how leadership advice, clear instructions, and leadership stories pertaining to primary events from the agency's past provide direction and a feeling of job satisfaction. Social implications of this study include creating and improving organizational communication best practices and guidelines to help leaders communicate information effectively and to motivate regional governmental organization employee job satisfaction.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:41:14Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Renata de Lima Velloso.pdf: 1203406 bytes, checksum: bd6f70f280924e3d77a921b7f2e7a1f3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-02 / Fundo Mackenzie de Pesquisa / Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) refer to important deficits in social interac-tion, in verbal and nonverbal communication, and in imaginative activities, which are replaced by repetitive and stereotyped behaviors. For several years, researchers have been proposing theories for explaining the primary deficit in the ASD, and cur-rently two theoretical approaches are preponderant: the developmental theory and the cognitive theory. This study has aimed at assessing abilities of language and of a theory of mind in children with ASD and in control children, with the application of the Strange Stories Test translated into Portuguese and adopted for Brazilian culture. Male children with ASD (28) and male control children (56) aged 6 to 12 years old took part in this study. The Brazilian version of the Strange Stories Test was applied following the same procedures to both experimental and control groups. Findings evidenced significant differences between mean scores of the groups in every of the 12 histories composing the test as well as in the sum of mean scores for all histories. Mean scores in all histories were significantly higher in the control group compared to the experimental group (children with ASD). Significant positive correlation was es-tablished between the estimated intelligence quotients and the sum of mean scores in the ASD group, and between the age and the sum of mean scores in the control group. Optimal internal consistence of the protocol was observed (0.955). Results were discussed under developmental and cognitive theories. It is concluded that the abilities of language and of a theory of mind assessed by the Strange Stories Test presented altered in children with ASD compared to children with typical develop-ment. / Os Transtornos do Espectro do Autismo (TEA) se caracterizam por prejuízos significativos na interação social, na comunicação verbal e não verbal e pela ausên-cia de atividades imaginativas, substituídas por comportamentos repetitivos e este-reotipados. Os pesquisadores vêm há muitos anos propondo teorias explicativas do prejuízo primário nos TEA, prevalecendo atualmente duas vertentes teóricas: a teo-ria desenvolvimentista e a teoria cognitivista. O objetivo deste estudo foi a avaliação de habilidades de linguagem e de Teoria da Mente em indivíduos com TEA e indiví-duos-controle, com a aplicação do teste Strange Stories, traduzido e adaptado para a Língua portuguesa. Participaram do estudo 28 crianças com TEA e 56 crianças-controle, todas do sexo masculino e na faixa etária entre seis e 12 anos. A versão brasileira do teste Strange Stories foi aplicada, seguindo os mesmos procedimentos, tanto ao grupo experimental quanto ao grupo-controle. Os resultados indicaram dife-renças significativas entre os escores médios dos grupos experimental e controle em cada uma das 12 histórias do teste e na soma dos escores de todas as histórias. Os escores médios registrados para todas as histórias foram significativamente maiores no grupo-controle do que no grupo experimental (crianças com TEA). Observou-se correlação positiva entre quociente de inteligência e soma dos escores médios para o grupo experimental, e correlação positiva entre idade e soma dos escores médios para o grupo-controle. Observou-se ótima consistência interna do protocolo. Os re-sultados foram discutidos sob a perspectiva cognitivista e desenvolvimentista. Con-cluiu-se que as habilidades de linguagem e de Teoria da Mente avaliadas pelo teste Strange Stories se mostraram alteradas no grupo de crianças com TEA quando comparadas às crianças do grupo-controle.

This study focuses on how internal crisis communications in organizations are affected by how people in a leading position, here middle managers, communicate with their employees. The theories used to discuss this phenomena are Motivating Language Theory with its three dimensions together with different leadership theories. The study was conducted in Sweden and the data was gathered through two digital questionnaires. Some questions had a set of answers to choose from, whereas some were open ended. This was in order to more deeply understand the reasoning behind the answers given. One questionnaire was aimed toward middle managers and one towards employees. However, both questionnaires studied the same variables. The study was conducted in several different organizations and questionnaires were distributed to a total of 276 people. In this study the following statements can be asserted: in a Swedish context meaning-making language is preferred for both employees and middle managers, but direction-giving language is still most commonly used.