This paper describes the development of a new Test of Child Speechreading (ToCS) that was specifically designed to be suitable for use with deaf children. Speechreading is a skill which is required for deaf children to access the language of the hearing community. ToCS is a child-friendly, computer-based, speechreading test that measures speechreading (silent lipreading) at three psycholinguist...

Around the world, increasing numbers of people are attending informal science events, often ones that are part of multi-event festivals that cross cultural boundaries. For the researchers who take part, and the organizers, evaluating the events’ success, value, and effectiveness is hugely important. However, the use of traditional evaluation methods such as paper surveys and formal structured i...

We present a unified dynamical mean-field theory, based on the single site approximation to the masterequation, for stochastic self-organized critical models. In particular, we analyze in detail the properties of sandpile and forest-fire ~FF! models. In analogy with other nonequilibrium critical phenomena, we identify an order parameter with the density of ‘‘active’’ sites, and control paramete...

abstract recognition of effective factors on landslide occurrence and so high and low hazard region is one of the most important and necessary works for mitigation of landslide damages. in this study, from all of the effective factors on landslide occurrence, land use changes and road construction, into a parts of tadjan watershed with area about 708.08 square kilometers in south of sari, was s...

We investigate the effectiveness of using an accepted readability index, the Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) scale, to design prompts for an automatic oral proficiency assessment system. The prompts in question are uttered by the system, and must be repeated from memory by the test subjects, in the form of an elicited imitation exercise. The FRE scores for our prompts are shown to correlate well with...

Reading fiction is a major component of intellectual life, yet it has proven difficult to study experimentally. One aspect of literature that has recently come to light is perspective embedding ("she thought I left" embedding her perspective on "I left"), which seems to be a defining feature of fiction. Previous work (Whalen et al., 2012) has shown that increasing levels of embedment affects th...

Two studies investigated whether there is a direct relation between children’s reading comprehension, their knowledge about the goals and processes of reading, and their skill in applying such knowledge. An interview revealed that less skilled comprehenders differed from same-age skilled comprehenders in their knowledge about reading and reading strategies, but they did not differ signiŽcantly ...