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The present paper aims to describe the process of creating CHARG—Corpus de Habla Radiofónica de Guayaquil (the Guayaquil Radiophonic Speech Corpus). It is the first systematized spoken corpus for this rather under-researched variety of Spanish. Guayaquil is the most populated city of Ecuador, while its capital city is Quito. Therefore, Ecuador is a rare case of a Spanish-speaking country with two major urban centers that belong to two separate dialectal zones, offering a very peculiar sociolinguistic context. CHARG is a corpus composed of Guayaquil radio programs. Its structure is organized by non-linguistic criteria (program type) in order to ensure a representative and balanced sample. The paper describes the design of the corpus (defining the study population, sample and stratification) and its construction (recording procedure, speakers and speech style coding, transcription and annotation). As a result, CHARG consists of 24 h of transcriptions and annotations of recordings from 142 speakers. The paper's potential use is twofold: since it presents a step-by-step procedure of corpus construction that can be replicated, the readers might be interested in both the procedure and the corpus itself as a research material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do modal expressions determine which possibilities they range over? According to the Modal Anchor Hypothesis (Kratzer in The language-cognition interface: Actes du 19econgrès international des linguistes, Libraire Droz, Genève, 179–199, 2013), modal expressions determine their domain of quantification from particulars (events, situations, or individuals). This paper presents novel evidence for this hypothesis, focusing on a class of Spanish relative clauses that host verbs inflected in the subjunctive. Subjunctive in Romance is standardly taken to be licensed only in a subset of intensional contexts. However, in our relative clauses, subjunctive is exceptionally licensed in extensional contexts. At the same time, the interpretation of these relative clauses still involves modality, a type of modality that targets the goals of the agent of the main event. We argue that the pattern displayed by these relative clauses follows straightforwardly if subjunctive is associated with a modal operator that, like modal indefinites (Alonso-Ovalle and Menéndez-Benito in Journal of Semantics 35(1):1–41, 2017), can project its domain from a volitional event. Overall, our proposal supports the event-based analysis of mood (Kratzer in Evidential mood in attitude and speech reports. Talk delivered at the 1st Syncart Workshop, Siena, July 13, 2016; Portner and Rubinstein in Natural Language Semantics 28:343–393, 2020) and extends its application beyond attitudinal and modal complements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Basic emotion classification is one of the main tasks of Sentiment Analysis usually performed by using several machine learning techniques. One of the main issues in Sentiment Analysis is the availability of tagged resources to properly train supervised classification algorithms. This is of particular concern in languages other than English, such as Spanish, where scarcity of these resources is the norm. In addition, most basic emotion datasets available in Spanish are rather small, containing a few hundred (or thousand) samples. Usually, the samples only contain a short text (frequently a comment) and a tag (the basic emotion), omitting crucial contextual information that may help to improve the classification task results. In this paper, the impact of using contextual information is measured on a recently published Spanish basic emotion dataset and the baseline architecture proposed in the Semantic Evaluation 2019 competition. This particular dataset has two main advantages for this paper. First, it was compiled using Distant Supervision and as a result it contains several hundred thousand samples. Secondly, the authors included valuable contextual information for each comment. The results show that contextual information, such as news headlines or summaries, helps improve the classification accuracy over a dataset of distantly supervised basic emotion labelled comments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I discuss apparent violations to the P(reposition)-Stranding Generalization (Merchant 2001) in Spanish, a language that does not allow P-stranding in regular wh-questions. I will refer to these apparent violations to the P-stranding Generalization as cases of P(reposition)-omission, which I define as the omission of a preposition in an ellipsis fragment. In order to provide a unified analysis for all types of clausal ellipsis, I examine different constructions such as sluicing, fragment answers, contrast sluicing, stripping and pseudostripping, split questions, and sprouting. I claim that P-omission in clausal ellipsis in Spanish is only allowed when the following two conditions are met: (a) the remnant's correlate in the antecedent does not move, and (b) the remnant does not move. I account for the distribution of this phenomenon by arguing that ellipsis is licensed under strict syntactic identity, and that the remnant doesn't need to move to escape deletion. Additionally, I show that previous approaches that derive P-omission in Spanish from non-isomorphic, copular sources make incorrect predictions with regard to the patterns found in different types of clausal ellipsis in this language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the bilingual Spanish-speaking population in the United States (U.S.) steadily rises (U.S. Census Bureau in Language spoken at home, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/profile?q=United%20States&g=0100000US, 2020), the need for systemic therapists who are competent in working with Spanish-speaking clients also increases. While it is unrealistic to require all mental health practitioners to be bilingual English and Spanish speakers, systemic therapists can improve their understanding of the impact that clients' native language can have on the therapeutic process. In this paper, we synthesize concepts from narrative therapy and linguistic relativity to provide non-Spanish-speaking clinicians with a unique perspective of case conceptualizations and therapeutic interventions for clients who natively speak Spanish. A clinical vignette is presented to illustrate the practical application of linguistic relativity informed systemic therapy. Potential theoretical and clinical implications of this treatment suggestion are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentence-final completion tasks serve as valuable tools in studying language processing and the associated predictive mechanisms. There are several established sentence-completion norms for languages like English, Portuguese, French, and Spanish, each tailored to the language it was designed for and evaluated in. Yet, cultural variations among native speakers of the same language complicate the claim of a universal application of these norms. In this study, we developed a corpus of 2925 sentence-completion norms specifically for Mexican Spanish. This corpus is distinctive for several reasons: Firstly, it is the most comprehensive set of sentence-completion norms for Mexican Spanish to date. Secondly, it offers a substantial range of experimental stimuli with considerable variability in terms of the predictability of word sentence completion (cloze probability/surprisal) and the level of uncertainty inherent in the sentence context (entropy). Thirdly, the syntactic complexity of the sentences in the corpus is varied, as are the characteristics of the final word nouns (including aspects of concreteness/abstractness, length, and frequency). This paper details the generation of the sentence contexts, explains the methodology employed for data collection from a total of 1470 participants, and outlines the approach to data analysis for the establishment of sentence-completion norms. These norms provide a significant contribution to fields such as linguistics, cognitive science, and machine learning, among others, by enhancing our understanding of language, predictive mechanisms, knowledge representation, and context representation. The collected data is accessible through the Open Science Framework (OSF) at the following link: https://osf.io/js359/?view_only=bb1b328d37d643df903ed69bb2405ac0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contemplates the concept of typographical advocacy, defined here as a variety of activities, strategies, and policies designed to increase or enhance language support in computing systems, facilitating typing and displaying