http://lcn.salk.edu/publications/2004/Reilly%20-%20Frog%20where%20are%20you.pdf

''Frog, where are you?'' Narratives in children with specific language impairment, early focal brain injury, and Williams syndrome

What kinds of social relationships can people have with computers? Are there activities that computers can engage in that actively draw people into relationships with them? What are the potential benefits to the people who participate in these human-computer relationships? To address these questions this work introduces a theory of Relational Agents, which are computational artifacts designed to build and maintain long-term, social-emotional relationships with their users. These can be purely software humanoid animated agents--as developed in this work--but they can also be non-humanoid or embodied in various physical forms, from robots, to pets, to jewelry, clothing, hand-helds, and other interactive devices. Central to the notion of relationship is that it is a persistent construct, spanning multiple interactions; thus, Relational Agents are explicitly designed to remember past history and manage future expectations in their interactions with users. Finally, relationships are fundamentally social and emotional, and detailed knowledge of human social psychology--with a particular emphasis on the role of affect--must be incorporated into these agents if they are to effectively leverage the mechanisms of human social cognition in order to build relationships in the most natural manner possible. People build relationships primarily through the use of language, and primarily within the context of face-to-face conversation. Embodied Conversational Agents--anthropomorphic computer characters that emulate the experience of face-to-face conversation--thus provide the substrate for this work, and so the relational activities provided by the theory will primarily be specific types of verbal and nonverbal conversational behaviors used by people to negotiate and maintain relationships. This work also provides an analysis of the types of applications in which having a human-computer relationship is advantageous to the human participant. In addition to applications in which the relationship is an end in itself (e.g., in entertainment systems), human-computer relationships are important in tasks in which the human is attempting to undergo some change in behavior or cognitive or emotional state. One such application is explored here: a system for assisting the user through a month-long health behavior change program in the area of exercise adoption. This application involves the research, design and implementation of relational agents as well as empirical evaluation of their ability to build relationships and effect change over a series of interactions with users. Thesis Supervisors: Rosalind W. Picard, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences Justine Cassell, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

Relational agents : effecting change through human-computer relationships

http://www.utpsyc.org/Nairan/research/bilingual.pdf

Do bilinguals have two personalities? A special case of cultural frame switching

Three sets of meta-analyses examined gender effects on children's language use. Each set of analyses considered an aspect of speech that is considered to be gender typed: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Statistically significant average effect sizes were obtained with all three language constructs. On average, girls were slightly more talkative and used more affiliative speech than did boys, whereas boys used more assertive speech than did girls. However, the average effect sizes were either negligible (talkativeness, d=0.11; assertive speech, d=0.11) or small (affiliative speech, d=0.26). Larger effect sizes were indicated for some language constructs depending on either the operational definition of the language measure, the method of recording, the child's age level, the interaction partner (adult or peer), group size, gender composition, observational setting, or type of activity. The results are interpreted in relation to social-developmental and social-constructionist approaches to gender; these views are presented as complementary--rather than competing--meta-theoretical viewpoints.

A meta-analytic review of gender variations in children's language use: talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech.

▪ Abstract According to recent interpretive approaches to the study of children's socialization, meaning creation is an active process by which children playfully transform and actively resist cultural categories, and where language is viewed as social action that helps shape reality (Gaskins et al. 1992). Four ways in which children's peer talk establishes and maintains peer culture are considered: (a) how children elaborate games and codes (and ritualize the basis of inclusion in the peer group) through peer talk, (b) how conflict talk functions to elaborate peer culture, (c) how identities as peer group phenomena are talked into being through peer talk, and (d) how adult culture is resisted through peer talk. Agentive goals of children's peer culture, and the role of language in achieving them, are discussed in each section. I conclude that sociolinguistics gives researchers a way to think about social competence as sets of linguistic practices (e.g., positionings, voicings, participation framework man...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25064867.pdf

Talk and Interaction Among Children and the Co-Construction of Peer Groups and Peer Culture

