1,513,316 research outputs found

    Between Reading Time and Information Structure

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    Using measures of reading time regularity (RTR) to quantify eye movement dynamics, and how they are shaped by linguistic information

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    In this article, we present the concept of reading time regularity (RTR) as a measure to capture reading process dynamics. The first study is concerned with examining one of the assumptions of RTR, namely, that process measures of reading, such as eye movement fluctuations and fixation durations, exhibit higher regularity when contingent on sequentially structured information, such as texts. To test this, eye movements of 26 German native speakers were recorded during reading-unrelated and reading-related tasks. To analyze the data, we used recurrence quantification analysis and sample entropy analysis to quantify the degree of temporal structure in time series of gaze steps and fixation durations. The results showed that eye movements become more regular in reading compared to nonreading conditions. These effects were most prominent when calculated on the basis of gaze step data. In a second study, eye movements of 27 native speakers of German were recorded for five conditions with increasing linguistic information. The results replicate the findings of the first study, verifying that these effects are not due to mere differences in task instructions between conditions. Implications for the concept of RTR and for future studies using these metrics in reading research are discussed

    Searching for behavioral correlates of text complexity in reading

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    Research on reading attempts to encompass the connection between linguistic proprieties of the reading materials and the cognitive processes for written language processing. Following studies on reading comprehension and fluency using either silent or oral reading, we are now deepening the relation between behavioral outputs – eye movements and prosody - collected in a reading aloud task. We conducted an experiment where 17 adult native speakers of European Portuguese were instructed to read aloud two texts. We put the hypothesis that there will be a strong connection between text complexity, integrative processes and eyes and vocal behavior. To verify the effect of reading complexity, we prepared two passages representing two poles in a scale of complexity. The texts differ in theme and vocabulary, concerning topic familiarity and word frequency, being alike in syntactic and informational structures. Eye movements were registered with an SMI IVIEW X™ HI-SPEED system, and reading speech was recorded with a Logitech® Webcam Pro 9000. First fixation, first pass and total reading time (for eye movement’s analysis), and vowel stressed duration (VSD) and F0 (for prosody analysis) were taken from two critical loci: words in a syntactic boundary (right edge of the clause) and informational boundary (before a period). Results show significant wrap-up effects in information boundaries either in an increase of first pass and total reading times, as in VSD in the most complex text. We observed eye-voice span effects triggered by words of low frequency, longer size or more complex phonological structure in both texts.info:eu-repo/semantics/draf

    Effective AMI System Based On Multi-Channel Cluster

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    Recently, high-efficient, next-generation infrastructure system using information communication technology is increasingly required to overcome limitation of water resource management, and Smart Water Grid is being developed to resolve imbalance by effectively allocating, managing and carrying water resources. Therefore, the article aims to enhance efficiency of management through physical, logical consumer channel clustering and reliability on metering reading data, and achieve expandability of wireless metering reading network through channel use that can be identified between proximate clusters, by suggesting channel set-up based on multichannel cluster mixed with network channel and group channel to resolve the problems stated above and implement various services. Further, this paper aims to reduce installment time and maintenance repair cost through hierarchical network structure composed with four differentiated devices in wireless AMR systems, and suggest wireless AMR network based on multichannel cluster substantializing various services by supporting various operation modes through quick error recovery and back up functions

    Student reading lists: evaluating the student experience at the University of Huddersfield

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    Purpose: To evaluate the bespoke Resource List Management System (MyReading) at the University of Huddersfield. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was designed to assess student use of MyReading and their views on potential improvements. The survey used closed questions designed to obtain quantitative data. Thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data obtained from open questions to obtain. Findings: The paper supports findings of another recent study which found that reading lists are perceived as more important by students than by lecturers. A variety of positive and negative themes emerged which pointed to this conclusion. Positive themes were: the perceived helpfulness of reading lists; students' view of MyReading as a starting point for independent further reading; ease of use of MyReading and the time saving afforded to students; the value students place on their reading lists as being "quality assured" by lecturers. Negative themes were: inconsistency in the length and structure of lists; concerns that some lists are not regularly updated; lack of awareness of functionality revealing training needs for students and lecturers; suggestions for future enhancements to MyReading. Another finding from the quantitative data is a clear link between low use of reading lists by students in certain Schools and low use of other library resources. Practical implication: The research provides guidance to universities regarding future development of Resource List Management Systems and promotional and training needs. Originality/value: The study adds rich information to the existing body of qualitative research on students' perceptions of their reading lists