texts in local languages. Focusing on the cases of Spanish and Paraguayan Guarani, the paper traces some existing efforts in the domain of typographical advocacy and strives to explain their dynamics. An attempt is made to examine both situations in which typographical advocacy is visible and explicit (as in the case of Spanish) and cases in which advocacy seems negligible (as in the case of Guarani). A wide range of enabling and hindering factors are examined, such as the relations between tech companies, nation-state institutions, consumers, and the habitus created by the use of technology. Through these examples, the rationale for advocacy is explored as well as alternative courses of action in cases where advocacy is not desired or fails to achieve its goals. A case will be made for raising the awareness of typographical issues in language planning and policy (LPP) both as part of broader multilingual awareness and as a tool for solving practical language problems in times of increased dependency on computing and mobile devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread availability of scientific documents in multiple languages, coupled with the development of automatic translation and editing tools, has created a demand for efficient methods that can detect plagiarism across different languages. In this paper, we present a novel cross-lingual plagiarism detection approach. The algorithm is based on the merger of two existing approaches that in turn achieve state-of-the-art (SOTA) or comparable to SOTA results on different benchmarks. The detailed analysis stages of existing approaches were sequentially merged levelling out the disadvantages of the approaches. The obtained algorithm significantly outperforms the ones it was merged of surpassing them by from 23 to 33% Plagdet Score, depending on different language pairs. The comparison between observed approaches was evaluated on a newly generated multilingual (English, Russian, Spanish, Armenian) test collection, where each suspicious document could contain plagiarised fragments from several languages. The merged method is applicable to various under-resourced languages which is shown on the example of the Armenian language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a first attempt to formally characterize the prosodic properties of Spanish acronyms. Based on the examination of a dataset and the results of a written questionnaire and perception test administered to native speakers, the stress patterns and prosodic size of Spanish acronyms are investigated. We show that stress in acronyms follows the regular stress patterns of the language. We further claim that acronyms are restricted to an upper limit of three syllables, which we explain by resorting to layered feet. Additionally, we show that an interesting minimality requirement applies exclusively to acronyms, one that must be expressed not in terms of syllable weight, but rather in terms of the number of segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary research on foreign language learning has important implications for learning and education. In this paper, we present the Repository of Third Language (L3) Spoken Narratives from Modern Language Learners in Hong Kong (L3HK Repository). This database contains 906 audio recordings and annotated transcripts of spoken narratives in French, German, and Spanish that were elicited from Cantonese-speaking (L1) young adults using a wordless picture book, "Frog, Where Are You?". All participants spoke English as the second language (L2) and learned the target language as a third language (L3). We collected their demographic information, answers to a motivation questionnaire, parental socioeconomic status, and music background. Furthermore, for a subset of participants, we collected their L1 and L2 proficiency scores and additional experimental data on working memory and music perception. This database is valuable for examining cross-sectional changes in foreign language learning. The extensive data on phenotypes provide opportunities to explore learner-internal and learner-external factors in foreign language learning outcomes. These data may also be helpful for those who work on speech recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowledge graphs (KGs) are useful data structures for the integration, retrieval, dissemination, and inference of information in various information domains. One of the main challenges in building KGs is the extraction of named entities (nodes) and their relations (edges), particularly when processing unstructured text as it has no semantic descriptions. Generating KGs from texts written in Spanish represents a research challenge as the existing structures, models, and strategies designed for other languages are not compatible in this scenario. This paper proposes a method to design and construct KGs from unstructured text in Spanish. We defined lexical patterns to extract named entities and (non) taxonomic, equivalence, and composition relations. Next, named entities are linked and enriched with DBpedia resources through a strategy based on SPARQL queries. Finally, OWL properties are defined from the predicate relations for creating resource description framework (RDF) triples. We evaluated the performance of the proposed method to determine the degree of elements extracted from the input text and to assess their quality through standard information retrieval measures. The evaluation revealed the feasibility of the proposed method to extract RDF triples from datasets in general and computer science domains. Competitive results were observed by comparing our method regarding an existing approach from the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a system that incorporates several strategies based on scientific models of how the brain records and recovers memories. Methodologically, an incremental prototyping approach has been applied to develop a satisfactory architecture that can be adapted to any language. A special case is studied and tested regarding the Spanish language. The applications of this proposal are vast because, in general, information such as text way, reports, emails, and web content, among others, is considered unstructured and, hence, the repositories based on SQL databases usually do not handle this kind of data correctly and efficiently. The conversion of unstructured textual information to structured one can be useful in contexts such as Natural Language Generation, Data Mining, and dynamic generation of theories, among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this work is to study the factorial structure of the IAT in a new Spanish sample of non-compulsory education students and to develop a shorter version of it based on empirical criteria. The paper also assesses the test's internal consistency reliability and validity with respect to the original IAT, to three other Internet addiction tests and to a clinical symptomatology test (CORE-OM: Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation-Outcome Measure). A total sample comprising 1886 Spanish non-compulsory education students (average age: 21.04 years; SD = 4.72) was randomly divided into two halves. The first half (n = 932) was subjected to the IAT exploratory factorial analysis (EFA). In the second half, a confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) was performed with 954 surveys. A subgroup of 209 randomly selected participants were given three independent internet addiction tests in addition to the IAT. Following the EFA and CFA, a new version of the test called IAT-12 was designed, with 2 factors (Control and management of time; Salience and neglect of social life) showing a very high correlation with the original (.97). IAT-12 also showed high internal consistency and a high capacity to predict Internet addiction in young Spaniards, and is able quickly and simply to differentiate individuals who really have a problem of Internet addiction from those who do not, with a high level of sensitivity and specificity. Its validity was demonstrated with respect both to Young's IAT itself and to external criteria for measuring Internet addiction and clinical symptomatology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of discourse markers, like that of any other linguistic element, is dependent on contextual factors that interact at the specific moment of an enunciation. The utterers, with the need to adjust their language product to their communicative intentions, perform an analysis of the contextual, material, and relational factors involved, resulting in the choice of the linguistic operators to be used in that particular utterance situation. A first goal of this paper