From ci.hosea at let.vu.nl Mon Jul 2 14:48:40 2001 From: ci.hosea at let.vu.nl (C.I. Hosea) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 15:48:40 +0100 Subject: data of Indonesian children? Message-ID: Dear all, I am doing a paper on first language acquisition and I am looking for some data on the acquisition of Indonesian as a first language. Does anybody know where I can find a longitudinal study of one or more children which I can use? Thanking you in advance, Sincerely, Chrissy Hosea student of Linguistics Free University Amsterdam From quigleyj at tcd.ie Fri Jul 6 14:27:58 2001 From: quigleyj at tcd.ie (Jean Quigley) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:27:58 +0100 Subject: Czech language transcriptions Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am a Czech doctoral student working with the CHILDES system. I was wondering if anyone has done any work transcribing Czech material using this system or if anyone has used the POSTTRAIN command to create a Czech database. I would greatly appreciate any information or direction any one could give me. Yours sincerely, Petra Houdkova houdkovp at tcd.ie Department of Psychology University of Dublin Trinity College, Dublin From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 7 04:12:45 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 12:12:45 +0800 Subject: Czech language transcriptions Message-ID: Dear Petra Houdkova, Filip Smolik at the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences on Husova 4, Prague 11000 sent me a few small CHAT files for Czech that he was working on last year. I don't know the current status of his work. His email is smolik at site.cas.cz --Brian MacWhinney From als at ip.pt Sun Jul 8 17:58:05 2001 From: als at ip.pt (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Ana_L=FAcia_Santos?=) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:58:05 +0100 Subject: GALA 2001 - Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition - Portugal Message-ID: GALA 2001 - Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition September, 14-16, Palmela, Portugal Organization: Universidade de Lisboa, Universidade Nova de Lisboa & Associação Portuguesa de Linguística Invited speakers: Anne Christophe Paula Fikkert Maria Teresa Guasti Nina Hyams Program of the colloquium and further information available at: http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/clunl/gala_index.htm Contact: gala2001 at netvisao.pt From dafna at A-i.com Mon Jul 16 08:31:52 2001 From: dafna at A-i.com (Dafna Itzhaki) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:31:52 +0200 Subject: English corpora which do not appear in documentation Message-ID: Dear Info-Childes, I have noticed that there are a few directories in the English corpora that do not appear in the 'database documentation' (for example, Morisset). Is there a way to get information regarding those transcripts? (age of subjects etc.). Thank you, Dafna Itzhaki Trainer Ai, Artificial Intelligence, NV. Tel# 972-54-288-930 From ehoff at fau.edu Mon Jul 16 12:53:32 2001 From: ehoff at fau.edu (Erika Hoff) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:53:32 -0400 Subject: backing up videotapes Message-ID: Dear all, On behalf of a colleague in biology, I am asking whether anyone has figured out a way to back up videotapes onto a more permanent medium such as CD or DVD. Many thanks, Erika Erika Hoff, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Florida Atlantic University 2912 College Avenue Davie, FL 33314 (954) 236-1142 fax: (954) 236-1099 From ehoff at fau.edu Mon Jul 16 21:28:18 2001 From: ehoff at fau.edu (Erika Hoff) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:28:18 -0400 Subject: backing up videotapes Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks to the many who responded to my query about how to back up videotapes. The gist of the answer, as I understand it, is that first you must digitize your tapes, saving them as .avi files or compressed as .mpg files. Then you can write these files onto a CD. To accomplish the digitizing part you need a video capture card and accompanying software. You hook up the VCR to the card to create the files. Then you need a CD burner to put the files on the CD. One suggested program for accomplishing the first part is called Broadway, version 2.5; and a recommended website is http://www.videoguys.com/dtvhome.html. Other comments were that these digitized files take up a great deal of space and the whole process is very time consuming and expensive. Thanks again, Erika Erika Hoff, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Florida Atlantic University 2912 College Avenue Davie, FL 33314 (954) 236-1142 fax: (954) 236-1099 From jshguo at csuhayward.edu Thu Jul 19 01:34:08 2001 From: jshguo at csuhayward.edu (Jiansheng Guo) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 18:34:08 -0700 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for this purpose. I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, shame and pride. If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any references to previous studies using such books, I would be most appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. All my best wishes, Guo Jiansheng Guo Dept. of Human Development California State University, Hayward From beate at fcu.edu.tw Wed Jul 18 01:35:37 2001 From: beate at fcu.edu.tw (beate luo) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:35:37 +0800 Subject: sorry for the virus Message-ID: Dear all, last week my computer got infested with the W32/Verona virus which spreads itself using the adress book of the computer. I suspected one file of being a virus message, so I just highlighted it for deleting. That was already enough to start it working. I was later told that it is impossible to delete these kind of viruses. I'm sorry that it got to the list. I got a lot of messages of virus warnings from some of your computer systems and some messages of people I don't know, telling me they could'nt read the message, some were even insulting as if I would have spread the virus intentionally. I didn't and all I can say is I'm sorry that the virus started from my computer. I've been waiting with this apology until my computer came back from the computer center as I didn't want to trigger another round of virus messages. Sincerely yours, Dr. Beate Luo Feng-Chia University Foreign Lanuage and Literature Teaching Section Dept. of Humanities 100 Wen-Hua Rd. Hsi-Tun District, 407 Taichung City Taiwan, ROC e-mail: beate at fcu.edu.tw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Thu Jul 19 20:07:52 2001 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:07:52 +0100 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions In-Reply-To: <3B563910.D4A0EED@bay.csuhayward.edu> Message-ID: Hi! There are quite a lot of picture books for primary school children, aimed at 'getting them in touch' with their emotions. There is a lot of debate about whether they serve the intended purpose or not; but at any rate they could be useful for your study, as they typically include illustrations both of the emotional expressions and of events which elicit them. One of the earliest is Terry Berger and Howard Spivak: I Have Feelings; Human Sciences Press, 1978. It is illustrated by photographs. More recent books include: Mary Atkinson: Why Can't I Be Happy All the Time?; Dorling Kindersley, 1997 Books by 'Althea' (Althea Braithwaite): Feeling Angry Feeling Jealous Feeling Sad Feeling Scared Feeling Shy Being Friends Books by Janine Amos (all published by "Cherrytree" in Bath, England) Angry (1990) Jealous (1990) Sad (1990) Hurt (1990) Lonely (1990) Brave (1993) Confident (1993) Happy (1993) Friendly (1993) Moody (1994) Books by Brian Moses and M. Gordon (all published by Wayland, 1993) I Feel Angry I Feel Frightened I Feel Jealous I Feel Sad Books by Sally Hewitt (all published by Watts) Feeling Angry Feeling Jealous Feeling Shy Feeling Worried I hope some of these are useful. Yours, Ann On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Jiansheng Guo wrote: > Dear Colleagues, > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > this purpose. > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > surprise, shame and pride. > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > All my best wishes, > Guo > > Jiansheng Guo > Dept. of Human Development > California State University, Hayward > > From c.g.hunt at reading.ac.uk Fri Jul 20 11:14:10 2001 From: c.g.hunt at reading.ac.uk (George Hunt) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:14:10 +0100 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions Message-ID: A very reliable source of this kind of talk is 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak. Other promising titles are: The Tunnel by Anthony Brown Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley My Brother Sean by Errol Lloyd The Great Green Mouse Disaster by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier Dogger by Shirley Hughes The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (top end of your age range) I'm sorry I don't have publishing details to hand, but all of these books are classics and should be widely available. Best wishes George Hunt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jiansheng Guo" To: Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:34 AM Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions > Dear Colleagues, > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > this purpose. > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > surprise, shame and pride. > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > All my best wishes, > Guo > > Jiansheng Guo > Dept. of Human Development > California State University, Hayward > > From dthal at mail.sdsu.edu Fri Jul 20 23:02:36 2001 From: dthal at mail.sdsu.edu (Dr. Donna Thal) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:02:36 -0700 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions In-Reply-To: <001801c1110d$1df188a0$2c81e186@rdg.ac.uk> Message-ID: I'll be out of the office until August 21st. At 12:14 PM 7/20/2001 +0100, George Hunt wrote: >A very reliable source of this kind of talk is 