    The conscious awareness and underlying representation of syllabic stress in skilled adult readers and adults with developmental dyslexia

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    The relationship between phonemic awareness and literacy ability is well established in the developmental and adult reading literatures. Recent research indicates that awareness of the rhythmic patterns present in spoken language (i.e. prosody) may also be an important predictor of reading ability. Researchers have demonstrated that sensitivity to speech prosody can facilitate speech segmentation and the development of phoneme awareness. Awareness of the rhythmic patterns in spoken words and phrases is also known to play a direct role in phonological decoding, reading comprehension and learning to use punctuation. These findings have the potential to enhance our understanding of typical reading development and inform theories of how poor phonological and auditory skills contribute to dyslexia. This research also helps extend our knowledge of skilled and impaired reading to a wider range of reading materials (e.g. multisyllabic words) and thus raises issues relevant to cognitive models of visual word recognition. A small number of studies have demonstrated that sensitivity to the prosodic patterns in spoken language is reduced in children with dyslexia. However, there is currently no published research investigating the prosodic processing skills of adults with dyslexia. The precise nature of the prosodic processing deficit associated with dyslexia is also unclear. These gaps in the literature are problematic because phonological processing is multifaceted and the relationship between specific phonological skills and reading ability may change over time. This thesis presents four cross sectional studies in which adults with dyslexia were compared with control participants matched for age and IQ on various tasks designed to measure prosodic processing. The experiments also contrast the conscious awareness of prosodic structure with the underlying representation of syllabic stress assignment in the mental lexicon and the ability to acquire spelling-sound correspondences for decoding stress assignment in multisyllabic words. Participants with dyslexia showed reduced awareness of lexical and metrical prosody and these skills were found to be significantly associated with, and predictive of, phoneme awareness and phonological decoding ability (Experiments 1a and 2). In contrast, adults with dyslexia showed normal patterns of stress based priming at magnitudes similar to controls (Experiments 1b and 2). Similar, although somewhat weaker results were also obtained when lexical stress was primed with abstract stress templates rather than real-word stimuli (Experiment 3). Participants with dyslexia also showed normal effects of spelling-stress congruency on lexical decision times for disyllabic words (Experiment 4). The overall pattern of results strongly suggests that the prosodic processing problems associated with dyslexia in adulthood are limited to tasks requiring participants to access and consciously reflect upon their knowledge of prosodic structure, or to process information related to prosodic structure in an abstract way. In contrast, the ability of adults with dyslexia to represent lexical stress assignment in the mental lexicon, assemble novel prosodic representations, and learn correspondences between lexical stress assignment and aspects of orthographic structure appears to be intact. Encouragingly, this pattern of results is consistent with recent findings reported in the domain of phonemic processing

    The Absolutely Relevant Remedy for Part-time Readers: Pairing Classic and YA Literature