is then to identify those contextual aspects encompassed in such selection, likely indeed to generate problems in the acquisition of affirmative operators by Spanish as Foreign Language learners, and to identify what types of unwanted implicatures can be caused by a lack of adjustment to the context. Subsequently, we introduce a methodological-didactic tool, based on a previously established theoretical framework which comprises these various contextual variables at its own formal level, directed at promoting the processes of acquisition of these markers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we highlight the importance of distilling the computational assessments of constructed responses to validate the indicators/proxies of constructs/trins using an empirical illustration in automated summary evaluation. We present the validation of the Inbuilt Rubric (IR) method that maps rubrics into vector spaces for concepts' assessment. Specifically, we improved and validated its scores' performance using latent variables, a common approach in psychometrics. We also validated a new hierarchical vector space, namely a bifactor IR. 205 Spanish undergraduate students produced 615 summaries of three different texts that were evaluated by human raters and different versions of the IR method using latent semantic analysis (LSA). The computational scores were validated using multiple linear regressions and different latent variable models like CFAs or SEMs. Convergent and discriminant validity was found for the IR scores using human rater scores as validity criteria. While this study was conducted in the Spanish language, the proposed scheme is language-independent and applicable to any language. We highlight four main conclusions: (1) Accurate performance can be observed in topic-detection tasks without hundreds/thousands of pre-scored samples required in supervised models. (2) Convergent/discriminant validity can be improved using measurement models for computational scores as they adjust for measurement errors. (3) Nouns embedded in fragments of instructional text can be an affordable alternative to use the IR method. (4) Hierarchical models, like the bifactor IR, can increase the validity of computational assessments evaluating general and specific knowledge in vector space models. R code is provided to apply the classic and bifactor IR method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a public dataset for Offline Handwriting Recognition, along with an appropriate evaluation method to provide benchmark indicators at sentence level, is presented. This dataset, called SPA-Sentences, consists of offline handwritten Spanish sentences extracted from 1617 forms produced by the same number of writers. A total of 13,691 sentences comprising around 100,000 word instances out of a vocabulary of 3288 words occur in the collection. Careful attention has been paid to make the baseline experiments both reproducible and competitive. To this end, experiments are based on state-of-the-art recognition techniques combining convolutional blocks with one-dimensional Bidirectional Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) networks using Connectionist Temporal Classification (CTC) decoding. The scripts with the entire experimental setting have been made available. The SPA-Sentences dataset and its baseline evaluation are freely available for research purposes via the institutional University repository. We expect the research community to include this corpus, as is usually done with English IAM and French RIMES datasets, in their battery of experiments when reporting novel handwriting recognition techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sign language recognition system can be applied to reduce a communication gap between deaf and normal persons. However, the Indian sign language recognition (ISL) systems are in the developing stage. Most of the recent ISL recognition systems use convolutional neural networks (CNNs) where applied convolution operation shifts a kernel to overlapping portions over the image. However, these kernels may learn redundant data since real-world images have very high correlations. The training process of neural networks is challenging for redundant image data. To overcome this limitation, an ISL recognition system has been proposed in this paper that uses the network deconvolution technique. This technique reduces not only pixel-wise correlation but also a channel-wise correlation in images. The proposed model is also augmented with a spatial transformer network to increase spatial invariance of convolution operations against spatial transformations. The proposed recognizer offers better accuracy most of the time than other experimented systems on two ISL datasets VUCS_ISL_I and created VUCS_ISL_II and standard datasets of other sign languages, i.e., American sign language, Arabic sign language, Spanish sign language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we applied a peer assessment scenario at the Technical University of Manabí (Ecuador). Students and professors evaluated some works through rubrics, assigned a numerical score, and provided textual feedback grounding why such a numerical score was determined, to detect inaccuracy between both assessments. The proposed model uses soft computing techniques to reduce the professor's workload in the correction process. Experiments were carried out with a data set in the Spanish language. We applied a supervised machine learning approach to obtain a sentiment score corresponding to specific textual feedback, and the fuzzy logic approach to detect inaccuracy between numerical and sentiment scores and obtain the assessment score. The results showed that the support vector machine model had a better performance with low computational costs when the feedback was represented as a 1-g and 2-g vector, whose relevance was weighted with term frequency-inverse document frequency; moreover, the grader's critical judgment validity was inferred from the similarities between numerical and sentiment scores. At the end, the outcomes assert the model is reliable and guarantees a fair peer assessment procedure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple-choice test generation is one of the most complex NLP problems, especially in languages other than English, where there is a lack of prior research. After a review of the literature, it has been verified that some methods like the usage of rule-based systems or primitive neural networks have led to the application of a recent architecture, the Transformer architecture, in the tasks of Answer Extraction (AE) and Question Generation (QG). Thereby, this study is centred in searching and developing better models for the AE and QG tasks in Spanish, using an answer-aware methodology. For this purpose, three multilingual models (mT5-base, mT0-base and BLOOMZ-560 M) have been fine-tuned using three different datasets: a translation to Spanish of the SQuAD dataset; SQAC, which is a dataset in Spanish; and their union (SQuAD + SQAC), which shows slightly better results. Regarding the models, the performance of mT5-base has been compared with that found in two newer models, mT0-base and BLOOMZ-560 M. These models were fine-tuned for multiple tasks in literature, including AE and QG, but, in general, the best results are obtained from the mT5 models trained in our study with the SQuAD + SQAC dataset. Nonetheless, some other good results are obtained from mT5 models trained only with the SQAC dataset. For their evaluation, the widely used BLEU1-4, METEOR and ROUGE-L metrics have been obtained, where mT5 outperforms some similar research works. Besides, CIDEr, SARI, GLEU, WER and the cosine similarity metrics have been calculated to present a benchmark within the AE and QG problems for future work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This study examines immigrant Latinas' (ILs') help-seeking behaviors, types of support systems, and access to intimate partner violence (IPV) services during a global health crisis (COVID-19) at a community-based agency in a Northeastern state. Method: Nineteen immigrant Latinas who had prior IPV-related services such as legal aid, advocacy, and support within 1–3 years were recruited for the study. Spanish-speaking telephone interviews averaging between 30 and 45 min were conducted with each participant. Content analysis was the method employed to review the data and generate themes of the participants' experiences. Results: Participants' qualitative responses included an increase of intimate partner violence during the pandemic. Types of support systems included reaching out to police departments, hospitals and health-care settings, and