'Where the Wild Things Are' >by Maurice Sendak. Other promising titles are: > >The Tunnel by Anthony Brown > >Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley > >My Brother Sean by Errol Lloyd > >The Great Green Mouse Disaster by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier > >Dogger by Shirley Hughes > >The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (top end of your age >range) > >I'm sorry I don't have publishing details to hand, but all of these books >are classics and should be widely available. > >Best wishes > >George Hunt > > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Jiansheng Guo" >To: >Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:34 AM >Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions > > > > Dear Colleagues, > > > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > > this purpose. > > > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > > surprise, shame and pride. > > > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > > > All my best wishes, > > Guo > > > > Jiansheng Guo > > Dept. of Human Development > > California State University, Hayward > > > > Donna J. Thal, Ph.D. Developmental Psycholinguistics Laboratory 6330 Alvarado Court, Suite 231 San Diego, CA 92120-1850 phone: 619-594-7110 fax: 619-594-4570 Department of Communicative Disorders San Diego State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dominey at isc.cnrs.fr Sat Jul 21 22:53:19 2001 From: dominey at isc.cnrs.fr (Peter FORD DOMINEY) Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:53:19 +0200 Subject: postdoc position, computational neuroscience and language Message-ID: Please Post: Post-Doctoral Fellowship Announcement: Multiple-Cue Integration in Language Acquisition: A Simulation Study Starting in September/October 2001, a post-doctoral fellowship will be available for a period of 12-36 months in the Sequential Cognition and Language group, at the Institute of Cognitive Science (Institut des Sciences Cognitive) in Lyon France. The selected researcher will participate in an HFSP funded project addressing aspects of language acquisition through simulation, behavioral and brain imagery (ERP) studies. The position will involve: 1. analysis of natural language corpora 2. Neural network simulation of language acquisition processes based on the preceding analysis. An example of a this type of approach can be found in: Dominey PF, Ramus F (2000) Neural network processing of natural language: I. Sensitivity to serial, temporal and abstract structure of language in the infant. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15(1) 87-127 Qualifications for the candidate: 1. A PhD in a related discipline (computer science, computational neuroscience, cognitive science) and a strong computational neuroscience background, with experience in the Linux/Unix C environment, and in cognitive neuroscience simulation. 2. Familiarity with the Childes language database and associated analysis tools, and/or experience/interest in computational aspects of language acquisition. 3. Fluency in French and English. Interested candidates should send a letter of intention, a CV and three letters of recommendation to Peter F. Dominey at the address below. Applications will continue to be accepted until the position is filled. Peter F. Dominey, Ph.D. Institut des Sciences Cognitives CNRS UPR 9075 67 boulevard Pinel 69675 BRON Cedex Tel Standard: 33(0)4.37.91.12.12 Tel Direct: 33(0)4.37.91.12.66 Fax : 33(0)4.37.91.12.10 dominey at isc.cnrs.fr WEB: http://www.isc.cnrs.fr From a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Mon Jul 23 15:12:26 2001 From: a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:12:26 +0100 Subject: quick question Message-ID: how would you translate "motherese" into French please. merci! Annette -- ________________________________________________________________ Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit, Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, U.K. tel: 0207 905 2754 fax: 0207 242 7717 http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm ________________________________________________________________ From lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu Mon Jul 23 19:28:18 2001 From: lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu (Lynne Hewitt) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:28:18 -0400 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions In-Reply-To: <001801c1110d$1df188a0$2c81e186@rdg.ac.uk> Message-ID: The works of Kevin Henkes all tend to deal with issues that resonate with young children through early elementary school, perfect for the ages you describe (though 3 year olds will obviously be on the edge of understanding some of this stuff). Characters behave in realistic ways depicting a wide range of emotions....Examples: Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse; Owen; Chrysanthemum; Chester's Way; Julius the Baby of the World. Characters are depicted as humanoid mice, so ethnicity issues are downplayed, though a middle class suburban environment is assumed. Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse has many of the emotions you describe: pride, joy, anger, shame, relief. The Berenstain bears series of books deals with a wide array of problems typical of young children's experiences--getting along with friends and siblings, new baby issues, fears, greed, bad habits. (I refer to the picture books--there are novels for older children as well.) Also, I like the frog stories for eliciting emotional terms--Mercer Mayer's frogs and dogs are as expressive as his boys! Lynne Hewitt At 12:14 PM 7/20/2001 +0100, you wrote: >A very reliable source of this kind of talk is 'Where the Wild Things Are' >by Maurice Sendak. Other promising titles are: > >The Tunnel by Anthony Brown > >Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley > >My Brother Sean by Errol Lloyd > >The Great Green Mouse Disaster by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier > >Dogger by Shirley Hughes > >The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (top end of your age >range) > >I'm sorry I don't have publishing details to hand, but all of these books >are classics and should be widely available. > >Best wishes > >George Hunt > > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Jiansheng Guo" >To: >Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:34 AM >Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions > > > > Dear Colleagues, > > > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > > this purpose. > > > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > > surprise, shame and pride. > > > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > > > All my best wishes, > > Guo > > > > Jiansheng Guo > > Dept. of Human Development > > California State University, Hayward > > > > From annabelledavid at hotmail.com Tue Jul 24 10:27:19 2001 From: annabelledavid at hotmail.com (Annabelle David) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:27:19 +0100 Subject: quick question Message-ID: According to de Boysson-Bardies, motherese does not have any real translation in french. She mentions the expression 'parler bebe' as a possible translation. But motherese refers more to prosody while 'parler bebe' refers to simplified vocabulary or syntax. She uses motherese even in a French text. Annabelle David Department of Speech University of Newcastle _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp From macwhinn at hku.hk Wed Jul 25 05:35:40 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:35:40 +0800 Subject: Archiving video data Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, About a week ago, Erika Hoff posted a message to info-childes outlining the results from a query about how to best archive video data. The suggested method involved the use of CD-ROMs to store data in either QuickTime or some other compressed format. I think the idea was that, once this was done, you could then recycle your original media. I would like to point out some potentially serious problems with this approach to video archiving. If the goal of the archiving is only to maintain some basic in-house record that will never be modified in any way, then the CD-ROM solution is a good one. After all, the price of CD-ROMs now has fallen so extremely, that they are about at the level of the diskette of five years ago. (By the way, current prices of 10 cents a disk are an aberration and they will soon rise back to about 30 cents a disk.) However, if the project has other potential goals, then CD-ROM archiving has some problems. When one archives data on CD-ROM, it has to be in some compressed format such as MPEG, Sorensen, or QuickTime. Raw video data is huge, perhaps as much as 40 times as big as compressed data. So archiving raw data on CD-ROM is not a possibility. Why would one want to archive raw data? Let me suggest four reasons (all based on hard-won personal experience): 1. Editing. You may want to create a sample of your data based on segments for playback to classes and colleagues. Once you have compressed your data, this is no longer possible. 2. Changing format. New compression schemes continue to emerge. Once you have compressed in one, you can't reverse that compression and switch to another better format. 3. Changes within format. Often I find that I didn't map stereo channels correctly or didn't select the right compression options. If I throw away my raw video, none of these errors can be repaired. 