• Lingua Humanitatis
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• v.7
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• pp.335-353
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• 2005

In recent years there has been much discussion about whether there is a critical, or sensitive period for language acquisition. Research on a critical period provides an excellent example around which we can organize a discussion of the behavioral and neural evidence. In this paper, the early history of critical periods and evidence for the existence of critical periods in various domains of human cognition and learning are reviewed. Followed by this overview, evidence for a critical period in both linguistic and non linguistic area are presented. The paper then provides some unresolved questions regarding a critical period in language acquisition and states what the outcome of this issues mean for an understanding of language acquisition. Finally the paper concludes with some educational implications of a critical period for practice.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.395-408
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• 2015

This study aims to propose a Bayesian approach to consider changes in temperature and vehicle weight as environmental and operational factors for vibration-based long-term bridge health monitoring. The Bayesian approach consists of three steps: step 1 is to identify damage-sensitive features from coefficients of the auto-regressive model utilizing bridge accelerations; step 2 is to perform a regression analysis of the damage-sensitive features to consider environmental and operational changes by means of the Bayesian regression; and step 3 is to make a decision on the bridge health condition based on residuals, differences between the observed and predicted damage-sensitive features, utilizing 95% confidence interval and the Bayesian hypothesis testing. Feasibility of the proposed approach is examined utilizing monitoring data on an in-service bridge recorded over a one-year period. Observations through the study demonstrated that the Bayesian regression considering environmental and operational changes led to more accurate results than that without considering environmental and operational changes. The Bayesian hypothesis testing utilizing data from the healthy bridge, the damage probability of the bridge was judged as no damage.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.6
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• pp.219-239
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• 2000

There has been a growing enthusiasm in Korea for the early education of English as a foreign language (EFL). The present study examined the validity of the Critical Period Hypothesis in terms of the Universal Grammar (UG), in three different types of learning contexts - first language (L1), second language (SL), and foreign language (FL) learning contexts. While previous research findings in L1 and SL learning contexts suggest that UG principles and parameters are accessible to language learners only for the early years of lifetime, this article argues that their results - and even the methods - cannot be applied to EFL settings and that independent studies on the EFL context are, required. It also proposes the recent UG notion of functional categories as the most appropriate subject in the discussion of Korean EFL learners' access to UG. Findings on foreign language contexts, including the author's own, strongly indicate that UG is not sensitive to learners' starting ages in FL settings. If young children in FL contexts cannot develop their interlanguage grammar based on UG, the existing teaching methods for young children should be revised.

• Journal of Plant Biology
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.159-166
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• 1994

Direct current (DC) applied to cotyledons during a 16 h inductive dark period inhibited the flowering in the short-day plant, Pharbitis nil Choisy cv. Violet. The inhibitory effect of DC was more profound when the current flowed from roots to cotyledons, showing its polarity-dependent action. The second half on the inductive dark period was more sensitive to DC stimulus. The flowering was significantly depressed only when DC stimuli were applied to the translocation path of the floral stimulus from the induced cotyledon to the apex, suggesting that the transport of floral stimulus was damaged by the DC treatment. The vegetative apex culture bioassay system showed that a significant level of the floral stimulus activity existed in the phloem exudate from the cotyledons which would fail to form their own floral buds. These results strongly support the hypothesis that DC partially impede, at least temporarily, the transmission path of the floral stimulus from florally-induced cotyledon to the apex, rather than depressing in situ synthesis of the floral stimulus.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.317-326
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• 2010

The preparations for aging society are in progress at various fields while the related businesses are also actively in progress at each part of the society. At the same time, many countries that have entered aging society at an early stage are also solving various problems of the aging society by performing a continuous research on elderly industry. While disapproval could be generally called an emotional attitude formed over a long period of time from experience, how this disapproval is shown in elderly group and general public group has been investigated. Through the research, we could see that disapproval is shown as formative disapproval and semantic disapproval while it could be seen that a more sensitive reaction is shown toward semantic disapproval than formative disapproval in the silver group and people reacted to both semantic disapproval and formative disapproval in the general public group. Using these results, a hypothesis was set up and as a step to verify this hypothesis, an electric wheelchair for elderly to perform verification of the hypothesis. Through this study, we have attempted to present a design development methodology to reduce a sense of disapproval toward elderly group of people and prepare for the aging society to come in the future by setting the design objectives.