community-based agencies. Findings indicated a 47% positive response rate when working with police officers (e.g., bilingual Spanish-English speaking police officers), and the participants reported being supported by the agency staff where they received services. Conclusion: Recommendations are provided to the community-based agency and other service providers regarding ongoing delivery of services and best practices for ILs throughout the pandemic transitions and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present the validation of a questionnaire for compulsory secondary school students (seventh to tenth grade), designated "Educational learning environments for ESO pupils" (CEApA_ESO), for the purpose of evaluating learning environments. Although many instruments have been developed in this area, our work attempts to comprehensively cover some factors that most influence learning environments from the students' perspective. Therefore, we included physical, learning, teaching and motivational elements, by adapting different already-validated scales to our intended overall approach and the Spanish context. We conducted a pilot study with 207 students from four grades (two classes per educational level). We performed descriptive and factor analyses with maximum likelihood extraction method and varimax rotation to identify factors underlying each scale. The factors extracted from each scale were used to evaluate the fit of the model, using the AMOS v.18 software for structural equation analysis, taking as reference the criteria set by Byrne (Structural equation modeling with AMOS: Basic concepts, applications, and programming, Taylor & Francis Group, 2010) and Kline (Principles and practice of structural equation modeling, The Guilford Press, 2010) (CMIN/DF between 2 and 5, CFI and IFI > 0.9, RMSEA < 0.06 and HOELTER > 200). Finally, we present the factorial validity of the complete scale and analyse the internal consistency of the scale and its subscales using Cronbach's alpha coefficient. This instrument, with adequate psychometric properties, offers educators and researchers a valid tool for assessing the learning environments of their schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of sentiment analysis of tourism data focuses on the analysis of the multimodal characteristics of the data generated digitally by tourists on each platform or social network. Generally, their opinions have multimodal characteristics, since they combine text, images or numbers (ratings), which represents an important challenge in sentiment analysis that requires new models or multimodal data classification techniques. This work proposes a multimodal sentiment analysis model for data in Spanish in the tourism domain composed of four main phases (extraction, classification, fusion, visualization), and a transversal phase to evaluate the quality of the multimodal sentiment analysis process. Thus, the multimodal sentiment analysis model integrates a data quality model to improve multimodal sentiment analysis tasks, but in addition, the linguistic resource "SenticNet 5" is adapted to Spanish. The model was validated by applying various classification metrics, and the classification results were compared to a manually labeled dataset (TASS) using two machine learning classification algorithms. The first was Random Forest, where the manually labeled dataset has a 50% F1 score compared to the adapted SenticNet automatically generated dataset, which has a 71% F1 score measure and a 70% accuracy. The classification generated by SenticNet is 21% higher than that of the TASS data set. The second algorithm applied was Support Vector Machine (SVM), which classified the SenticNet-generated dataset with an F1 score of 72% versus the manually created dataset with 57.7% (14.3% more effective). In the fusion tests of the multimodal sentiment inputs, the accuracy results for text were 65%, for images 33%, and the fusion of both was 71%. In general, it was identified that the opinions made by users composed of text in Spanish and images improve polarity identification if an independent classification is carried out, and then apply a polarity fusion process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Despite being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 due to a lack of structural support, marginalized communities have been largely ignored in the politically polarized debate over school masking. In response to this, we sought to explore masking attitudes by centering the voices of parents and children at historically marginalized, predominantly Hispanic schools in southern California. Methods: We conducted a mixed-methods study with parents and children attending 26 low-income predominantly Hispanic-serving elementary schools. A random sample of parents was asked to provide a freelist of words they associate with masking. A subset of parents with children aged 4–6 was recruited from these surveys to participate in parent-child interviews (PCI). We calculated Smith's salience index for all unique items, stratifying by language (English/Spanish). Item salience guided PCI thematic analysis for additional context and meaning. Results: 648 participants provided 1118 unique freelist items in English and Spanish. 19 parent-child pairs were interviewed, 11 in Spanish and 8 in English. The most salient words were "safety"(0.37), "protection"(0.12), "prevention"(0.05), "health"(0.04), "good"(0.03), "can't breathe"(0.03), "necessary"(0.02), "care"(0.02), "precaution"(0.02), and "unnecessary"(0.02). Spanish speakers had a more favorable view of masking than English speakers, particularly regarding "protection" (0.20 vs 0.08) and "prevention" (0.10 vs 0.02). Discussion: Masking is an affordable individual-level risk mitigation that protects the communities that have inequitably shouldered the burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recommend that policymakers prioritize the views of those most impacted when deciding on risk mitigation policies like school masking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many sexual health programs transitioned to virtual implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite its devastation, the pandemic provided an opportunity to learn about virtual compared to in-person implementation of a sexual health promotion program—El Camino. This study assessed differences in program attendance, engagement, quality, and student ratings for virtual versus in-person implementation of El Camino as part of a rigorous evaluation in high schools with high Latino populations in Maryland. Drawing on positive youth development practices, El Camino helps participants identify personal goals and learn about sexual reproductive health and healthy relationships. This mixed-methods study incorporates data from performance measures, baseline and post-intervention participant surveys, observations, monthly implementation reports, and debriefs with facilitators to describe and compare virtual and in-person program implementation. At baseline, participants were an average of 16.2 years old; between 8 and 12th grade; 61% female; 79% Hispanic, Latino, or of Spanish origin; and 54% spoke mostly Spanish at home. Recruitment and retention of students outside of school classes were challenging for both forms of implementation. However, attendance was higher during in-person implementation and in schools where the organization implementing El Camino had a strong presence before the pandemic. Findings indicate high fidelity, excellent quality ratings, and positive student perceptions of the program and facilitators in both the virtual and in-person cohorts, which suggest that both forms of implementation were comparable and furthermore highlight the strength of the virtual adaptation of the El Camino program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, systems have been developed to monitor online content and remove abusive, offensive or hateful content. Comments in online social media have been analyzed to find and stop the spread of negativity using methods such as hate speech detection, identification of offensive language or detection of abusive language. We define hope speech as the type of speech that is able to relax a hostile environment and that helps, gives suggestions and inspires for good to a number of people when they are in times of illness, stress, loneliness or depression. Detecting it automatically, in order to give greater diffusion to positive comments, can have a very significant effect when it comes to fighting against sexual or racial discrimination or when we intend to foster less bellicose environments. In this article we perform a complete study on hope speech, analyzing