4. If you created a transcript and linked it to a video in CLAN and then went back to change something, all of the links you created will be wrong. So, what is the solution? The alternative is to also keep the raw data on the mini-DV tapes on which it was recorded. If the original was VHS, the best method is to first take the VHS to mini-DV and then use the mini-DV as the archive. For this scheme to work, you have to rely on good archiving of your editing script file in your editing program (Final Cut, Premiere, iMovie). If you archive this list, you can always just reload the mini-DV cassette and redigitize the movie. If you do this, all of the links you created in CLAN for the time values in your movie will still be good. So, it seems to me that, if your data is important to you, if you are the type of person who ever makes a mistake, and if your project has sufficient funds, the best archiving method relies on keeping the mini-DV and the accompanying edit script file, as well as the compressed product on CD-ROM. If you never make mistakes, never change formats, never plan to work with other projects, and don't have enough funds, then CD-ROM archiving without mini-DV archiving is OK. --Brian MacWhinney From cslater at alma.edu Thu Jul 26 13:43:24 2001 From: cslater at alma.edu (Carol Slater) Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:43:24 +0100 Subject: No subject was specified. Message-ID: Dear Colleagues-- I wonder whether anyone has had experience using CHILDES as an instructional resource? Suggestions, advice, cautions, counsel would be very welcome as I get ready to teach a dozen bright (but linguistically unsophisticated) students in a language acquisition course cross listed in psychology and cognitive science. ???? I have also been looking for audio examples to illustrate research in early speech recognition. So far, all I have found on the web are synthesized vowel sounds. ???? Your help will be greatly appreciated. Carol Slater Department of Psychology & Cognitive Science Group Alma College Alma MI 48801 From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 28 05:23:02 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:23:02 +0800 Subject: updated Dutch corpus Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I would like to announce the updating of Jacqueline van Kampen's corpus on the acquisition of Dutch. Earlier, we had only about 40 files in this database and now we have the complete set of 122. This is a longitudinal study of two girls (Sarah and Laura) and the documentation for the project can be found in the database manual on the web, as well as in the third printed edition of the manual. Thanks to Jacqueline for completing this contribution. --Brian MacWhinney From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 28 05:32:47 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:32:47 +0800 Subject: new SLI corpus Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I would like to announce the addition to CHILDES of a new corpus from Gina Conti-Ramsden, Ludovica Serratrice, Kate Joseph, and Rachel Hick, all from the University of Manchester. I am referring to this corpus as conti3.sit and conti3.zip, since it is the third corpus on specific language impairment (SLI) contributed by Gina Conti-Ramsden and her co-workers at Manchester and we don't want to confuse this Manchester SLI corpus with the Manchester corpus on normally-developing language. This one is in /clinical whereas the other is in /english on the server. This corpus includes longitudinal data across 18 months from four English SLI children. It also includes a completely disambiguated %mor line for all of the utterances in all of the files. This is the first SLI corpus with a full %mor line and could be an excellent source of information on grammatical patterns in SLI. I am appending the readme file. I would love to send it as a nice Word attachment, but given the rash of viruses on the Internet, perhaps it is best to continue to keep attachments off of info-childes. --Brian MacWhinney MANCHESTER SLI Address for correspondence: Gina Conti-Ramsden Gina Conti-Ramsden Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL gina.conti-ramsden at man.ac.uk Ludovica Serratrice Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL Serratrice at man.ac.uk Kate Joseph Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL k.joseph at man.ac.uk Rachel Hick Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL r.f.hick at stud.man.ac.uk This corpus includes longitudinal data from four monolingual British children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) ranging from 2;6 to 4;0 at the beginning of the study and from 3;11 and 5;0 at the end of the study. Participants The four children in this study, one girl and three boys, were recruited through a number of speech and language therapists in the North West of England. The therapists were initially informed by letter of the criteria for participation including the following: age range between 2;6 and 4;0, early stages of multiword speech, no history of hearing problems, good degree of intelligibility, non-verbal abilities within the normal range, no obvious autistic tendencies, poor language abilities including poor receptive abilities. Parents of children meeting these criteria were subsequently contacted and visited at home by two researchers. In the initial screening visit one of the investigators explained the aims and methods of the study to the parents and helped them fill in an anglicised copy of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory Words and Sentences (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Thal, Bates, Hartung, Pethick, Reilly, 1993) to assess the child¹s lexical skills and his/her productive use of multiword utterances. The parents were also asked to complete a questionnaire including information on parental education and occupation, number of siblings, pregnancy and birth history, family history of speech and language impairment, learning difficulties and mental retardation, and child¹s previous ear infections and hearing problems. The Autistic Screening Questionnaire (Berument, Rutter, Lord, Pickles & Bailey, 1999) was also administered to ensure that the children did not have any obvious autistic tendencies. During the initial visit a twenty minute spontaneous speech sample was also obtained while one of the investigators played with the child and administered the receptive component of the Reynell developmental language scales (Edwards, Fletcher, Garman, Hughes, Letts & Sinka, 1997). In order to be enrolled in the study the children had to present receptive as well as expressive difficulties and only children below the 16th centile were therefore included. A measure of non-verbal ability was also elicited using the Leiter International Performance Scale (Leiter, 1969) to ensure that the children were within the normal range. Once the children were identified as potential participants in the study the parents were required to sign a consent form in which they agreed to take part in the study with their children for a period of up to 18 months. Table 1 provides information on children¹s age, sex, birth order, MLU in words at the start of the study and test scores measuring receptive language skills and non-verbal ability. Table 1: Manchester SLI Children Child Sex Birth order Age MLUw Reynell receptive (centile) Non-verbal I.Q. Bonnie F 1 4;0 2.85 1 90 Dan M 2 2;6 1.06 10 129 Harry M 1 3;4 1.78 13 120 Nathan M 2 2;10 1.23 1 117 At the start of the study all the children were attending mainstream nursery schools and were either receiving speech and language therapy or had received it in the previous six months. By the end of the data collection period two of the children, Bonnie and Harry, were enrolled in mainstream primary schools and Bonnie had the support of a teaching assistant. Data collection Data were collected for a period of sixteen months at fortnightly intervals in the children¹s homes with breaks due to illness and family commitments. One of the children originally recruited in the study was excluded after three months due to difficulties in keeping up with the recording schedule. Bonnie replaced the child who was withdrawn four months into the project therefore data collection only lasted twelve months for this child. Each session lasted for approximately an hour and it involved the child and the mother playing together in a quiet room. Older siblings were occasionally present during the recordings with Harry and Nathan, and Bonnie¹s newborn brother was also in the room in most of the recordings. The investigator was not normally present during the recordings with Dan and Harry, except when the mother had to leave the room or at the beginning and at the end of a session in order to deal with the equipment. In the case of Bonnie and Nathan the investigator spent longer periods of time with the children while the mother was otherwise engaged, especially from session sixteen onwards in Bonnie¹s recordings. The activities the children engaged in during the recordings ranged from looking at picture books to playing with toy trains, drawing, playing with Lego. The investigators also provided a set of toys including miniature Playmobil people and a variety of assembly sets such as a café, a log cabin with fishing boats, a farmyard, a playground and a furnished house. The new toys were quite successful in engaging the children¹s attention and in generating a considerable amount of speech with their mothers and the investigator. In the last three months of the study the investigators supplied three different story books with a clear sequential narrative in the attempt to elicit more complex structures and longer mother-child exchanges. All sessions were audio-taped by a portable Sony digital minidisc recorder MZ-R35 and an ATR97 ominidirectional boundary microphone placed on a flat surface near the recorder. At monthly intervals the sessions were also videotaped using a Panasonic VHS-C camera installed on a tripod. In addition to collecting spontaneous data of mother-child interaction a number of psychometric tests were also administered to assess children¹s receptive and expressive lexical and grammatical abilities: the British Picture Vocabulary Scales (Dunn, Dunn, Whetton & Pintillie, 1982), the Expressive Vocabulary Test (Williams, 1997), the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool (Wiig, Secord & Semel, 1992), the Children¹s Test of Non-word Repetition (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1996). All tests were conducted in a quiet room by one of the female investigators, mothers were not normally present unless the child was particularly distressed or unwilling to co-operate. All of the tests were repeated once after a minimal interval of six months. Table 2. Manchester SLI Test Scores Bonnie Dan Harry Nathan Test Age Centile Age