Objectives: Lao Juan (LJ, 劳倦) is a syndrome described in Chinese medicine (CM) that manifests with : Lao Juan (LJ, 劳倦) is a syndrome described in Chinese medicine (CM) that manifests with fatigue, fever, spontaneous sweating, indigestion, work-induced pain, weakness of the limbs, and shortness of breath. fatigue, fever, spontaneous sweating, indigestion, work-induced pain, weakness of the limbs, and shortness of breath. The present study was conducted to examine the reliability and validity of a Lao Juan Questionnaire (LJQ). The present study was conducted to examine the reliability and validity of a Lao Juan Questionnaire (LJQ). Methods: A total of 151 outpatients and 73 normal subjects were asked to complete the LJQ. Seventy-three normal subjects A total of 151 outpatients and 73 normal subjects were asked to complete the LJQ. Seventy-three normal subjects were additionally asked to complete the Chalder Fatigue Scale (CFS). Twelve clinicians determined whether the were additionally asked to complete the Chalder Fatigue Scale (CFS). Twelve clinicians determined whether the 151 outpatients exhibited LJ or not. The internal consistency and construct validity for the LJQ were estimated using 151 outpatients exhibited LJ or not. The internal consistency and construct validity for the LJQ were estimated using data from the outpatient subjects. The CFS data were used to examine the concurrent validity of the LJQ. Total LJQ data from the outpatient subjects. The CFS data were used to examine the concurrent validity of the LJQ. Total LJQ scores and the clinicians' diagnoses of the outpatients were used to perform receiver operating characteristics (ROC) scores and the clinicians' diagnoses of the outpatients were used to perform receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve analyses and to defi ne an optimum cut-off score for the LJQ. curve analyses and to defi ne an optimum cut-off score for the LJQ. Results: The 19-item LJQ had satisfactory internal : The 19-item LJQ had satisfactory internal consistency (α=0.828) and concurrent validity, with signifi cant correlations between the LJQ and the CFS subscales. consistency (α=0.828) and concurrent validity, with signifi cant correlations between the LJQ and the CFS subscales. In the test of construct validity using principal component analysis, a total of six factors were extracted, and the overall In the test of construct validity using principal component analysis, a total of six factors were extracted, and the overall variance explained by all factors was 59.5%. In ROC curve analyses, the sensitivity, specifi city, and area under the variance explained by all factors was 59.5%. In ROC curve analyses, the sensitivity, specifi city, and area under the curve were 76.0%, 59.2%, and 0.709, respectively. The optimum cut-off score was defi ned as six points. curve were 76.0%, 59.2%, and 0.709, respectively. The optimum cut-off score was defi ned as six points. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the LJQ is a reliable and valid instrument for evaluating LJ. Our results suggest that the LJQ is a reliable and valid instrument for evaluating LJ. KEYWORDS Chinese medicine, chronic fatigue syndrome, Chinese medicine-pattern Chinese medicine, chronic fatigue syndrome, Chinese medicine-pattern

Development and Validation of A

Many people have argued that the evolution of the human language faculty cannot be explained by Darwinian natural selection. Chomsky and Gould have suggested that language may have evolved as the by-product of selection for other abilities or as a consequence of as-yet unknown laws of growth and form. Others have argued that a biological specialization for grammar is incompatible with every tenet of Darwinian theory – that it shows no genetic variation, could not exist in any intermediate forms, confers no selective advantage, and would require more evolutionary time and genomic space than is available. We examine these arguments and show that they depend on inaccurate assumptions about biology or language or both. Evolutionary theory offers clear criteria for when a trait should be attributed to natural selection: complex design for some function, and the absence of alternative processes capable of explaining such complexity. Human language meets these criteria: Grammar is a complex mechanism tailored to the transmission of propositional structures through a serial interface. Autonomous and arbitrary grammatical phenomena have been offered as counterexamples to the position that language is an adaptation, but this reasoning is unsound: Communication protocols depend on arbitrary conventions that are adaptive as long as they are shared. Consequently, language acquisition in the child should systematically differ from language evolution in the species, and attempts to analogize them are misleading. Reviewing other arguments and data, we conclude that there is every reason to believe that a specialization for grammar evolved by a conventional neo-Darwinian process.

http://www.biolinguagem.com/ling_cog_cult/pinker_bloom_1990_naturallanguage_naturalselection.pdf

Natural language and natural selection

Infants learn language with remarkable speed, but how they do it remains a mystery. New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words. Social interaction with another human being affects speech learning in a way that resembles communicative learning in songbirds. The brain's commitment to the statistical and prosodic patterns that are experienced early in life might help to explain the long-standing puzzle of why infants are better language learners than adults. Successful learning by infants, as well as constraints on that learning, are changing theories of language acquisition.

/pdf/early-language-acquisition-cracking-the-speech-code-bf9adht4u8.pdf

Early language acquisition: cracking the speech code

In mammals, environmental sounds stimulate the auditory receptor, the cochlea, via vibrations of the stapes, the innermost of the middle ear ossicles. These vibrations produce displacement waves that travel on the elongated and spirally wound basilar membrane (BM). As they travel, waves grow in amplitude, reaching a maximum and then dying out. The location of maximum BM motion is a function of stimulus frequency, with high-frequency waves being localized to the “base” of the cochlea (near the stapes) and low-frequency waves approaching the “apex” of the cochlea. Thus each cochlear site has a characteristic frequency (CF), to which it responds maximally. BM vibrations produce motion of hair cell stereocilia, which gates stereociliar transduction channels leading to the generation of hair cell receptor potentials and the excitation of afferent auditory nerve fibers. At the base of the cochlea, BM motion exhibits a CF-specific and level-dependent compressive nonlinearity such that responses to low-level, near-CF stimuli are sensitive and sharply frequency-tuned and responses to intense stimuli are insensitive and poorly tuned. The high sensitivity and sharp-frequency tuning, as well as compression and other nonlinearities (two-tone suppression and intermodulation distortion), are highly labile, indicating the presence in normal cochleae of a positive feedback from the organ of Corti, the “cochlear amplifier.” This mechanism involves forces generated by the outer hair cells and controlled, directly or indirectly, by their transduction currents. At the apex of the cochlea, nonlinearities appear to be less prominent than at the base, perhaps implying that the cochlear amplifier plays a lesser role in determining apical mechanical responses to sound. Whether at the base or the apex, the properties of BM vibration adequately account for most frequency-specific properties of the responses to sound of auditory nerve fibers.