existing solutions and available resources. In addition, we have generated a quality resource, SpanishHopeEDI, a new Spanish Twitter dataset on LGBT community, and we have conducted some experiments that can serve as a baseline for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spanish is one of the most spoken languages in the world. Its proliferation comes with variations in written and spoken communication among different regions. Understanding language variations can help improve model performances on regional tasks, such as those involving figurative language and local context information. This manuscript presents and describes a set of regionalized resources for the Spanish language built on 4-year Twitter public messages geotagged in 26 Spanish-speaking countries. We introduce word embeddings based on FastText, language models based on BERT, and per-region sample corpora. We also provide a broad comparison among regions covering lexical and semantical similarities and examples of using regional resources on message classification tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant psychological impact worldwide. The COVID-19 Peritraumatic Distress Index (CPDI) is widely used to assess psychological stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although CPDI has been validated in Peru and Spain, no cross-cultural validation studies have been conducted. As an exploratory aim, differences in CPDI factorial scores between the most prevalent medical conditions in the two samples (arterial hypertension, respiratory diseases and anxious-depressive disorders) from a general population of Peru and Spain were investigated. We conducted secondary data analysis with data from Peru and Spain to validate the CPDI in a cross-cultural context. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) were performed to evaluate the factor structure and measurement invariance of the CPDI across cultural contexts. Concerning the exploratory analysis, we performed a U-Mann–Whitney test to evaluate differences in the factorial scores in the two samples. This study revealed a two-factor solution (stress and rumination/information) for the CPDI that included 21 of the 24 original items, and consistent with previous studies. The MGCFA demonstrated measurement invariance across cultural contexts (scalar invariance), indicating that the CPDI construct has the same meaning across both groups, regardless of cultural context and language variations of Spanish. Patients with anxious-depressive disorders showed higher CPDI factorial scores for both factors, whereas patients with respiratory diseases were only associated with the stress factor. This study provides evidence for the cross-cultural validity of the CPDI, highlighting its utility as a reliable instrument for assessing psychological stress in the context of COVID-19 across different cultures. These findings have important implications for developing and validating measures to assess psychological distress in different cultural contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numbers and languages are present around the world. While mathematics is deemed as universal, communities around the world have developed mathematical practices that align with their specific context and needs. Rooted in an Indigenous epistemological framework, this manuscript presents a dialogue among four co-researchers and teachers retelling their experiences teaching and learning Mesoamerican numbers in both monolingual (Spanish) and bilingual (Ixil and Spanish) contexts. With a strong desire to learn about and reconnect with the forces of Indigenous mathematical thought and language that move within the teaching and learning of these numbers, the authors collectively reflected on their "tellings" of prior work. It is worthy of note that these reflections on teaching and learning processes of naming Mesoamerican numbers, their symbols, and numerical values help realize that these concepts are more fully animated when presented in contexts that are onto-epistemologically relevant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Delirium is a sudden mental state that causes confusion and disorientation, affecting a person's ability to think and remember clearly. Virtual assistants are a promising alternative for non-pharmacological interventions. This research aims to present a prototype of ADELA, a conversational assistant to prevent delirium in hospitalized older persons who speak Spanish. A co-creation process with medical experts to identify requirements was carried out to later develop the assistant iteratively and evaluate it from a technical and usability perspectives; the latest using the Spanish version of the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the Chatbot Usability Questionnaire (CUQ), supplemented by qualitative data. Mean values of 75.5 and 85.94 were obtained for SUS and CUQ, respectively. The technical evaluation helped defining the minimum environmental specifications required for deployment. Obtained results imply the assistant is usable and potentially accepted by the target population; useful information was extracted for refinement. Technical evaluation showed positive results, indicating it can be used in a real clinical environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Power dynamics are fundamental when negotiating conflicts. However, no instrument for measuring power in romantic relationships has been adequately adapted to Spanish culture. The goal of this research was to adapt the Relationship Power Inventory (RPI; Farrell et al., 2015) to Spanish culture and language, filling this gap by providing a rigorous instrument for evaluating this construct. Study 1 was conducted to obtain evidence based on Spanish adaptation of RPI content. Once the Spanish adaptation of the RPI was built and we obtained validity evidence based on the test content, in Study 2, the scale was administered to two different samples of the adult population following a cross-validation approach. Specifically, in Sample 1 (N = 400), the training sample, a statistical analysis and an exploration of the dimensional structure and reliability of the measure were carried out. In Sample 2 (N = 755), the validation sample, the internal structure of the scale was confirmed, and evidence of external validity and generalization was obtained. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit for the four-factor structure. These dimensions were invariant to gender and had adequate validity based on their relationship with other variables (dependence on the partner, conflict-resolution strategies, and psychological well-being). In sum, the Spanish version of the RPI (SARPI) is a reliable instrument with sufficient valid evidence to provide accurate measurement of power differences in the context of romantic relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parenting interventions for parents and children facing risks associated with poverty have significant effects on children's social-emotional, behavioral and academic functioning, but they are threatened by low engagement, especially among families from underrepresented groups. The purpose of this study was to understand ways to enhance engagement in parenting programs among families in Head Start who are Spanish-Speaking in the United States. We used a conjoint analysis technique, namely a discrete choice experiment (DCE) (N = 73, 94% mothers, 31% single parents), to examine how Head Start parents who were Spanish-speaking prioritized key attributes of parenting programs when considering potential participation. Utility values and importance scores indicate that parents placed the highest priority on a program that optimized children's friendship skills, academics, the parent-child relationship and behavioral skills (rather than on incentives and the inclusion of child groups). Next, we used simulations or forecasting tools to estimate parents' preferences for types of programs. Seventy-three percent of parents preferred Outcome-focused Programs that fostered parents' understanding and practice of skills, whereas 27% prioritized Enhanced Support Programs offering logistic support, followed by child outcomes. Results from multivariate analyses of variance showed that parents preferring Outcome-focused Programs reported lower levels of children's mental health problems and higher child prosocial behaviors compared to parents preferring Enhanced Support Programs. MANOVAS and chi square analyses showed that the latter parents were more likely to have dropped out of a previous parenting program, less likely to have completed high school, reported higher levels of children's mental health problems, and/or