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Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and epilepsy represent a comorbidity that negatively influences the proper development of linguistic competencies, particularly in receptive language, in the pediatric population. This group displays impairments in the auditory comprehension of both simple and complex grammatical structures, significantly limiting their performance in language-related activities, hampering their integration into social contexts, and affecting their quality of life. The main objective of this study was to assess auditory comprehension of grammatical structures in individuals with ASD and epilepsy and compare the results among the three groups. A non-experimental cross-sectional study was designed, including a total of 170 participants aged between 7 and 9 years, divided into three groups: a group with ASD, a group with epilepsy, and a comorbid group with both ASD and epilepsy (ASDEP). The comprehension of grammatical structures was assessed using the CEG and CELF-5 instruments. Statistical analyses included MANOVA and ANOVA to compare scores between groups to verify associations between study variables. The results indicate that the group with ASD and epilepsy performed worse compared to the ASD and epilepsy-only groups, respectively. Additionally, a significant and directly proportional association was observed among all variables within the measures of grammatical structure comprehension. The neurological damage caused by epilepsy in the pediatric population with ASD leads to difficulties in understanding oral language. This level of functioning significantly limits the linguistic performance of these children, negatively impacting their quality of life and the development of core language skills.

Bilingual and multilingual individuals exhibit variation in everyday language experience. Studies on bilingualism account for individual differences with measures such as L2 age of acquisition, exposure, or language proficiency, but recent theoretical perspectives posit that the relative balance between the two or more languages throughout daily life (i.e., interactional context ) is a crucial determinant for language representation, access, and control. We propose an innovative measure to characterize this construct by using entropy to estimate the social diversity of language use. Language entropy is computed from commonly-collected language history data and generalizes to multilingual communicative contexts. We show how language entropy relates to other indices of bilingual experience and that it predicts self-report L2 outcome measures over and above classic measures of language experience. Thus, we proffer language entropy as a means to characterize individual differences in bilingual (and multilingual) language experience related to the social diversity of language use.

This article empirically tests a previously developed theoretical framework for mathematics identity based on students' beliefs. The study employs data from more than 9,000 college calculus students across the United States to build a robust structural equation model. While it is generally thought that students' beliefs about their own competence in mathematics directly impact their identity as a \"math person,\" findings indicate that students' self-perceptions related to competence and performance have an indirect effect on their mathematics identity, primarily by association with students' interest and external recognition in mathematics. Thus, the model indicates that students' competence and performance beliefs are not sufficient for their mathematics identity development, and it highlights the roles of interest and recognition.

•The framewise language network dynamics in resting state are robustly clustered into four temporal-reoccurring states.•Spatially, the first three dFC states are cognitively meaningful for different processing.•Temporally, the first three states appeared in limited time bins, and state 4 appeared most of the time.•A dynamic “meta-network” framework of language network in resting state is proposed. Modern linguistic theories and network science propose that language and speech processing are organized into hierarchical, segregated large-scale subnetworks, with a core of dorsal (phonological) stream and ventral (semantic) stream. The two streams are asymmetrically recruited in receptive and expressive language or speech tasks, which showed flexible functional segregation and integration. We hypothesized that the functional segregation of the two streams was supported by the underlying network segregation. A dynamic conditional correlation approach was employed to construct framewise time-varying language networks and k-means clustering was employed to investigate the temporal-reoccurring patterns. We found that the framewise language network dynamics in resting state were robustly clustered into four states, which dynamically reconfigured following a domain-separation manner. Spatially, the hub distributions of the first three states highly resembled the neurobiology of speech perception and lexical-phonological processing, speech production, and semantic processing, respectively. The fourth state was characterized by the weakest functional connectivity and was regarded as a baseline state. Temporally, the first three states appeared exclusively in limited time bins (∼15%), and most of the time (> 55%), state 4 was dominant. Machine learning-based dFC-linguistics prediction analyses showed that dFCs of the four states significantly predicted individual linguistic performance. These findings suggest a domain-separation manner of language network dynamics in resting state, which forms a dynamic “meta-network” framework to support flexible functional segregation and integration during language and speech processing.

Syntactic and linguistic complexity have been studied extensively in applied linguistics as indicators of linguistic performance, development, and proficiency. Recent publications have equally highlighted the reductionist approach taken to syntactic complexity measurement, which often focuses on one or two measures representing complexity at the level of clause-linking or the sentence, but eschews complexity measurement at other syntactic levels, such as the phrase or the clause. Previous approaches have also rarely incorporated measures representing the diversity of syntactic structures in learner productions. Finally, complexity development has rarely been considered from a cross-linguistic perspective, so that many questions pertaining to the cross-linguistic validity of complexity measurement remain. This article reports on an empirical study on syntactic complexity development and introduces a range of syntactic diversity measures alongside frequently used measures of syntactic elaboration. The study analyzed 100 English and 100 French second language oral narratives from adolescent native speakers of Dutch, situated at 4 proficiency levels (beginner-advanced), as well as native speaker benchmark data from each language. The results reveal a gradual process of syntactic elaboration and syntactic diversification in both learner groups, while, especially in French, considerable differences between learners and native speakers reside in the distribution of specific clause types. (Verlag).

