The Group Calibration Index (GCI) provides a means of assessing the quality of forecasters’ predictions in situations that lack external feedback or outcome data. The GCI replaces the missing outcome data with aggregated ratings of a well-defined reference group. A simulation study and two experiments show how the GCI classifies forecaster performance and distinguishes between forecasters with restricted information and those with complete information. The results also show that under certain circumstances, where members of the reference group have high-quality information, (...) the new GCI will outperform expert classification that is based on traditional calibration indices. (shrink)

The study considers the topic of linguistic register by examining how schoolchildren, adolescents, and adults vary the texts that they construct across the dimensions of modality and genre . Although register variation is presumably universal, it is realized in language-specific ways, and so our analysis focuses on Israeli Hebrew, a language that evolved under peculiar socio-historical circumstances. An original procedure for characterizing register — as low, neutral, or high — was applied to four text types produced by the same speaker-writers. (...) We found that across all age groups, “neutral“ items constituted the bulk of the material, and that the lexicon accounted for some 80% of variation. Developmentally, we found that acquisition of fully flexible register variation continues beyond adolescence. Finally, we observed that text types range on a cline from everyday colloquial usage in oral narratives to more formal, high-level language in written expository essays. These results are discussed in light of their implications for the nature of register variation, later language development, and the sociolinguistics of contemporary Hebrew. (shrink)

A spelling model which has evolved in the parallel universe of spelling research resonates with Frost's reading model. Like reading, spelling cannot be based solely on phonology or orthography, but should accommodate all linguistic facets. The cognitive domain of spelling does not take place at the level of single grapheme or phoneme or syllable, but rather, at the lexical level.

This study examines the distribution of complex nominal constructions in Hebrew texts produced by non-expert schoolage and adult writers, compared with their distribution in expert-written encyclopedic texts. One aim of the paper was to determine young writers’ ability to distinguish text types through their usage of genre-appropriate morpho-syntactic forms. Another aim was to investigate the distribution of these constructions in expert school-related texts so as to confirm or refute the hypothesis of “resonance” between input and output texts. The study population (...) consisted of native Hebrew-speaking gradeschoolers, adolescents and adults who each produced 2 written texts, one biographical, one expository. The same text types were analyzed in three encyclopedias, targeted for use in each of the age groups under discussion. Our analysis indicates that non-expert writers’ textual output undergoes marked developmental changes during later childhood and adolescence, but no developmental resonance was found in expert texts, which constitute part of the input that novice and non-expert writers are exposed to. Implications for the nature of the mental lexicon and its relationship with grammar are discussed. (shrink)

This article reports a study conducted with a rarely studied minority group, the Jewish ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem, Israel, an extremely religious group that endorses patterns of voluntary segregation. The segregation of the group explored in the present study involves also a linguistic component: this group uses only Yiddish for daily communication and relates to Hebrew, Israel’s official language, mainly as a sacred tongue. The sample consisted of 56 girls, 20 4th graders and 36 7th graders, who were asked to (...) write a story in Hebrew about a good thing that had happened to them. Analysis revealed developmental changes in most of the linguistic measures examined — text length, language productivity measures, and lexicon. In contrast to baseline studies on mainstream L1 groups, Optional Bound Morphology usage also increased with age. Global structure analysis shows that, beside canonic narratives, the girls’ stories also include script-like reports, eventive narratives, and retellings of traditional Hasidic stories. These findings intertwine in interesting ways with the linguistic and socio-cultural findings of the study to reveal how lexical and syntactic categories develop in a second language in the context of narrative text production. (shrink)

Traumatic brain injury is a major cause of death and disability in Western society, and often results in functional and neuropsychological abnormalities. Memory impairment is one of the most significant cognitive implications after TBI. In the current study we investigated procedural memory acquisition by observational training in TBI patients. It was previously found that while practicing a new motor skill, patients engage in all three phases of skill learning–fast acquisition, between-session consolidation, and long-term retention, though their pattern of learning is (...) atypical compared to healthy participants. A different set of studies showed that training by observing a motor task, generally prompted effective acquisition and consolidation of procedural knowledge in healthy participants. The aim of our study was to evaluate the potential benefit of action observation in TBI patients. Examine the possibility of general improvement in performance between the first and second stage of the study. Investigate the link between patients’ ability to benefit from observational learning and common measures of injury.Materials and methodsPatients hospitalized after moderate to severe TBI, were trained by observation for the finger opposition sequence motor task. They were then tested for the observation-trained sequence and a similar control sequence, at two different time-points.Results revealed a significant difference in performance between the trained and untrained sequences, in favor of the trained sequence. An increase in performance for both sequences A and B toward the second session. The advantage for sequence A was stable and preserved also in the second session. Participants with lower moderate Functional Independence Measure scores gained more from observational-procedural learning, compared with patients with higher functional abilities.ConclusionOverall, these findings support the notion that TBI patients may achieve procedural memory consolidation and retention through observational learning. Moreover, different functional traits may predict the outcomes of observational training in different patients. These findings may have significant practical implications in the future, regarding skill acquisition methods in TBI patients. (shrink)