reported fewer children's prosocial behaviors. Findings suggest ways to enhance accessibility and program reach, especially for families living in poverty speaking Spanish. Highlights: Parents most preferred programs that would optimize friendships and academics. Parents preferring Outcome-focused Programs reported lower child mental health problems and higher prosocial problems. Parents preferring Enhanced-Support Programs reported more child mental health problems and fewer prosocial behaviors. Programs that aim to optimize friendships and academics and/or provide logistical supports might enhance parents' uptake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hispanic adults with skin cancer are known to exhibit worsened outcomes compared to their counterparts. To critically evaluate the literature on methods to educate Spanish-speaking patients on sun safety and skin cancer, we conducted a systematic review of PubMed, SCOPUS, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Central Register databases from inception through December 18, 2021. Evidence quality was assessed using criteria from the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. A total of 1014 articles were identified and 10 articles using Spanish language materials for community dermatology education were included for review. Seven studies were interventional: four studies were community-based healthcare worker interventions, and three were video-based interventions. Two studies were patient survey studies on skin-related health literacy and the readability of patient resources. One was an online readability study. Our findings show that there is a need for an increased number of materials to educate Spanish-speaking patients about sun safety and skin cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evolution of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has changed the way we communicate. Access to the Internet and social networks has even changed the way we organise ourselves socially. Despite advances in this field, research on the use of social networks in political discourse and citizens' perceptions of public policy remains scarce. So, the empirical study of politicians' discourse on social networks in relation to citizens' perception of public and fiscal policies according to their political affinity is of particular interest. The aim of the research is, therefore, to analyse positioning, from a dual perspective. Firstly, the study analyses the positioning in the discourse of the communication campaigns posted on social networks of Spain's most prominent politicians. And secondly, it evaluates whether this positioning is reflected in citizens' opinions about the public and fiscal policies being implemented in Spain. To this end, a qualitative semantic analysis and a positioning map is performed on a total of 1553 tweets published between 1 June and 31 July 2021 by the leaders of the top ten Spanish political parties. In parallel, a cross-sectional quantitative analysis is carried out, also through positioning analysis, based on the database of the Public Opinion and Fiscal Policy Survey of July 2021 by the Sociological Research Centre (CIS), whose sample is 2849 Spanish citizens. The results show a significant difference in the discourse of political leaders' social network posts—which is more pronounced between right-wing and left-wing parties—and only some differences in citizens' perception of public policies according to their political affinity. This work contributes to identifying the differentiation and positioning of the main parties and helps to guide the discourse of their posts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parents of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) express concern about raising their children bilingually, and often hear advice from professionals against the use of bilingualism. The current study examined the relation between bilingualism and the language and social communication skills of toddlers diagnosed with ASD (N = 353) in the US, while controlling for socioeconomic risk factors. Structural equation modeling showed no differences in language skills between bilingual Spanish–English speaking children and monolingual English-speaking (p =.596) or monolingual Spanish-speaking (p =.963) children and showed a bilingual advantage on socialization skills when comparing bilingual and monolingual English-speaking children (p =.001). Parents of autistic children exposed to Spanish and English should be encouraged to raise their child bilingually if it best suits familial needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of social networks has allowed misogynistic, xenophobic, and homophobic people to spread their hate-speech to intimidate individuals or groups because of their gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. The consequences of hate-speech are devastating, causing severe depression and even leading people to commit suicide. Hate-speech identification is challenging as the large amount of daily publications makes it impossible to review every comment by hand. Moreover, hate-speech is also spread by hoaxes that requires language and context understanding. With the aim of reducing the number of comments that should be reviewed by experts, or even for the development of autonomous systems, the automatic identification of hate-speech has gained academic relevance. However, the reliability of automatic approaches is still limited specifically in languages other than English, in which some of the state-of-the-art techniques have not been analyzed in detail. In this work, we examine which features are most effective in identifying hate-speech in Spanish and how these features can be combined to develop more accurate systems. In addition, we characterize the language present in each type of hate-speech by means of explainable linguistic features and compare our results with state-of-the-art approaches. Our research indicates that combining linguistic features and transformers by means of knowledge integration outperforms current solutions regarding hate-speech identification in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of a Tier 2 intervention within the context of the Response to Intervention (RtI) model implemented by Spanish first- to second-grade primary school teachers to improve at-risk students' transcription skills. Teachers were instructed in the administration of a writing curriculum-based measure composed of 5 isolates measures (allographs, dictated words with arbitrary spelling or non-ruled, dictated words with rule-based spelling, dictated nonsense words, and dictated sentences) to identify at-risk students and to monitor their progress; and in the implementation of a systematic and explicit instructional program to improve transcription skills in at-risk students. A total of 164 at-risk students from 12 schools from the Canary Islands participated in the study. Teachers were provided with a support system that included a web-based training program for writing. Implementation fidelity was analyzed using direct observations and self-reports. All students were assessed three times during the academic year. In a hierarchical linear growth modeling procedure, differences in growth rates of transcription skills were compared between students who received the intervention, those who did not, and their typically achieving peers. Additionally, the effects of the intervention in the experimental at-risk group were also analyzed, differentiating between those who left the risk status and those who remained at-risk. Children at-risk in the intervention condition appeared to benefit more in handwriting skills than at-risk children in the control condition, but to a lesser extent in spelling accuracy. Nevertheless, improvements in both transcription skills had only been made in the experimental risk group that had left the risk situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author profiling (AP) is a highly relevant natural language processing (NLP) problem; it deals with predicting features of authors such as gender, age and personality traits. It is done by analyzing texts written by the authors themselves; take for instance documents such as books, articles, and more recently posts in social media platforms. In the present study, we focus in the latter, which is an scenario with a number of applications in marketing, security, health and others. Surprisingly, given the achievements of deep learning (DL) strategies on other NLP tasks, for AP DL architectures regularly underperform, left behind by classical machine learning (ML) approaches. In this study we show how a deep learning architecture based on transformers