Text Processing Like Humans Do: Visually Attacking and Shielding NLP Systems

Visual modifications to text are often used to obfuscate offensive comments in social media (e.g., "!d10t") or as a writing style ("1337" in "leet speak"), among other scenarios. We consider this as a new type of adversarial attack in NLP, a setting to which humans are very robust, as our experiments with both simple and more difficult visual input perturbations demonstrate. We then investigate the impact of visual adversarial attacks on current NLP systems on character-, word-, and sentence-level tasks, showing that both neural and non-neural models are, in contrast to humans, extremely sensitive to such attacks, suffering performance decreases of up to 82\%. We then explore three shielding methods---visual character embeddings, adversarial training, and rule-based recovery---which substantially improve the robustness of the models. However, the shielding methods still fall behind performances achieved in non-attack scenarios, which demonstrates the difficulty of dealing with visual attacks.Comment: Accepted as long paper at NAACL-2019; fixed one ungrammatical sentenc

A principled approach to the measurement of situation awareness in commercial aviation

The issue of how to support situation awareness among crews of modern commercial aircraft is becoming especially important with the introduction of automation in the form of sophisticated flight management computers and expert systems designed to assist the crew. In this paper, cognitive theories are discussed that have relevance for the definition and measurement of situation awareness. These theories suggest that comprehension of the flow of events is an active process that is limited by the modularity of attention and memory constraints, but can be enhanced by expert knowledge and strategies. Three implications of this perspective for assessing and improving situation awareness are considered: (1) Scenario variations are proposed that tax awareness by placing demands on attention; (2) Experimental tasks and probes are described for assessing the cognitive processes that underlie situation awareness; and (3) The use of computer-based human performance models to augment the measures of situation awareness derived from performance data is explored. Finally, two potential example applications of the proposed assessment techniques are described, one concerning spatial awareness using wide field of view displays and the other emphasizing fault management in aircraft systems

The Effects of Chunk Reading Training on the Syntactic Processing Skills and Reading Spans of Japanese Learners of English

The present study investigated the impact of chunk reading training (CRT) on the online syntactic processing and verbal working memory (WM) of Japanese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners in secondary school. For four weeks, the treatment group (N = 31) underwent CRT, while the control group (N = 25) participated in reading training in block format. A reading span test (RST) was administered as the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest in this study to assess learners’ online syntactic processing and verbal WM. The results showed that syntactic processing and verbal WM increased only in the treatment group after training, but the differences between the two groups were not statistically significant. Nevertheless, these results suggest that CRT has the potential to positively affect the development of learners’ online syntactic processing skills and verbal WM

Measuring programming competence by assessing chunk structures in a code transcription task

In a simple transcription task in which sections of Java program code are copied by freehand writing, it is demonstrated that chunk related temporal signals are sufficiently robust to permit the measurement of programming competence. An experiment with 24 participants revealed that the number of views of the stimulus per trial and the duration of writing per stimulus view are both strongly correlated with independent measures of Java competence

EU accession and Poland's external trade policy

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Obstacles Non-Native English Speakers Experience in Aviation

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are challenges associated with the comprehension of aviation content in the English language for international students in flight training. The researcher conducted a study by interviewing four international students enrolled in flight training at the Bowling Green State University Aviation Studies program utilizing a qualitative and quantitative survey questionnaire. Results revealed that there is a correlation between an international student’s Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) score and the challenges encountered with effective communication. The discussion and subsequent findings revealed connections between ILR scores and perceived student challenges. Additional connections between the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Language Proficiency Requirements and the challenges identified by the international students were confirmed. Limitations included the researcher’s emphasis on qualitative rather than quantitative data affecting perceived objectivity and the small sample size which contributed to the limited responses and representation of demographics. Meaningful connections were revealed by examining the relationship between an international student’s ILR score and the resulting challenges to facilitate effective communication skills