Centile Age Centile Age Centile BPVS 4;1 30 3;1 58 3;9 34 3;4 55 CELF 4;3 7 3;9 53 3;10 45 3;4 47 Linguistic concepts 1 75 75 63 Basic concepts 1 75 37 63 Sentence structure 5 50 75 95 Receptive lang 1 70 66 82 Recalling sentences 5 16 25 16 Formulating labels 5 75 50 37 Word Structure 1 25 9 5 Expressive lang 2 34 21 16 CN-REP 4;10 11-15 3;11 50 4;7 25 - 50 4;0 25 EVT 4;3 21 3;3 47 3;10 61 3;4 68 Transcription and coding The spontaneous data were orthographically transcribed in CHAT format by the three trained researchers who originally collected the samples. Pauses, hesitations, interruptions, overlaps and retracings were also coded as accurately as possible. All names, except the investigators¹, were changed to preserve anonymity. A complete morphological tagging was added to the main line by using the MOR and POST programmes. Although the automatic tagging was fairly accurate and reliable, additional manual checking of all the data was conducted to ensure that ambiguous cases were resolved appropriately. A number of changes to the coding system were introduced to include new codes and minor amendments to previously existing ones: 1. New postcodes were introduced for tagging self-repetitions [+ srp] and imitations [+ imi] of an immediately preceding utterance and non-lexical responses [+ nlr]. The first two codes were used only for utterances containing a minimum of two words and for those utterances that were an exact repetition of the immediately preceding utterance used by the speaker or identical to an immediately preceding utterance used by another speaker. The [+ nlr] code was used whenever the child attempted a verbal response but it was of a non-lexical nature, i.e. a vocalisation, although not a recognisable word, that was obviously a response to a previous maternal turn. 2. The MOR coding does not include a distinction between past tense forms and perfective participle forms for regular verbs or for irregular verbs in which the two forms are homophonous. An automatic search for past tense forms therefore may also include a number of forms which are in fact participial forms, e.g. in MOR does not make a distinction between ³I walked for hours² and ³I have walked for hours², the form ³walked² is a past tense in the former sentence but a participle in the latter, while the coding is v|walk-PAST in both cases. To avoid the inclusion of participle forms in the count for past tense forms an additional code was introduced as illustrated below: walked = v|walk-PERF instead of v|walk-PAST when participle put = v|put&PERF insead of v|put&PAST when participle 3. The distinction between adjectives and participles is often a very difficult one to make and one which has implications in the coding of the BE verb they appear with. The decision was made to treat the following words as adjectives in constructions containing a BE verb unless there were clear indications that the construction was really a passive, i.e. in the presence of a by-phrase: allowed, bored, bothered, broken, called, closed, done, excited, fed up, finished, fixed, gone, locked, meant, mixed up, mended, shattered (= tired), shut, stuck, supposed. *CHI: this toy was broken. %mor: det|this n|toy v|be&3S adj|broken. *CHI: this toy was broken by the wind. %mor: det|this n|toy v:aux|be&PAST v|break&PERF prep|by det|the n|wind. Publications using these data should cite: Serratrice, L., Joseph, K.L. & Conti-Ramsden, G. (in press). The acquisition of past tense in pre-school children with Specific Language Impairment and unaffected controls: regular and irregular forms. In K.Lindner and Z. Penner (eds.), Special Issue of Linguistics. References Berument, S.K., Rutter, M., Lord, C., Pickles A., & Bailey, A. (1999). Autistic Screening Questionnaire: Diagnostic Validity. British Journal of Psychiatry, 175, 444-451. Dunn, L.M., Dunn, L.M., Whetton, C. & Pintillie, D. (1982). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Windsor: NFER. Edwards, S., Fletcher, P., Garman, M., Hughes, A., Letts, C. & Sinka, I. (1997). The Reynell Developmental Language Scale III: the University of Reading Edition. Windsor: NFER. Fenson, L., Dale, P.S., Reznick, J.S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J., Pethick, S., Reilly, J. (1993). The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: user¹s guide and technical manual. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group. Leiter, R.G. (1969). The Leiter International Performance Scale. Chicago, IL: Stoelting. Williams, K. (1997). The Expressive Vocabulary Test. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Services. Wiig, E.H., Secord, W & Semel, E. (1992). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool. New York, NY: The Psychological Corporation. Gathercole, S.E. & Baddeley, A.D. (1996) The Children¹s Test of Nonword Repetition. London: The Psychological Corporation. From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 28 05:52:01 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:52:01 +0800 Subject: parsed English data Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, Using a parsing program based on earlier work by Alon Lavie at the CMU Linguistic Technologies Institute, Kenji Sagae has begun to parse the English CHILDES corpora. This work relies first on the successful running of the MOR program for tagging of part of speech and then uses a pseudo-unification process to produce LFG (Lexical-Functional Grammar) parsings for CHAT files. The parser is written in LISP and is not included in CLAN. The output of the program is a %syn line, which is virtually impossible to read unless you are a LISP programmer who has acquired a module for parsing nested parentheses. CLAN on Windows (but not Mac) includes a utility for reading these %syn lines in an easily understood tree form exactly as in the trees of Windows Explorer. To run this utility, all you need to do is to triple-click on any %syn line in a CLAN file and the viewer will open. You can then also use this viewer to march through the %syn lines in a file one by one and can press the "good" or "bad" buttons to decide whether or not you accept the parses yielded by the program. I have placed an initial sample of the output of the program at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/win/english/eve4syn.zip If people interested in syntactic development could take a look at this and provide Kenji and me with feedback, we would be most appreciative. We have not yet written CLAN programs to search these nested paren stuctures, but that is a logical next step. There is a discussion in the manual of how to use COMBO for this, but this is the first time that the relevant data structures have been available, so I am guessing that more will be needed. Kenji will be producing a larger corpus soon, but these first four files provide good examples of the shape of the data. Eventually, when more files are available, I will put them in a separate folder on CHILDES. --Brian MacWhinney From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Mon Jul 30 11:54:26 2001 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Mueller Gathercole) Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:54:26 +0100 Subject: Research Assistant position Message-ID: Please pass on the following announcement to any student you know who might be interested. Thanks very much. Ginny Gathercole UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY Research Assistant (half-time) RA Grade 1B: £17,278 - £19,293 p.a. pro rata A half-time Research Assistant is sought for work with Dr. Virginia Mueller Gathercole. Minimum of a Bachelor's degree in Psychology, Linguistics, or related field is necessary. Preference will be given to candidates with experience collecting and analysing child language or linguistic data and with a strong background in computer skills (e.g., data processing/entry, word processing, and statistical analysis). Excellent writing skills a must. Some knowledge of Welsh or Spanish is desirable, but not essential. Duties will include assisting in data collection, entry, and coding, in transcription of child language, in the statistical and qualitative analysis of data, and in the write-up of reports, as well as providing some administrative support. The position is for one year in the first instance, possibly renewable. The successful applicant will have the option of concurrently pursuing work towards the Ph.D. degree, but this is not obligatory. Application forms and further particulars are available from: Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel: 01248-382926/388132. e-mail: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk. Please provide a copy of your c.v. as well as the names of three referees with your application. Please quote reference number 01-1/5 when applying. Closing dates for applications: 31 August, 2001. Informal enquiries can be directed to Dr. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole; University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2AS; phone: (44) ((0)1248) 382264; e-mail: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk. JOBS.AC.UK Research Assistant Job Description 1. To recruit and test participants in experiments investigating child language development. 2. To code, transcribe, enter, and analyse child language data, both qualitatively and quantitatively. 3. To assist in the preparation of manuscripts and reports of research. 4. To carry out administrative and office-related duties as may from time to time be required. 5. The post holder will be answerable to the Head of School for the efficient performance of his/her duties. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Ph.D. Reader Ysgol Seicoleg School of Psychology Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor University of Wales, Bangor Adeilad Brigantia The Brigantia Building Ffordd Penrallt Penrallt Road Bangor LL57 2AS Bangor LL57 2AS Cymru Wales | /\ | / \/\ Tel: 44 (0)1248 382624 | /\/ \ \ Fax: 44 (0)1248 382599 | / ======\=\ | B A N G O R From ci.hosea at let.vu.nl Mon Jul 2 14:48:40 2001 From: ci.hosea at let.vu.nl (C.I. Hosea) Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2001 15:48:40 +0100 Subject: data of Indonesian children? Message-ID: Dear all, I am doing a paper on first language acquisition and I am looking for some data on the acquisition of Indonesian as a first language. Does anybody know where I can find a longitudinal study of one or more children which I can use? Thanking you in advance, Sincerely, Chrissy Hosea student of Linguistics Free University Amsterdam From quigleyj at tcd.ie Fri Jul 6 14:27:58 2001 From: quigleyj at tcd.ie (Jean Quigley) Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2001 15:27:58 +0100 Subject: Czech language transcriptions Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I am a Czech doctoral student working with the CHILDES system. I was wondering if anyone has done any work transcribing Czech material using this system or if anyone has used the POSTTRAIN command to create a Czech database. I would greatly appreciate any information or direction any one could give me. Yours sincerely, Petra Houdkova houdkovp at tcd.ie Department of Psychology University of Dublin Trinity College, Dublin From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 7 04:12:45 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2001 12:12:45 +0800 Subject: Czech language transcriptions Message-ID: Dear Petra Houdkova, Filip Smolik at the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences on Husova 4, Prague 11000 sent me a few small CHAT files for Czech that he was working on last year. I don't know the current status of his work. His email is smolik at site.cas.cz --Brian MacWhinney From als at ip.pt Sun Jul 8 17:58:05 2001 From: als at ip.pt (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Ana_L=FAcia_Santos?=) Date: Sun, 8 Jul 2001 18:58:05 +0100 Subject: GALA 2001 - Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition - Portugal Message-ID: GALA 2001 - Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition September, 14-16, Palmela, Portugal Organization: Universidade de Lisboa, Universidade Nova de Lisboa & Associa??o Portuguesa de Lingu?stica Invited speakers: Anne Christophe Paula Fikkert Maria Teresa Guasti Nina Hyams Program of the colloquium and further information available at: http://www.fcsh.unl.pt/clunl/gala_index.htm Contact: gala2001 at netvisao.pt From dafna at A-i.com Mon Jul 16 08:31:52 2001 From: dafna at A-i.com (Dafna Itzhaki) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 10:31:52 +0200 Subject: English corpora which do not appear in documentation Message-ID: Dear Info-Childes, I have noticed that there are a few directories in the English corpora that do not appear in the 'database documentation' (for example, Morisset). Is there a way to get information regarding those transcripts? (age of subjects etc.). Thank you, Dafna Itzhaki Trainer Ai, Artificial Intelligence, NV. Tel# 972-54-288-930 From ehoff at fau.edu Mon Jul 16 12:53:32 2001 From: ehoff at fau.edu (Erika Hoff) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 08:53:32 -0400 Subject: backing up videotapes Message-ID: Dear all, On behalf of a colleague in biology, I am asking whether anyone has figured out a way to back up videotapes onto a more permanent medium such as CD or DVD. Many thanks, Erika Erika Hoff, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Florida Atlantic University 2912 College Avenue Davie, FL 33314 (954) 236-1142 fax: (954) 236-1099 From ehoff at fau.edu Mon Jul 16 21:28:18 2001 From: ehoff at fau.edu (Erika Hoff) Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2001 17:28:18 -0400 Subject: backing up videotapes Message-ID: Dear all, Thanks to the many who responded to my query about how to back up videotapes. The gist of the answer, as I understand it, is that first you must digitize your tapes, saving them as .avi files or compressed as .mpg files. Then you can write these files onto a CD. To accomplish the digitizing part you need a video capture card and accompanying software. You hook up the VCR to the card to create the files. Then you need a CD burner to put the files on the CD. One suggested program for accomplishing the first part is called Broadway, version 2.5; and a recommended website is http://www.videoguys.com/dtvhome.html. Other comments were that these digitized files take up a great deal of space and the whole process is very time consuming and expensive. Thanks again, Erika Erika Hoff, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology Florida Atlantic University 2912 College Avenue Davie, FL 33314 (954) 236-1142 fax: (954) 236-1099 From jshguo at csuhayward.edu Thu Jul 19 01:34:08 2001 From: jshguo at csuhayward.edu (Jiansheng Guo) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 18:34:08 -0700 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for this purpose. I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, shame and pride. If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any references to previous studies using such books, I would be most appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. All my best wishes, Guo Jiansheng Guo Dept. of Human Development California State University, Hayward From beate at fcu.edu.tw Wed Jul 18 01:35:37 2001 From: beate at fcu.edu.tw (beate luo) Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 09:35:37 +0800 Subject: sorry for the virus Message-ID: Dear all, last week my computer got infested with the W32/Verona virus which spreads itself using the adress book of the computer. I suspected one file of being a virus message, so I just highlighted it for deleting. That was already enough to start it working. I was later told that it is impossible to delete these kind of viruses. I'm sorry that it got to the list. I got a lot of messages of virus warnings from some of your computer systems and some messages of people I don't know, telling me they could'nt read the message, some were even insulting as if I would have spread the virus intentionally. I didn't and all I can say is I'm sorry that the virus started from my computer. I've been waiting with this apology until my computer came back from the computer center as I didn't want to trigger another round of virus messages. Sincerely yours, Dr. Beate Luo Feng-Chia University Foreign Lanuage and Literature Teaching Section Dept. of Humanities 100 Wen-Hua Rd. Hsi-Tun District, 407 Taichung City Taiwan, ROC e-mail: beate at fcu.edu.tw -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk Thu Jul 19 20:07:52 2001 From: ann.dowker at psy.ox.ac.uk (Ann Dowker) Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 21:07:52 +0100 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions In-Reply-To: <3B563910.D4A0EED@bay.csuhayward.edu> Message-ID: Hi! There are quite a lot of picture books for primary school children, aimed at 'getting them in touch' with their emotions. There is a lot of debate about whether they serve the intended purpose or not; but at any rate they could be useful for your study, as they typically include illustrations both of the emotional expressions and of events which elicit them. One of the earliest is Terry Berger and Howard Spivak: I Have Feelings; Human Sciences Press, 1978. It is illustrated by photographs. More recent books include: Mary Atkinson: Why Can't I Be Happy All the Time?; Dorling Kindersley, 1997 Books by 'Althea' (Althea Braithwaite): Feeling Angry Feeling Jealous Feeling Sad Feeling Scared Feeling Shy Being Friends Books by Janine Amos (all published by "Cherrytree" in Bath, England) Angry (1990) Jealous (1990) Sad (1990) Hurt (1990) Lonely (1990) Brave (1993) Confident (1993) Happy (1993) Friendly (1993) Moody (1994) Books by Brian Moses and M. Gordon (all published by Wayland, 1993) I Feel Angry I Feel Frightened I Feel Jealous I Feel Sad Books by Sally Hewitt (all published by Watts) Feeling Angry Feeling Jealous Feeling Shy Feeling Worried I hope some of these are useful. Yours, Ann On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Jiansheng Guo wrote: > Dear Colleagues, > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > this purpose. > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > surprise, shame and pride. > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > All my best wishes, > Guo > > Jiansheng Guo > Dept. of Human Development > California State University, Hayward > > From c.g.hunt at reading.ac.uk Fri Jul 20 11:14:10 2001 From: c.g.hunt at reading.ac.uk (George Hunt) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 12:14:10 +0100 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions Message-ID: A very reliable source of this kind of talk is 'Where the Wild Things Are' by Maurice Sendak. Other promising titles are: The Tunnel by Anthony Brown Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley My Brother Sean by Errol Lloyd The Great Green Mouse Disaster by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier Dogger by Shirley Hughes The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (top end of your age range) I'm sorry I don't have publishing details to hand, but all of these books are classics and should be widely available. Best wishes George Hunt ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jiansheng Guo" To: Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:34 AM Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions > Dear Colleagues, > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > this purpose. > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > surprise, shame and pride. > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > All my best wishes, > Guo > > Jiansheng Guo > Dept. of Human Development > California State University, Hayward > > From dthal at mail.sdsu.edu Fri Jul 20 23:02:36 2001 From: dthal at mail.sdsu.edu (Dr. Donna Thal) Date: Fri, 20 Jul 2001 16:02:36 -0700 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions In-Reply-To: <001801c1110d$1df188a0$2c81e186@rdg.ac.uk> Message-ID: I'll be out of the office until August 21st. At 12:14 PM 7/20/2001 +0100, George Hunt wrote: >A very reliable source of this kind of talk is 'Where the Wild Things Are' >by Maurice Sendak. Other promising titles are: > >The Tunnel by Anthony Brown > >Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley > >My Brother Sean by Errol Lloyd > >The Great Green Mouse