Contents: Contributors. Part I: Susan Ervin-Tripp.Susan Ervin-Tripp: A Mind in the World. A Brief Biography of Susan Ervin-Tripp. Bibliography of Publications by S. Ervin-Tripp. S. Ervin-Tripp, Context in Language. Part II: Pragmatics and Sociolinguistics. R. Brown, The Language of Social Relationship. C.J. Fillmore, The Pragmatics of Constructions. M.H. Goodwin, Shifting Frame. A. Grimshaw, Code-Switching or Code-Mixing: Apparent Anomalies in Semi-formal Registers. D. Hymes, Oral Patterns as a Resource in Children's Writing: An Ethnopoetic Note. W.R. Miller, Language Socialization and Language Differentiation in Small Scale Societies: The Shoshoni and Guarijio. Part III: Social and Interactive Processes in Language Acquisition. E.S. Andersen, A Cross-Cultural Study of Children's Register Knowledge. N. Budwig, What Influences Children's Patterning of Forms and Functions in Early Child Language? W.A. Corsaro, D.W. Maynard, Format Tying in Discussion and Argumentation Among Italian and American Children. A. Duranti, E. Ochs, Use and Acquisition of Genitive Constructions in Samoan. J. Dunn, Arguing with Siblings, Friends, and Mothers: Developments in Relationships and Understanding. J.B. Gleason, R. Ely, R.Y. Perlmann, B. Narasimhan, Patterns of Prohibition in Parent-Child Discourse. L. Nader, Regulating Household Talk. K. Nakamura, The Use of Polite Language by Japanese Preschool Children. B.B. Schieffelin, E. Ochs, The Microgenesis of Competence: Methodology in Language Socialization. A. Kuntay, D.I. Slobin, Listening to a Turkish Mother: Some Puzzles for Acquisition. M. Pak, R. Sprott, E. Escalera, Little Words, Big Deal: The Development of Discourse and Syntax in Child Language. Part IV: Narrative. A. Aksu-Koc, Frames of Mind Through Narrative Discourse. M. Bamberg, J. Reilly, Emotion, Narrative, and Affect: How Children Discover the Relationship Between What to Say and How to Say It. R.A. Berman, Form and Function in Developing Narrative Abilities. A. Nicolopoulou, Narrative Development in Social Context. A.M. Peters, The Development of Collaborative Story Retelling by a Two-Year-Old Blind Child and His Father. Part V: Bilingualism. P.V. Hull, Bilingualism: Some Personality and Cultural Issues. L.W. Fillmore, What Happens When Languages Are Lost? An Essay on Language Assimiliation and Cultural Identity. Part VI: Discourse in Institutional Settings. J. Gerhardt, C. Stinson, The Therapeutic Encounter: Neutral Context or Social Construction? J.J. Gumperz, On Teaching Language in Its Sociocultural Context. R.T. Lakoff, True Confessions? Pragmatic Competence and Criminal Confession. M.C. O'Connor, Managing the Intermental: Classroom Group Discussion and the Social Context of Learning. Part VII: Gender Difference in Language Acquisition and Use. J. Cook-Gumperz, B. Scales, Girls, Boys and Just People: The Interactional Accomplishment of Gender in the Discourse of the Nursery School. L. Hinton, The New Old Ladies' Songs: Functional Adaptation of Hualapai Music to Modern Contexts. V. John-Steiner, Women's Collaborative Interactions. A. Kyratzis, J. Guo, "Separate Worlds for Girls and Boys"? Views from U.S. and Chinese Mixed-Sex Friendship Groups. M.D. Lampert, Studying Gender Differences in the Conversational Humor of Adults and Children. G. Redeker, A. Maes, Gender Differences in Interruptions. A. Sheldon, L. Rohleder, Sharing the Same World, Telling Different Stories: Gender Differences in Co-constructed Pretend Narratives.

Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp.

Although a wide body of research on sex-gender differences with White middle-class children in the United States has supported the separate worlds hypothesis (SWH), research with children from other cultures, including Taiwan, and Latino and African American children in the United States have challenged the view of girls' language as cooperative. In this study, we examine the linguistic strategies by which middle-class girls and boys from the United States and Mainland China manage conflict. Preschoolers were videotaped playing with peers. In same-sex groupings, Chinese girls and U.S. boys used the most direct strategies, including third-party complaints and censures and aggravated commands. Chinese boys used a combination of direct and indirect conflict strategies. U.S. girls used the most mitigated strategies. The pattern found in the United States of boys being more assertive than girls supported the SWH, whereas the pattern found in China was the reverse. Possible explanations of this cultural differe...

Jiansheng Guo

Papers

Social interaction, social context, and language: Essays in honor of Susan Ervin-Tripp.

Preschool girls' and boys' verbal conflict strategies in the United States and China.

A Cross-Cultural Study of Children's Register Knowledge

“Separate Worlds for Girls and Boys”? Views from U.S. and Chinese Mixed-Sex Friendship Groups