offers competitive results by exploiting a joint-intermediate fusion strategy called the Wide & Deep Transformer (WD-T). Our methodology implements a fusion of contextualized word vector representations and handcrafted features, by using a self-attention mechanism and a novel encoding technique that incorporates stylistic, topic, and personal information from authors. This allows for the creation of more accurate, fine-grained predictions. Our approach attained competitive performance against top-quartile results from the 2017–2019 editions at the Plagiarism analysis, Authorship identification, and Near-duplicate detection forum (PAN) in English and Spanish languages for gender and language variety predictions, and the Kaggle Myers–Briggs-type indicator (MBTI) dataset for personality forecasting. Our proposal consistently surpasses all other deep learning methods in PAN collections by as much as 2.4%, and up to 3.4% in the MBTI dataset. These results suggest that this DL strategy effectively addresses and improves upon the limitations of previous techniques and paves the way for new avenues of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To assess—from a qualitative perspective—the perceptions and attitudes of Spanish rehabilitation professionals (e.g. rehabilitation doctors, speech therapists, physical therapists) about Brain–Computer Interface (BCI) technology. A qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study was carried out by means of interviews and analysis of textual content with mixed generation of categories and segmentation into frequency of topics. We present the results of three in-depth interviews that were conducted with Spanish speaking individuals who had previously completed a survey as part of a larger, 3-country/language, survey on BCI perceptions. 11 out of 15 of these Spanish respondents (survey) either strongly or somewhat accept the use of BCI in rehabilitation therapy. However, the results of our three in-depth interviews show how, due to a strong inertia of attitudes and perceptions about BCI technology, most professionals feel reluctant to use BCI technology in their daily practice (interview). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the impact of certain cognitive processes on word and pseudoword reading in languages with different orthographic consistency (Spanish and Arabic) in the first year of Primary Education. The study was conducted with a group of 113 pupils from Algeria and another group of 128 pupils from Ecuador, from a middle-class background and without any special education needs. The participants were assessed in terms of their reading ability of words and pseudowords, knowledge of letters, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and phonological memory. Using a correlational design, descriptive-exploratory, bivariate, and hierarchical multivariate regressions were applied to the different measures of reading in each language. The findings show that knowledge of letters, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and phonological memory contribute differently to the explanation of reading ability in each group at the start of compulsory schooling. These results have important implications for the teaching of reading skills and the prevention of specific learning disabilities, as well as the theory of reading acquisition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Hearing handicap inventory for adult- screening version (HHIA-S) is one of the widely used questionnaire for assessing hearing handicap among adult population over the short period of time. This questionnaire has been translated in many languages worldwide including Indian, Sweden, and Spanish. However, there is lack of such questionnaire in Nepali language. Hence, this study is aimed at developing and standardizing the HHIA-S questionnaire in Nepali language. The English version of the HHIA-S was translated to the Nepali language using the translation-back-translation method. Further, it was given to 10 native Nepali speakers for content validation. The final HHIA-S Nepali version was then administered to 70 normal native Nepali speakers and 50 hearing impaired Nepali speaker. The responses were analyzed, and Cronbach's alpha was calculated to measure the internal consistency of the questionnaire. Results showed that the HHIA-S Nepali version has a Cronbach's alpha score of 0.94 for normal hearing group and 0.93 for hearing impaired group, which is considered good reliability. The HHIA-S Nepali version developed in this study is found to be valid and reliable. Hence, it can be used as a screening tool for assessing hearing handicap among Nepali population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have been carried out in various languages to explore the role of the main psycholinguistic variables in word naming, mainly in nouns. However, reading of verbs has not been explored to the same extent, despite the differences that have been found between the processing of nouns and verbs. To reduce this research gap, we present here SpaVerb-WN, a megastudy of word naming in Spanish, with response times (RT) for 4562 verbs. RT were obtained from at least 20 healthy adult participants in a reading-aloud task. Several research questions on the role of syllable frequency, word length, neighbourhood, frequency, age of acquisition (AoA), and the novel variable 'motor content' in verb naming were also examined. Linear mixed-effects model analyses indicated that (1) RT increase in with increasing word length and with decreasing neighbourhood size, (2) syllable frequency does not show a significant effect on RT, (3) AoA mediates the effect of motor content, with a positive slope of motor content at low AoA scores and a negative slope at high AoA scores, and (4) there is an interaction between word frequency and AoA, in which the AoA effect for low-frequency verbs gradually decreases as frequency increases. The results are discussed in relation to existing evidence and in the context of the consistency of the spelling–sound mappings in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conducting a functional analysis is the "gold standard" of behavior assessment with best practices recommending identification of idiosyncratic variables as essential to valid results. One potential variable that might impact assessment results is language of assessment. For individuals who operate in environments with multiple languages (e.g., English and Spanish), the language of assessment might differentially impact assessment results. Therefore, there is a need to evaluate if language of assessment affects identified function. The current study presents the results of 10 cases in which the experimenters conducted assessments (i.e., functional analysis) in both the Spanish and English language. Participants were nine children with autism who engaged in problem behavior and whose parents reported Spanish as the primary home language. Result indicates correspondence of function for eight of the ten cases. Discussion of results and recommendations for practice and future research are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Affective Norms for English Words (ANEW) are a set of normative emotional ratings for verbal stimuli that have been adapted to many different languages. This article presents the 1034 ANEW words adapted into Rioplatense Spanish, a regional variation of Spanish used in Latin America. A total of 483 volunteers rated three affective (valence, arousal, dominance) and three semantic variables (familiarity, imageability, concreteness). Several objective variables, such as frequency, number of letters, syllable length, and grammatical class were also included. The results showed the typical U-shaped distribution along valence and arousal, as well as strong correlations with other ANEW adaptations. Furthermore, our sample was compared with the European Spanish sample and the original US sample and differences between languages and regional variations were found, stressing the need for culturally-specific resources for experimental research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research presented here is founded on the Big Five trait approach to personality which has been shown to be related to academic success, students' academic confidence or self-efficacy and the emotions related to academic achievement.To explore whether Personality characteristics would be differentially associated with Academic Confidence and both would jointly predict Academic Emotions.A bespoke online platform was used to survey undergraduate students in two Spanish universities. The data was used to assess bivariate correlation and to build Structural Equation