Disaster by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier > >Dogger by Shirley Hughes > >The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (top end of your age >range) > >I'm sorry I don't have publishing details to hand, but all of these books >are classics and should be widely available. > >Best wishes > >George Hunt > > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Jiansheng Guo" >To: >Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:34 AM >Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions > > > > Dear Colleagues, > > > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > > this purpose. > > > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > > surprise, shame and pride. > > > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > > > All my best wishes, > > Guo > > > > Jiansheng Guo > > Dept. of Human Development > > California State University, Hayward > > > > Donna J. Thal, Ph.D. Developmental Psycholinguistics Laboratory 6330 Alvarado Court, Suite 231 San Diego, CA 92120-1850 phone: 619-594-7110 fax: 619-594-4570 Department of Communicative Disorders San Diego State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dominey at isc.cnrs.fr Sat Jul 21 22:53:19 2001 From: dominey at isc.cnrs.fr (Peter FORD DOMINEY) Date: Sun, 22 Jul 2001 00:53:19 +0200 Subject: postdoc position, computational neuroscience and language Message-ID: Please Post: Post-Doctoral Fellowship Announcement: Multiple-Cue Integration in Language Acquisition: A Simulation Study Starting in September/October 2001, a post-doctoral fellowship will be available for a period of 12-36 months in the Sequential Cognition and Language group, at the Institute of Cognitive Science (Institut des Sciences Cognitive) in Lyon France. The selected researcher will participate in an HFSP funded project addressing aspects of language acquisition through simulation, behavioral and brain imagery (ERP) studies. The position will involve: 1. analysis of natural language corpora 2. Neural network simulation of language acquisition processes based on the preceding analysis. An example of a this type of approach can be found in: Dominey PF, Ramus F (2000) Neural network processing of natural language: I. Sensitivity to serial, temporal and abstract structure of language in the infant. Language and Cognitive Processes, 15(1) 87-127 Qualifications for the candidate: 1. A PhD in a related discipline (computer science, computational neuroscience, cognitive science) and a strong computational neuroscience background, with experience in the Linux/Unix C environment, and in cognitive neuroscience simulation. 2. Familiarity with the Childes language database and associated analysis tools, and/or experience/interest in computational aspects of language acquisition. 3. Fluency in French and English. Interested candidates should send a letter of intention, a CV and three letters of recommendation to Peter F. Dominey at the address below. Applications will continue to be accepted until the position is filled. Peter F. Dominey, Ph.D. Institut des Sciences Cognitives CNRS UPR 9075 67 boulevard Pinel 69675 BRON Cedex Tel Standard: 33(0)4.37.91.12.12 Tel Direct: 33(0)4.37.91.12.66 Fax : 33(0)4.37.91.12.10 dominey at isc.cnrs.fr WEB: http://www.isc.cnrs.fr From a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk Mon Jul 23 15:12:26 2001 From: a.karmiloff-smith at ich.ucl.ac.uk (Annette Karmiloff-Smith) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 16:12:26 +0100 Subject: quick question Message-ID: how would you translate "motherese" into French please. merci! Annette -- ________________________________________________________________ Professor A.Karmiloff-Smith, Head, Neurocognitive Development Unit, Institute of Child Health, 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH, U.K. tel: 0207 905 2754 fax: 0207 242 7717 http://www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/units/ncdu/NDU_homepage.htm ________________________________________________________________ From lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu Mon Jul 23 19:28:18 2001 From: lhewitt at bgnet.bgsu.edu (Lynne Hewitt) Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 15:28:18 -0400 Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions In-Reply-To: <001801c1110d$1df188a0$2c81e186@rdg.ac.uk> Message-ID: The works of Kevin Henkes all tend to deal with issues that resonate with young children through early elementary school, perfect for the ages you describe (though 3 year olds will obviously be on the edge of understanding some of this stuff). Characters behave in realistic ways depicting a wide range of emotions....Examples: Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse; Owen; Chrysanthemum; Chester's Way; Julius the Baby of the World. Characters are depicted as humanoid mice, so ethnicity issues are downplayed, though a middle class suburban environment is assumed. Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse has many of the emotions you describe: pride, joy, anger, shame, relief. The Berenstain bears series of books deals with a wide array of problems typical of young children's experiences--getting along with friends and siblings, new baby issues, fears, greed, bad habits. (I refer to the picture books--there are novels for older children as well.) Also, I like the frog stories for eliciting emotional terms--Mercer Mayer's frogs and dogs are as expressive as his boys! Lynne Hewitt At 12:14 PM 7/20/2001 +0100, you wrote: >A very reliable source of this kind of talk is 'Where the Wild Things Are' >by Maurice Sendak. Other promising titles are: > >The Tunnel by Anthony Brown > >Badger's Parting Gifts by Susan Varley > >My Brother Sean by Errol Lloyd > >The Great Green Mouse Disaster by Martin Waddell and Phillipe Dupasquier > >Dogger by Shirley Hughes > >The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Allsburg (top end of your age >range) > >I'm sorry I don't have publishing details to hand, but all of these books >are classics and should be widely available. > >Best wishes > >George Hunt > > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Jiansheng Guo" >To: >Sent: Thursday, July 19, 2001 2:34 AM >Subject: Picture Books for Eliciting Emotional Expressions > > > > Dear Colleagues, > > > > I'm planning to collect some narratives that contain emotional > > expressions, and am wondering if there is a good picture story book for > > this purpose. > > > > I would like to see how children (from 3 to 9 years) label emotions and > > describe the cause and consequence of the characters' emotional > > reactions to emotional arousing events. Ideally, the story should > > contain events that might arouse happiness, sadness, anger, fear, > > surprise, shame and pride. > > > > If you have used any books good for this purpose, or if you have any > > references to previous studies using such books, I would be most > > appreciative to know. Thanks for your kind help in advance. > > > > All my best wishes, > > Guo > > > > Jiansheng Guo > > Dept. of Human Development > > California State University, Hayward > > > > From annabelledavid at hotmail.com Tue Jul 24 10:27:19 2001 From: annabelledavid at hotmail.com (Annabelle David) Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2001 11:27:19 +0100 Subject: quick question Message-ID: According to de Boysson-Bardies, motherese does not have any real translation in french. She mentions the expression 'parler bebe' as a possible translation. But motherese refers more to prosody while 'parler bebe' refers to simplified vocabulary or syntax. She uses motherese even in a French text. Annabelle David Department of Speech University of Newcastle _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp From macwhinn at hku.hk Wed Jul 25 05:35:40 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 13:35:40 +0800 Subject: Archiving video data Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, About a week ago, Erika Hoff posted a message to info-childes outlining the results from a query about how to best archive video data. The suggested method involved the use of CD-ROMs to store data in either QuickTime or some other compressed format. I think the idea was that, once this was done, you could then recycle your original media. I would like to point out some potentially serious problems with this approach to video archiving. If the goal of the archiving is only to maintain some basic in-house record that will never be modified in any way, then the CD-ROM solution is a good one. After all, the price of CD-ROMs now has fallen so extremely, that they are about at the level of the diskette of five years ago. (By the way, current prices of 10 cents a disk are an aberration and they will soon rise back to about 30 cents a disk.) However, if the project has other potential goals, then CD-ROM archiving has some problems. When one archives data on CD-ROM, it has to be in some compressed format such as MPEG, Sorensen, or QuickTime. Raw video data is huge, perhaps as much as 40 times as big as compressed data. So archiving raw data on CD-ROM is not a possibility. Why would one want to archive raw data? Let me suggest four reasons (all based on hard-won personal experience): 1. Editing. You may want to create a sample of your data based on segments for playback to classes and colleagues. Once you have compressed your data, this is no longer possible. 2. Changing format. New compression schemes continue to emerge. Once you have compressed in one, you can't reverse that compression and switch to another better format. 3. Changes within format. Often I find that I didn't map stereo channels correctly or didn't select the right compression options. If I throw away my raw video, none of these errors can be repaired. 