/pdf/mechanics-of-the-mammalian-cochlea-368l279klj.pdf

Mechanics of the Mammalian Cochlea

Surveying the terrain a brief historical perspective on language acquisition research early research on speech perception how speech perception develops in the first year the role of memory and attentional processes in the development of speech perception how attention to sound properties may facilitate learning other elements of linguistic organization relating perception to production wrapping things up. Appendix - methodology used in studies of infant speech perception.

https://www.gendocs.ru/docs/18/17604/conv_1/file1.pdf

The discovery of spoken language

In an attempt to clearly differentiate perceptual effects that are attributable to ’’auditory’’ and ’’phonetic’’ levels of processing in speech perception we have undertaken a series of experiments with animal listeners. Four chinchillas (Chinchilla laniger) were trained to respond differently to the ’’endpoints’’ of a synthetic alveolar speech continuum (0 ms VOT and +80 ms VOT) and were then tested in a generalization paradigm with the VOT stimuli between these endpoints. The resulting identification functions were nearly identical to those obtained with adult English‐speaking listeners. To test the generality of this agreement, the animals were then tested with synthetic stimuli that had labial and velar places of articulation. As a whole, the functions produced by the two species were very similar; the same relative locations of the phonetic boundaries, with lowest VOT boundaries for labial stimuli and highest for velar stimuli, were obtained for each animal and human subject. No significant differenc...

Speech perception by the chinchilla: Identification functions for synthetic VOT stimuli

An overview of the effects of noise on people as can be determined from the scientific literature is presented. Only audible noise is considered and no attempt is made to describe the extent of the noise problem in terms of the number of people affected or in terms of social and economic costs. Rather, emphasis is placed on describing and classifying the adverse effects and relating them in a general way to the intensive and temporal properties of audible noise. For simplicity, the intensive dimension of the noise is usually given as the A‐weighted sound level and detailed descriptions and evaluations of various acoustical measurements are for the most part avoided. The effects of noise are classified as auditory, general psychological, and sociological, or as general physiological. A summary is included.

Effects of noise on people.

The onset of a noise [0.9–2.1 kHz, 55 dB SPL (A weighted)] preceded that of a buzz [100 Hz, 0.5–3.0 kHz, 70 db SPL (A weighted), 500 msec] by −10 to +80 msec and both terminated simultaneously. Eight adults discriminated among noise‐lead times in an oddity task. In separate sessions, they labeled singly presented stimuli with either of the two responses: ’’no noise’’ or ’’noise.’’ The results are highly similar to those reported for the categorical perception of synthetic plosive consonants differing in voice‐onset time. On the average, discrimination was best across a noise‐lead‐time boundary of about 16 msec, where labeling also shifted abruptly. These results and those of categorical perception, generally, are interpreted in terms of Weber’s law as applied to a single component within a stimulus complex. It is concluded that categorical perception of sounds is not unique to speech and suggested that it may be a general property of sensory behavior.Subject Classification: [43]65.75; [43]70.30.

Discrimination and labeling of noise-buzz sequences with varying noise-lead times: An example of categorical perception

The audibility curve of the chinchilla was measured by behavioral audiometry. The animals were trained to respond to tones by the method of instrumental avoidance conditioning. Threshold tests were conducted in a sound‐treated quiet room, with the loudspeaker located over the chinchilla's head. Thirty‐six chinchillas were made monaural by surgical destruction of the left cochleas. Their auditory sensitivity was measured for tones spaced at equal logarithmic intervals over the range from 0.09 to 22.8 kHz. In addition, a few animals were tested at 32.0 kHz. For tones between 0.62 and 6.0 kHz, the chinchilla's threshold is about 2.4 dB sound‐pressure level (SPL). For low frequencies, sensitivity declines about 5 dB/oct from 0.62 to 0.19 kHz, and about 17 dB/oct from 0.19 to 0.09 kHz. For high frequencies, sensitivity declines about 7 dB/oct from 6.0 to 16.0 kHz, and about 22 dB/oct from 16.0 to 22.8 kHz. Similar measurements were made for 10 binaural chinchillas. On the average, the binaural animals are 2.0–8.0 dB more sensitive than monaural animals. Two old chinchillas, 12 and 14 years of age, were found to have nearly normal thresholds, but abnormal inner ears.

Audibility curve of the chinchilla

Frequencies of tones are mapped on to distances along the organ of Corti by associating behaviorally measured threshold shifts with regions of hair‐cell loss. The central tendency found for 95 frequency‐position matches by four observers on 21 ears is approximated by a straight‐line, log‐linear relation between frequency and position. Only a small portion of the considerable variation of individual matches around this function could be explained by length of the organ of Corti. Other unidentified factors appear to be responsible for most of these variations.

James D. Miller

Papers

Speech perception by the chinchilla: Identification functions for synthetic VOT stimuli

Effects of noise on people.

Discrimination and labeling of noise-buzz sequences with varying noise-lead times: An example of categorical perception

Audibility curve of the chinchilla

A frequency‐position map for the chinchilla cochlea