Applying Pause Analysis to Explore Cognitive Processes Occurring During the Copying of Sentences Amongst 6 years old Children in Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar Tasik Puteri

Pause analysis is a method that investigates processes of writing by measuring the amount of time between pen strokes. It provides the field of teaching and learning in the 21st century with insights of the cognitive processes underpinning the nature of writing in children. This study examined the potential of using free handwritten copying of sentences as a means of investigating components of the cognitive processes of children who have English as their Second Language (ESL). An experiment is conducted where 28 children of Sekolah Kebangsaan Bandar Tasik Puteri are asked to copy a sentence in Malay Language and a sentence in English. The handwritten activity is captured to study the pause lengths produced at different forms of chunking sizes (i.e. group of words, words and group of letters). Results are then associated to the Theoretical Model of Copying (MoC) in identifying the possible factors that might affect the chunking sizes. It was found that there is a clear chunk with long pauses that occur at letter level, group of letters and word level. This indicates that there is a possibility of language comprehension processes taking place during the copying of sentences

Knowledge-based control of an adaptive interface

The analysis, development strategy, and preliminary design for an intelligent, adaptive interface is reported. The design philosophy couples knowledge-based system technology with standard human factors approaches to interface development for computer workstations. An expert system has been designed to drive the interface for application software. The intelligent interface will be linked to application packages, one at a time, that are planned for multiple-application workstations aboard Space Station Freedom. Current requirements call for most Space Station activities to be conducted at the workstation consoles. One set of activities will consist of standard data management services (DMS). DMS software includes text processing, spreadsheets, data base management, etc. Text processing was selected for the first intelligent interface prototype because text-processing software can be developed initially as fully functional but limited with a small set of commands. The program's complexity then can be increased incrementally. The intelligent interface includes the operator's behavior and three types of instructions to the underlying application software are included in the rule base. A conventional expert-system inference engine searches the data base for antecedents to rules and sends the consequents of fired rules as commands to the underlying software. Plans for putting the expert system on top of a second application, a database management system, will be carried out following behavioral research on the first application. The intelligent interface design is suitable for use with ground-based workstations now common in government, industrial, and educational organizations

A Task Analysis of Static Binary Reverse Engineering for Security

Software is ubiquitous in society, but understanding it, especially without access to source code, is both non-trivial and critical to security. A specialized group of cyber defenders conducts reverse engineering (RE) to analyze software. The expertise-driven process of software RE is not well understood, especially from the perspective of workflows and automated tools. We conducted a task analysis to explore the cognitive processes that analysts follow when using static techniques on binary code. Experienced analysts were asked to statically find a vulnerability in a small binary that could allow for unverified access to root privileges. Results show a highly iterative process with commonly used cognitive states across participants of varying expertise, but little standardization in process order and structure. A goal-centered analysis offers a different perspective about dominant RE states. We discuss implications about the nature of RE expertise and opportunities for new automation to assist analysts using static techniques

How do teachers teach students with working memory impairments in the regular classroom? A grounded theory approach

This study uses a qualitative, post-positive grounded theory approach to investigate the process of teaching primary students with working memory impairments. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were used to collect data specific to students with WMI from nine primary teachers. After transcript coding and data analysis, themes were extracted from the data. The themes reflect how having a working memory impairment may alter the students’ education. The interacting themes included: learning with a working memory impairment and the characteristics of the student, adaptations made by the teacher including effective teaching strategies , and adaptations made by the students as a result of their self-awareness of their weaknesses. The students were found to be struggling with the academic curriculum in language, reading, and math. Some students also struggled with their behaviour and social abilities. The strategies teachers used to assist their students with learning included: reducing cognitive load by simplifying material, reducing cognitive load by activating prior knowledge, and focusing attention. Additionally, some students used self-strategies to support their own learning. The findings of this study may inform future research particular to this group, including intervention studies. Additionally, the findings offer important information for educators teaching students with similar learning profiles