4. If you created a transcript and linked it to a video in CLAN and then went back to change something, all of the links you created will be wrong. So, what is the solution? The alternative is to also keep the raw data on the mini-DV tapes on which it was recorded. If the original was VHS, the best method is to first take the VHS to mini-DV and then use the mini-DV as the archive. For this scheme to work, you have to rely on good archiving of your editing script file in your editing program (Final Cut, Premiere, iMovie). If you archive this list, you can always just reload the mini-DV cassette and redigitize the movie. If you do this, all of the links you created in CLAN for the time values in your movie will still be good. So, it seems to me that, if your data is important to you, if you are the type of person who ever makes a mistake, and if your project has sufficient funds, the best archiving method relies on keeping the mini-DV and the accompanying edit script file, as well as the compressed product on CD-ROM. If you never make mistakes, never change formats, never plan to work with other projects, and don't have enough funds, then CD-ROM archiving without mini-DV archiving is OK. --Brian MacWhinney From cslater at alma.edu Thu Jul 26 13:43:24 2001 From: cslater at alma.edu (Carol Slater) Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 14:43:24 +0100 Subject: No subject was specified. Message-ID: Dear Colleagues-- I wonder whether anyone has had experience using CHILDES as an instructional resource? Suggestions, advice, cautions, counsel would be very welcome as I get ready to teach a dozen bright (but linguistically unsophisticated) students in a language acquisition course cross listed in psychology and cognitive science. ???? I have also been looking for audio examples to illustrate research in early speech recognition. So far, all I have found on the web are synthesized vowel sounds. ???? Your help will be greatly appreciated. Carol Slater Department of Psychology & Cognitive Science Group Alma College Alma MI 48801 From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 28 05:23:02 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:23:02 +0800 Subject: updated Dutch corpus Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I would like to announce the updating of Jacqueline van Kampen's corpus on the acquisition of Dutch. Earlier, we had only about 40 files in this database and now we have the complete set of 122. This is a longitudinal study of two girls (Sarah and Laura) and the documentation for the project can be found in the database manual on the web, as well as in the third printed edition of the manual. Thanks to Jacqueline for completing this contribution. --Brian MacWhinney From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 28 05:32:47 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:32:47 +0800 Subject: new SLI corpus Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, I would like to announce the addition to CHILDES of a new corpus from Gina Conti-Ramsden, Ludovica Serratrice, Kate Joseph, and Rachel Hick, all from the University of Manchester. I am referring to this corpus as conti3.sit and conti3.zip, since it is the third corpus on specific language impairment (SLI) contributed by Gina Conti-Ramsden and her co-workers at Manchester and we don't want to confuse this Manchester SLI corpus with the Manchester corpus on normally-developing language. This one is in /clinical whereas the other is in /english on the server. This corpus includes longitudinal data across 18 months from four English SLI children. It also includes a completely disambiguated %mor line for all of the utterances in all of the files. This is the first SLI corpus with a full %mor line and could be an excellent source of information on grammatical patterns in SLI. I am appending the readme file. I would love to send it as a nice Word attachment, but given the rash of viruses on the Internet, perhaps it is best to continue to keep attachments off of info-childes. --Brian MacWhinney MANCHESTER SLI Address for correspondence: Gina Conti-Ramsden Gina Conti-Ramsden Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL gina.conti-ramsden at man.ac.uk Ludovica Serratrice Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL Serratrice at man.ac.uk Kate Joseph Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL k.joseph at man.ac.uk Rachel Hick Human Communication and Deafness School of Education University of Manchester Oxford Road Manchester M13 9PL r.f.hick at stud.man.ac.uk This corpus includes longitudinal data from four monolingual British children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) ranging from 2;6 to 4;0 at the beginning of the study and from 3;11 and 5;0 at the end of the study. Participants The four children in this study, one girl and three boys, were recruited through a number of speech and language therapists in the North West of England. The therapists were initially informed by letter of the criteria for participation including the following: age range between 2;6 and 4;0, early stages of multiword speech, no history of hearing problems, good degree of intelligibility, non-verbal abilities within the normal range, no obvious autistic tendencies, poor language abilities including poor receptive abilities. Parents of children meeting these criteria were subsequently contacted and visited at home by two researchers. In the initial screening visit one of the investigators explained the aims and methods of the study to the parents and helped them fill in an anglicised copy of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory Words and Sentences (Fenson, Dale, Reznick, Thal, Bates, Hartung, Pethick, Reilly, 1993) to assess the child?s lexical skills and his/her productive use of multiword utterances. The parents were also asked to complete a questionnaire including information on parental education and occupation, number of siblings, pregnancy and birth history, family history of speech and language impairment, learning difficulties and mental retardation, and child?s previous ear infections and hearing problems. The Autistic Screening Questionnaire (Berument, Rutter, Lord, Pickles & Bailey, 1999) was also administered to ensure that the children did not have any obvious autistic tendencies. During the initial visit a twenty minute spontaneous speech sample was also obtained while one of the investigators played with the child and administered the receptive component of the Reynell developmental language scales (Edwards, Fletcher, Garman, Hughes, Letts & Sinka, 1997). In order to be enrolled in the study the children had to present receptive as well as expressive difficulties and only children below the 16th centile were therefore included. A measure of non-verbal ability was also elicited using the Leiter International Performance Scale (Leiter, 1969) to ensure that the children were within the normal range. Once the children were identified as potential participants in the study the parents were required to sign a consent form in which they agreed to take part in the study with their children for a period of up to 18 months. Table 1 provides information on children?s age, sex, birth order, MLU in words at the start of the study and test scores measuring receptive language skills and non-verbal ability. Table 1: Manchester SLI Children Child Sex Birth order Age MLUw Reynell receptive (centile) Non-verbal I.Q. Bonnie F 1 4;0 2.85 1 90 Dan M 2 2;6 1.06 10 129 Harry M 1 3;4 1.78 13 120 Nathan M 2 2;10 1.23 1 117 At the start of the study all the children were attending mainstream nursery schools and were either receiving speech and language therapy or had received it in the previous six months. By the end of the data collection period two of the children, Bonnie and Harry, were enrolled in mainstream primary schools and Bonnie had the support of a teaching assistant. Data collection Data were collected for a period of sixteen months at fortnightly intervals in the children?s homes with breaks due to illness and family commitments. One of the children originally recruited in the study was excluded after three months due to difficulties in keeping up with the recording schedule. Bonnie replaced the child who was withdrawn four months into the project therefore data collection only lasted twelve months for this child. Each session lasted for approximately an hour and it involved the child and the mother playing together in a quiet room. Older siblings were occasionally present during the recordings with Harry and Nathan, and Bonnie?s newborn brother was also in the room in most of the recordings. The investigator was not normally present during the recordings with Dan and Harry, except when the mother had to leave the room or at the beginning and at the end of a session in order to deal with the equipment. In the case of Bonnie and Nathan the investigator spent longer periods of time with the children while the mother was otherwise engaged, especially from session sixteen onwards in Bonnie?s recordings. The activities the children engaged in during the recordings ranged from looking at picture books to playing with toy trains, drawing, playing with Lego. The investigators also provided a set of toys including miniature Playmobil people and a variety of assembly sets such as a caf?, a log cabin with fishing boats, a farmyard, a playground and a furnished house. The new toys were quite successful in engaging the children?s attention and in generating a considerable amount of speech with their mothers and the investigator. In the last three months of the study the investigators supplied three different story books with a clear sequential narrative in the attempt to elicit more complex structures and longer mother-child exchanges. All sessions were audio-taped by a portable Sony digital minidisc recorder MZ-R35 and an ATR97 ominidirectional boundary microphone placed on a flat surface near the recorder. At monthly intervals the sessions were also videotaped using a Panasonic VHS-C camera installed on a tripod. In addition to collecting spontaneous data of mother-child interaction a number of psychometric tests were also administered to assess children?s receptive and expressive lexical and grammatical abilities: the British Picture Vocabulary Scales (Dunn, Dunn, Whetton & Pintillie, 1982), the Expressive Vocabulary Test (Williams, 1997), the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool (Wiig, Secord & Semel, 1992), the Children?s Test of Non-word Repetition (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1996). All tests were conducted in a quiet room