Robert Stainton at the University of Western Ontario and Jessica de Villiers of The University of British Columbia have recently conducted a study which aims to measure and define pragmatic capabilities of autism patients, specifically those with Autism Spectrum Disorder, or ASD. Previously, one of the defining features of ASD patients was the deficiency or [...]
About a week ago, Michael from Greater Blogazonia broke the news of the World Atlas of Language Structures Online (WALS) database release. Following suite was Mark from The Ideophone, and Simon from HENRY. All three are lingustic anthropology focused blogs that I follow and trust, and they all praised this database. I’ve been poking around [...]
Daniel Tight at the University of Minnesota has announced the completion of his dissertation, “The Role of Perceptual Learning Style Preferences and Instructional Method in the Acquisition of L2 Spanish Vocabulary,” on Linguist List. The abstract details a study which measured the effectiveness of preferred learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) in 128 intermediate-level L2 college [...]
For those of you out there interested in Mayan archeology and culture, or even those out there interested in how linguists crack codes, tomorrow night PBS’s NOVA will be airing a special on how the Mayan language was deciphered. The show is called, “Cracking the Mayan Code.” It airs tomorrow night at 8 p.m. on [...]
National Geographic News has just published an article about the recent symposium in Alaska regarding a possible connection between Yeniseic languages in Siberia and Na-Dene languages in the Americas. John Roach’s article, Siberian, Native American Languages Linked — A First, highlights the recent work of Edward Vajda, who defended his connection during the February symposium. [...]
Despite the fact that I’ve seen some really impactful primate related research lately, I’ve completely neglected updating Primatology.net with it. I can’t believe it has been almost three months since I’ve posted there! I should really resume posting there. Actually, I was considering putting up this following blog post over there, since it has to [...]
Michael Callahan of Ambient Corp. in Champaign, Ill. and the University of Illinois has recently introduced The Audeo, a thought-to-speech interfacing device which acquires and converts neurological signals into vocalizations. The device allows users to communicate with a computer much in the way voice recognition software does. However, instead of encrypting wave patterns [...]
Charles Limb and Allen Braun at Johns Hopkins have recently published a study on the internal characteristics and functions of improvisation in music. The study, “Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation,” uses a functional MRI to look at the neural activity of Jazz musicians, specifically pianists, during improvisation. Several [...]
The question answering (QA) research group at Carnegie Mellon University has recently released an open source version of their Ephyra Question and Answer System. The software utilizes the internet to answer linguistic questions as well as recognize syntax, word ordering, and tone, using a series of algorithms to produce the most context-appropriate and statistically correct [...]
So you probably just saw the new post, the one announcing an upcoming linguistic conference on a possible link between the Yeniseic and Na-Dene language families. Well, I, Kambiz Kamrani, did not publish that post. It was actually authored by Alex Greengaard, who’s a new blogger here at Anthropology.net. Usually, I introduce new contributors to [...]