Models.A total of 1398 undergraduate students studying Psychology, Primary Education, or Educational Psychology degree programmes completed the validated Spanish version of the Academic Behavioural Confidence scale. Of those, 636 also completed a validated Spanish language scale to assess Personality along the Big Five dimensions and 551 of the 1398 students complete a validated Spanish language scale to assess Academic Emotions. A total of 527 students completed all three scales.The correlations showed that the student Personality traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreeableness were significantly and positively related to their Academic Confidence whilst Neuroticism was negatively correlated with the degree of Academic Confidence. Similarly student Academic Confidence correlated positively with positive Academic Emotions and negatively with negative Academic Emotions. Structural Equation Modelling resulted in a model of excellent fit that linked the personality traits of Conscientiousness and Neuroticism with overall Academic Confidence and Academic Emotion scores. The methodological issues around the findings along with the implications for undergraduate learning and teaching are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is growing concern about the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on radiology and the future of the profession. The aim of this study is to evaluate general knowledge and concerns about trends on imaging informatics among radiologists working in Spain (residents and attending physicians). For this purpose, an online survey among radiologists working in Spain was conducted with questions related to: knowledge about terminology and technologies, need for a regulated academic training on AI and concerns about the implications of the use of these technologies. Results: A total of 223 radiologists answered the survey, of whom 76.7% were attending physicians and 23.3% residents. General terms such as AI and algorithm had been heard of or read in at least 75.8% and 57.4% of the cases, respectively, while more specific terms were scarcely known. All the respondents consider that they should pursue academic training in medical informatics and new technologies, and 92.9% of them reckon this preparation should be incorporated in the training program of the specialty. Patient safety was found to be the main concern for 54.2% of the respondents. Job loss was not seen as a peril by 45.7% of the participants. Conclusions: Although there is a lack of knowledge about AI among Spanish radiologists, there is a will to explore such topics and a general belief that radiologists should be trained in these matters. Based on the results, a consensus is needed to change the current training curriculum to better prepare future radiologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there is increasing global attention to data privacy, most of their current theoretical understanding is based on research conducted in a few countries. Prior work argues that people's cultural backgrounds might shape their privacy concerns; thus, we could expect people from different world regions to conceptualize them in diverse ways. We collected and analyzed a large-scale dataset of tweets about the #CambridgeAnalytica scandal in Spanish and English to start exploring this hypothesis. We employed word embeddings and qualitative analysis to identify which information privacy concerns are present and characterize language and regional differences in emphasis on these concerns. Our results suggest that related concepts, such as regulations, can be added to current information privacy frameworks. We also observe a greater emphasis on data collection in English than in Spanish. Additionally, data from North America exhibits a narrower focus on awareness compared to other regions under study. Our results call for more diverse sources of data and nuanced analysis of data privacy concerns around the globe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teamwork skills are considered essential for personal, academic and professional achievement, so universities are increasingly integrating them into their syllabuses. However, little is known about how some specific features of students and their educational development can affect their acquisition. Accordingly, this study aims to fill this gap and describe higher education students' mastery of teamwork skills and its relation to certain socio-academic variables (gender, academic year and grade point average—GPA). With the aim of determining the level of teamwork skills among university students, an observational, transversal descriptive study was designed with an intentional sample of Spanish university students. The sample is made up of 615 social science degree students. The results suggest significant gender differences, highlighting that female students outdid their male counterparts in most teamwork skills, except leadership. Likewise, students' skills improved as they progressed in their studies, particularly those skills related to adaptability and decision-making. Finally, a positive relationship was observed between teamwork skills and GPA, except for interpersonal development. A regression analysis confirmed the influence of both academic year and GPA for women whilst no effect was detected in the case of men. Based on these results, it is suggested to make changes in university education programmes to compensate for the influence of socio-academic factors and benefit from the most positive features of each gender regarding teamwork to achieve an equal and fair higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to refer in any language, speakers must choose between explicit forms of expression, such as names or descriptions, or more ambiguous forms like pronouns. Current models suggest that reference form is driven by subjecthood, where speakers in English choose pronouns for the subject, and speakers of null pronoun languages like Spanish or Italian use null pronouns. We test this generalization by examining the effect of a different factor, thematic role predictability, on reference production in Spanish. In stories about transfer events (e.g., Ana gave a ball to Liz), speakers prefer to use pronouns more for reference to goals (Liz) than sources (Rosa and Arnold, Journal of Memory and Language 94:43–60, 2017). However, this has not been examined for null pronoun languages. In two experiments, we demonstrate that Spanish speakers are also sensitive to thematic role, but it primarily affects the rate of overt pronouns (ella, el) rather than null pronouns. These results highlight the need to include semantic constraints in models of reference production for null-pronoun languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Individuals with obesity frequently regain weigh after endoscopic bariatric therapies (EBT) unless they adhere to healthy habits. The objective was to create and validate a short, self-administered questionnaire (EMOVE) to assess healthy dietary and physical activity (PA) habits' adherence to be used in clinical practice. Materials and Methods: In this prospective, unicentric study, 463 patients completed the short, Spanish EMOVE questionnaire, to be validated following the Medical Outcome Trust Criteria. Conceptual and measurement model, reliability (internal consistency and test–retest [subgroup of 93 patients]), construct validity, responsiveness, interpretability, and burden were evaluated. Patients enrolled from January 2017 through August 2018 and auto-filled the EMOVE at baseline and at 3, 6, and 12 months. Results: Patients submitted to intragastric ballon for 6 and 12 months or POSE were 82.7% women with a mean age of 42.7 years, and a mean BMI of 37.1 kg/m2. Four factors were extracted with exploratory factor analysis related to intake frequency, portions and proportions, time and place of eating, and physical activity. EMOVE showed adequate internal consistency (α = 0.73), very good test–retest (r = 0.91, CI: 0.86–0.94; p < 0.001), moderate construct validity of dietary (r = 0.24, CI: 0.11–0.37, p < 0.001), and PA habits (r = 0.44, CI 0.30–0.58; p < 0.001). Stable responsiveness, with correlations from 0.29 to 0.39 (p < 0.001) between the EMOVE scores and the % of total weight loss at 3, 6, and 12 months. Participants categorized as having good or excellent habits (score ≥ 30 points) lost significantly more weight (p < 0.05). Finally, the administration burden was 2.96 min. Conclusion: The EMOVE is a useful tool in Spanish language to easily assess the level of adherence to healthy dietary and PA habits to be used routinely in clinical practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]