by one of the female investigators, mothers were not normally present unless the child was particularly distressed or unwilling to co-operate. All of the tests were repeated once after a minimal interval of six months. Table 2. Manchester SLI Test Scores Bonnie Dan Harry Nathan Test Age Centile Age Centile Age Centile Age Centile BPVS 4;1 30 3;1 58 3;9 34 3;4 55 CELF 4;3 7 3;9 53 3;10 45 3;4 47 Linguistic concepts 1 75 75 63 Basic concepts 1 75 37 63 Sentence structure 5 50 75 95 Receptive lang 1 70 66 82 Recalling sentences 5 16 25 16 Formulating labels 5 75 50 37 Word Structure 1 25 9 5 Expressive lang 2 34 21 16 CN-REP 4;10 11-15 3;11 50 4;7 25 - 50 4;0 25 EVT 4;3 21 3;3 47 3;10 61 3;4 68 Transcription and coding The spontaneous data were orthographically transcribed in CHAT format by the three trained researchers who originally collected the samples. Pauses, hesitations, interruptions, overlaps and retracings were also coded as accurately as possible. All names, except the investigators?, were changed to preserve anonymity. A complete morphological tagging was added to the main line by using the MOR and POST programmes. Although the automatic tagging was fairly accurate and reliable, additional manual checking of all the data was conducted to ensure that ambiguous cases were resolved appropriately. A number of changes to the coding system were introduced to include new codes and minor amendments to previously existing ones: 1. New postcodes were introduced for tagging self-repetitions [+ srp] and imitations [+ imi] of an immediately preceding utterance and non-lexical responses [+ nlr]. The first two codes were used only for utterances containing a minimum of two words and for those utterances that were an exact repetition of the immediately preceding utterance used by the speaker or identical to an immediately preceding utterance used by another speaker. The [+ nlr] code was used whenever the child attempted a verbal response but it was of a non-lexical nature, i.e. a vocalisation, although not a recognisable word, that was obviously a response to a previous maternal turn. 2. The MOR coding does not include a distinction between past tense forms and perfective participle forms for regular verbs or for irregular verbs in which the two forms are homophonous. An automatic search for past tense forms therefore may also include a number of forms which are in fact participial forms, e.g. in MOR does not make a distinction between ?I walked for hours? and ?I have walked for hours?, the form ?walked? is a past tense in the former sentence but a participle in the latter, while the coding is v|walk-PAST in both cases. To avoid the inclusion of participle forms in the count for past tense forms an additional code was introduced as illustrated below: walked = v|walk-PERF instead of v|walk-PAST when participle put = v|put&PERF insead of v|put&PAST when participle 3. The distinction between adjectives and participles is often a very difficult one to make and one which has implications in the coding of the BE verb they appear with. The decision was made to treat the following words as adjectives in constructions containing a BE verb unless there were clear indications that the construction was really a passive, i.e. in the presence of a by-phrase: allowed, bored, bothered, broken, called, closed, done, excited, fed up, finished, fixed, gone, locked, meant, mixed up, mended, shattered (= tired), shut, stuck, supposed. *CHI: this toy was broken. %mor: det|this n|toy v|be&3S adj|broken. *CHI: this toy was broken by the wind. %mor: det|this n|toy v:aux|be&PAST v|break&PERF prep|by det|the n|wind. Publications using these data should cite: Serratrice, L., Joseph, K.L. & Conti-Ramsden, G. (in press). The acquisition of past tense in pre-school children with Specific Language Impairment and unaffected controls: regular and irregular forms. In K.Lindner and Z. Penner (eds.), Special Issue of Linguistics. References Berument, S.K., Rutter, M., Lord, C., Pickles A., & Bailey, A. (1999). Autistic Screening Questionnaire: Diagnostic Validity. British Journal of Psychiatry, 175, 444-451. Dunn, L.M., Dunn, L.M., Whetton, C. & Pintillie, D. (1982). The British Picture Vocabulary Scale. Windsor: NFER. Edwards, S., Fletcher, P., Garman, M., Hughes, A., Letts, C. & Sinka, I. (1997). The Reynell Developmental Language Scale III: the University of Reading Edition. Windsor: NFER. Fenson, L., Dale, P.S., Reznick, J.S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J., Pethick, S., Reilly, J. (1993). The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories: user?s guide and technical manual. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group. Leiter, R.G. (1969). The Leiter International Performance Scale. Chicago, IL: Stoelting. Williams, K. (1997). The Expressive Vocabulary Test. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Services. Wiig, E.H., Secord, W & Semel, E. (1992). Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals-Preschool. New York, NY: The Psychological Corporation. Gathercole, S.E. & Baddeley, A.D. (1996) The Children?s Test of Nonword Repetition. London: The Psychological Corporation. From macwhinn at hku.hk Sat Jul 28 05:52:01 2001 From: macwhinn at hku.hk (Brian MacWhinney) Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 13:52:01 +0800 Subject: parsed English data Message-ID: Dear Info-CHILDES, Using a parsing program based on earlier work by Alon Lavie at the CMU Linguistic Technologies Institute, Kenji Sagae has begun to parse the English CHILDES corpora. This work relies first on the successful running of the MOR program for tagging of part of speech and then uses a pseudo-unification process to produce LFG (Lexical-Functional Grammar) parsings for CHAT files. The parser is written in LISP and is not included in CLAN. The output of the program is a %syn line, which is virtually impossible to read unless you are a LISP programmer who has acquired a module for parsing nested parentheses. CLAN on Windows (but not Mac) includes a utility for reading these %syn lines in an easily understood tree form exactly as in the trees of Windows Explorer. To run this utility, all you need to do is to triple-click on any %syn line in a CLAN file and the viewer will open. You can then also use this viewer to march through the %syn lines in a file one by one and can press the "good" or "bad" buttons to decide whether or not you accept the parses yielded by the program. I have placed an initial sample of the output of the program at http://childes.psy.cmu.edu/win/english/eve4syn.zip If people interested in syntactic development could take a look at this and provide Kenji and me with feedback, we would be most appreciative. We have not yet written CLAN programs to search these nested paren stuctures, but that is a logical next step. There is a discussion in the manual of how to use COMBO for this, but this is the first time that the relevant data structures have been available, so I am guessing that more will be needed. Kenji will be producing a larger corpus soon, but these first four files provide good examples of the shape of the data. Eventually, when more files are available, I will put them in a separate folder on CHILDES. --Brian MacWhinney From v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk Mon Jul 30 11:54:26 2001 From: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk (Ginny Mueller Gathercole) Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2001 12:54:26 +0100 Subject: Research Assistant position Message-ID: Please pass on the following announcement to any student you know who might be interested. Thanks very much. Ginny Gathercole UNIVERSITY OF WALES, BANGOR SCHOOL OF PSYCHOLOGY Research Assistant (half-time) RA Grade 1B: ?17,278 - ?19,293 p.a. pro rata A half-time Research Assistant is sought for work with Dr. Virginia Mueller Gathercole. Minimum of a Bachelor's degree in Psychology, Linguistics, or related field is necessary. Preference will be given to candidates with experience collecting and analysing child language or linguistic data and with a strong background in computer skills (e.g., data processing/entry, word processing, and statistical analysis). Excellent writing skills a must. Some knowledge of Welsh or Spanish is desirable, but not essential. Duties will include assisting in data collection, entry, and coding, in transcription of child language, in the statistical and qualitative analysis of data, and in the write-up of reports, as well as providing some administrative support. The position is for one year in the first instance, possibly renewable. The successful applicant will have the option of concurrently pursuing work towards the Ph.D. degree, but this is not obligatory. Application forms and further particulars are available from: Personnel Services, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, LL57 2DG. Tel: 01248-382926/388132. e-mail: pos020 at bangor.ac.uk. Please provide a copy of your c.v. as well as the names of three referees with your application. Please quote reference number 01-1/5 when applying. Closing dates for applications: 31 August, 2001. Informal enquiries can be directed to Dr. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole; University of Wales, Bangor, LL57 2AS; phone: (44) ((0)1248) 382264; e-mail: v.c.gathercole at bangor.ac.uk. JOBS.AC.UK Research Assistant Job Description 1. To recruit and test participants in experiments investigating child language development. 2. To code, transcribe, enter, and analyse child language data, both qualitatively and quantitatively. 3. To assist in the preparation of manuscripts and reports of research. 4. To carry out administrative and office-related duties as may from time to time be required. 5. The post holder will be answerable to the Head of School for the efficient performance of his/her duties. Virginia C. Mueller Gathercole, Ph.D. Reader Ysgol Seicoleg School of Psychology Prifysgol Cymru, Bangor University of Wales, Bangor Adeilad Brigantia The Brigantia Building Ffordd Penrallt Penrallt Road Bangor LL57 2AS Bangor LL57 2AS Cymru Wales | /\ | / \/\ Tel: 44 (0)1248 382624 | /\/ \ \ Fax: 44 (0)1248 382599 | / ======\=\ | B A N G O R