• Korea journal of population studies
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.41-53
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• 1986

The purpose of this paper is two-fold. One is to investigate the determinants of the demand supply of labor, and another is to project long-term demand and supply of labor. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, theoretical models and important hypotheses are discussed: for the case of a labor supply model, issues regarding discouraged worker model, permanent wage hypothesis, and relative wage hypothesis are examined and for the case of a demand model, issues regarding estimating an employment demand equation within the framework of an inverted short-run produc- tion function are inspected. Particularly, a theoretical justification for introducing a demographic cohort variable in a labor supply equation is also investigated. In the second part, empirical results of the estimated supply and demand equations are analyzed. Supply equations are specified differently between primary and secondary labor force. That is, for the case of primary labor force groups including males aged 25 and over, attempts are made to explain the variations in participation behavior within the framework of a neo-classical economics oriented permanent wage hypothesis. On the other hand, for the case of females and young male labor force, variations in participation rates are explained in terms of a relative wage hypothesis. In other words, the participation behavior of primary labor force is related to short-rum business fluctuations, while that of secondary labor force is associated with intermediate swings of business cycles and demographic changes in the age structure of population. Some major findings arc summarized as follows. (1) For the case of males aged 14~19 and 2O~24 groups and females aged 14∼19, the effect of schhool enrollment rate is dominant and thus it plays a key role in explaining the recent declining trend of participation rates of these groups. (2) Except for females aged 20∼24, a demographic cohort variable, which captures the impact of changes in the age structure on participation behavior, turns out to show positive and significant coefficients for secondary labor force groups. (3) A cyclical variable produce significant coefficients for prime-age males and females reflecting that as compared to other groups the labor supply behavior of these groups is more closely related to short-run cyclical variations (4) The wage variable, which represents a labor-leisure trade-off turns out to yield significant coefficients only for older age groups (6O and over) for both males and females. This result reveals that unlike the experiences of other higer-income nations, the participation decision of the labor force of our nation is not highly sensitive with respect to wage changes. (5)The estimated result of the employment demand equation displays that given that the level of GNP remains constant the ability of the economy to absord labor force has been declining;that is, the elasticity of GNP with respect to labor absorption decreasre over time. In the third part, the results of long-term projections (for the period of 1986 and 1995) for age-sex specific participation rates are discussed. The participation rate of total males is anticipated to increase slightly, which is contrary to the recent trend of declining participation rates of this group. For the groups aged 25 and below, the participation rates are forecast to decline although the magnitude of decrease is likely to shrink. On the other hand, the participation rate of prime- age males (25 to 59 years old) is predicted to increase slightly during 1985 and 1990. For the case of females, except for 20∼24 and 25∼34 age groups, the participation rates are projected to decrease: the participation rates of 25∼34 age group is likely to remain at its current level, while the participation rate of 20∼24 age group is expected to increase considerably in the future (specifi- cally, from 55% in 1985 to 61% in 1990 and to 69% in 1995). In conclusion, while the number of an excess supply of labor will increase in absolute magnitude, its size as a ratio of total labor force is not likely to increase. However, the age composition of labor force is predicted to change; that is, the proportion of prime-age male and female labor force is projected to increase.

• Journal of Korea Port Economic Association
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.269-282
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• 2009

This study investigates the difference of behavioral patterns between the import container volume of all ports and that of Gwangyang port in Korea. All series span the period January 1999 to December 2008. I first test whether the series are stationary or not. I can reject the null hypothesis of a unit root in each of the level variables and of a unit root for the residuals from the cointegration at the 5 percent significance level. I hitherto make use of variance decompositions and impulse response functions, both of which have now been widely used to examine how much movement in one variable can be explained by innovations in different variables and how rapidly these fluctuations in one variable can be transmitted to another. The variance decompositions for the import container volume show that the proportions of the forecast error variance of import container volumes explained by themselves are 30 and 26 per cent after 12 months, respectively. As a result, innovations in exchange rate and business activity explain 70 and 74 per cent of the variance in the import container volume. All in all, innovation accounting indicates that import container volumes are not exogenous with respect to exchange rate and business activity. The impulse responses indicate that container volumes decrease sharply to the shocks in exchange rate and decay very slowly to its pre-shock level, while container volumes respond positively to the shocks in the business activity and disappear very slowly, showing that the shocks last very long. Furthermore Gwangyang port is more sensitive to the change of the exchange rate and the industrial production than all ports.