El estudio de los idiomas en Puerto Rico se ha centrado en el efecto que tienen los factores de nivel macro (ej. políticas lingüísticas) en las competencias lingüísticas de los puertorriqueños. Estos factores se han vinculado al pobre desempeño de los estudiantes del sistema público. Sin embargo, los factores a nivel micro (ej., género, nivel socioeconómico y escuela) han sido en gran medida desatendidos, a pesar de que juegan un rol importante en las habilidades lingüísticas. El presente estudio busca subsanar la falta de datos sobre el impacto de los micro-factores en los estudiantes puertorriqueños.  Evaluamos los efectos del género, el nivel socioeconómico y la escuela en las destrezas de español de los estudiantes del sistema público de educación. Analizamos datos de la Medición y Evaluación para la Transformación Educativa (META). La muestra comprende de 21,425 estudiantes del grado 11º distribuidos en 194 escuelas. Los análisis estadísticos revelan que existe una brecha lingüística por género y nivel socioeconómico. Además, sugieren que la efectividad de la escuela y la composición de la población escolar tienen una función mitigadora en las diferencias por género y nivel socioeconómico. Proponemos que, aunque la escuela, en algunos casos, sí parece cumplir una función compensatoria, la efectividad de la escuela parece estar estrechamente ligada a las condiciones socioeconómicas de sus estudiantes. Palabras clave: género; nivel socioeconómico; escuela; desempeño lingüístico; estudiantes; brechas académicas

Did you know that, to get a job in Australia, it is important to use the right balance of informal and formal language during the interview? Did you know that student advising in Wu Chinese (spoken around Shanghai) is not a face-threatening activity, contrary to general perceptions about the nature of advice giving? Did you know that the use of minimal eye contact and flat intonation by Japanese speakers is interpreted by native English speakers as a lack of interest and willingness to communicate? Did you know that French and Australian English speakers show a surprising number of similarities in the way they use conversational humour in social visits? Think you know how to address your Italian lecturer or tutor? Think again!These are some of the findings arrived at in this exciting new collection of papers from an array of international scholars who represent different theoretical perspectives, but who all study communicative behaviour across languages and cultures, including English, French, Italian, Japanese, Russian and Wu Chinese. Adopting a comparative or cross-cultural approach, the majority of the contributions draw on authentic examples from a wide range of corpora, including social visits among friends, advising sessions involving recent high school graduates and/or their parents, simulated employment interviews and interactions involving second language learners. Contributions of a pedagogical approach offer practical assistance to the cross-cultural learner through a range of classroom activities. These include: a cross-linguistic comparison of conceptual metaphors; an applied ethnolinguistics framework; and ethnographic critical cultural awareness and reflexivity exercises. All of these activities are designed to equip the learner to study the communicative behaviours and cultural values of the target language. This edited volume is an important contribution to the growing body of work dedicated to better understanding the linguistic and pragmatic aspects of cross-cultural competence required for successful communication across cultural boundaries. It will appeal to readers interested in linguistics, interactional styles and communicative behaviour, cross-cultural pragmatics and intercultural communication.

Interaction is a prominent part of our everyday life and experience; daily reality is constructed within the interactions that individuals establish with those around them, with whom they share experiences in a concrete context. Objects, phenomena and individuals permanently influence each other through this dynamic process. The authors of this volume engage in an on-going interpretative process of defining this influence, giving considerable attention to the way participants to interaction t.

This study examined alternative methods for detecting alexithymia to the Toronto Alexithymia Scale—20 (TAS-20) by comparing the emotional linguistic performance of ASD and NT samples (n = 32 in each) on the Alexithymia Provoked Responses Questionnaire (APRQ). We utilised both the LIWC and tidytext approaches to linguistic analysis. The results indicate the ASD sample used significantly fewer affective words in response to emotionally stimulating scenarios and had less emotional granularity. Affective word use was correlated with ASD symptomatology but not with TAS-20 scores, suggesting that some elements of alexithymia are not well detected by the TAS-20 alone. The APRQ, in combination with the tidytext package, offers significant potential for sophisticated exploration of emotional expression in ASD.

The language history questionnaire (LHQ) is an important tool for assessing the linguistic background of bilinguals or second language learners and for generating self-reported proficiency in multiple languages. Previously we developed a generic LHQ based on the most commonly asked questions in published studies (Li, Sepanski & Zhao, 2006). Here we report a new web-based interface (LHQ 2.0) that has more flexibility in functionality, more accuracy in data recording, and more privacy for users and data. LHQ 2.0 achieves flexibility, accuracy, and privacy by using dynamic web-design features for enhanced data collection. It allows investigators to dynamically construct individualized LHQs on the fly and allows participants to complete the LHQ online in multiple languages. Investigators can download and delete the LHQ results and update their user and experiment information on the web. Privacy issues are handled through the online assignment of a unique ID number for each study and password-protected access to data.