School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences

About: School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences is a facility organization based out in Villejuif, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Politics & Context (language use). The organization has 1230 authors who have published 2084 publications receiving 57740 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales & EHESS.

Infant-directed input and literacy effects on phonological processing: Non-word repetition scores among the Tsimane'

Abstract: Language input in childhood and literacy (and/or schooling) have been described as two key experiences impacting phonological processing. In this study, we assess phonological processing via a non-word repetition (NWR) group game, in adults and children living in two villages of an ethnic group where infants are rarely spoken to, and where literacy is variable. We found lower NWR scores than in previous work for both children (N = 17; aged 1-12 years) and adults (N = 13; aged 18-60 years), which is consistent with the hypothesis that there would be long-term effects on phonological processing of experiencing low levels of directed input in infancy. Additionally, we found some evidence that literacy and/or schooling increases NWR scores, although results should be interpreted with caution given the small sample size. These findings invite further investigations in similar communities, as current results are most compatible with phonological processing being influenced by aspects of language experience that vary greatly between and within populations.

Access to assisted reproductive technologies in France: the emergence of the patients' voice.

Abstract: Is there any ethical justification for limiting the reproductive autonomy and not make assisted reproductive technologies available to certain prospective parents? We present and discuss the results of an interdisciplinary clinical ethics study concerning access to assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in situations which are considered as ethically problematic in France (overage or sick parents, surrogate motherhood). The study focused on the arguments that people in these situations put forward when requesting access to ART. It shows that requester’s arguments are based on sound ethical values, and that their legitimacy is at least as strong as that of those used by doctors to question access to ART. Results reveal that the three implicit normative arguments that founded the law in 1994, which are still in force after the bioethics law revision in July 2011—the welfare of the child, the illegitimacy of a “right to a child,” and the defense of the so called “social order”—are challenged on several grounds by requesters as reasons for limiting their reproductive autonomy. Although these results are limited to exceptional situations, they are of special interest insofar as they give voice to the requesters’ own ethical concerns in the ongoing political debate over access to ART.

A corpus-based evaluation method for Distributional Semantic Models

Abstract: Evaluation methods for Distributional Semantic Models typically rely on behaviorally derived gold standards. These methods are difficult to deploy in languages with scarce linguistic/behavioral resources. We introduce a corpus-based measure that evaluates the stability of the lexical semantic similarity space using a pseudo-synonym same-different detection task and no external resources. We show that it enables to predict two behaviorbased measures across a range of parameters in a Latent Semantic Analysis model.