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    Overview: During seventh and eighth grade, I read seventy-six young adult novels aside from required reading, with book logs from middle school to prove it. But, ask me what I enjoyed reading in high school, and I would have to think for a while. High school curricula forced me to read Shakespeare and classic novels without a hint of modern young adult literature involved. Not only did the uninteresting and outdated novels make classroom reading and assignments excruciating, but the distance between my life and the books that I was required to read discouraged my willingness to read much more. Barbara G. Samuels, a professor at the University of Houston, reports in her article, “Young Adult Literature: Young Adult Novels in the Classroom?” that, based on a 1975 study of English classrooms, the most commonly used novels were A Separate Peace, The Scarlet Letter, Lord of the Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird (86). Now, these titles are from 1975, but they were the staples of my English curricula from 2010 to 2014. Thirty-five years later, I was a student sitting in a classroom still reading, analyzing, testing, and writing essays on the same old characters, the now historical context, and the unfamiliar language and syntax that required decoding. As Junior from Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian would say, “I couldn’t believe it. How horrible is that?” (31). I still can’t believe it, it’s still horrible, and I’m still not much of a reader. Author\u27s Reflection: My name is Claire Sauter and I am a Media Management major with an Ethics minor at St. John Fisher College. I am also a Service Scholar, the marketing chair for Students Who Advocate Volunteering (SWAV) club, a Peer Colleague for an English 101 course, and a member of the Teddi Dance for Love committee. I grew up in the small town of Carthage, NY, but my family is moving to the Adirondacks in the coming year. Professor Barry began the Young Adult Literature RW course by asking the class questions about our favorite books, discussing novels we read in middle school and high school, and helping us to define YAL. I found that one of my challenges was shared among other students in my class – the high school English curricula did not help to inspire reading outside of school work. Turning my experience into a thesis, I argued that integrating modern and relevant young adult novels into the instruction of the English canon may help students continue to read for pleasure or curiosity even after their class is over. Developing the structure of this argument and balancing it with examples was difficult. However, the 199 course emphasized different outlining processes that greatly helped me and my peers. The freedom of the course allowed me to practice different writing styles, which is something that I never thought would be flexible within research writing. I enjoyed taking a risk and creating a conversation between characters within The Absolutely True Diary of Part-Time Indian and my own voice. The 199 Research Writing course is integral to a college student’s development of writing skills. As part of the Fisher Core goals, the course has taught me how to develop an argument, navigate libraries and databases for relevant research, read critically for quality information, and compose long-form pieces of writing. Each skill is applicable to all educational programs at St. John Fisher and has helped me to analyze readings and write for classes ranging from Ethics and Multimedia Writing to Public Relations and Business Communications. Mrs. Barry\u27s Summary: Claire came into my class with the skills of a good writer. What this class enabled her to do was couple those skills with her research skills to produce a writing that is not only worthy of 3690 but worthy of the attention of high school English teachers struggling to get their students to read the Classics. As far as my role in her writing, it was more of a conversation about her paper - where she wanted to go with it, how she went with it and what she might need to do more to make her argument solid. These conversations could be compared to what an editor might do with any good writer because Claire, herself, edited, re-edited and edited her work again before even coming to see me. So, in our meetings, we actually talked. It was truly a pleasure “talking” with Claire

    Structure SNP (StSNP): a web server for mapping and modeling nsSNPs on protein structures with linkage to metabolic pathways

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    SNPs located within the open reading frame of a gene that result in an alteration in the amino acid sequence of the encoded protein [nonsynonymous SNPs (nsSNPs)] might directly or indirectly affect functionality of the protein, alone or in the interactions in a multi-protein complex, by increasing/decreasing the activity of the metabolic pathway. Understanding the functional consequences of such changes and drawing conclusions about the molecular basis of diseases, involves integrating information from multiple heterogeneous sources including sequence, structure data and pathway relations between proteins. The data from NCBI's SNP database (dbSNP), gene and protein databases from Entrez, protein structures from the PDB and pathway information from KEGG have all been cross referenced into the StSNP web server, in an effort to provide combined integrated, reports about nsSNPs. StSNP provides ‘on the fly’ comparative modeling of nsSNPs with links to metabolic pathway information, along with real-time visual comparative analysis of the modeled structures using the Friend software application. The use of metabolic pathways in StSNP allows a researcher to examine possible disease-related pathways associated with a particular nsSNP(s), and link the diseases with the current available molecular structure data. The server is publicly available at http://glinka.bio.neu.edu/StSNP/

    Second Language Sentence Processing: Is it fundamentally different?

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    In this dissertation, the main assumptions in the Shallow Structure Hypothesis, developed by Clahsen & Felser (2006), are evaluated to determine whether the performance of second language (L2) learners when parsing sentences in the target language is fundamentally different. First, the claim that L2 learners do not employ phrase structure heuristics is assessed with stimuli made up of transitively- and intransitively-biased verbs followed by a noun phrase (Traxler, 2005). The second claim evaluated is that L2 learners do not use structurally defined gaps. This hypothesis is tested by comparing the learners' reading performance of intermediate gaps, stimuli with garden path effects and genitive nominalizations. The third assumption tested involves the use of configurational (binding) principles (Chomsky, 1981) in the parsing of cataphoric reference. The performance of L2 learners of English from Spanish and Chinese backgrounds is compared to that of native English speakers using the moving window paradigm. The relative influence of WM on the processing of these structures was also measured. Results show that both native and non-native speakers present similar parsing profiles and do make use of parsing heuristics. At the same time, both native speakers and L2 learners present difficulties accessing other kinds of structural information and resort instead to other clues that may render 'good-enough' representations (Ferreira et al., 2002). A pervasive finding as regards the WM capacity in L2 learners is the relationship found between the ability to store words and grammatical proficiency in a version of the reading span task (Daneman & Carpenter, 1980)

    Extracting Tasks from Customize Portal using Natural Language Processing

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    In software documentation, product knowledge and software requirement are very important to improve product quality. Within maintenance stage, reading of whole documentation of large corpus won’t be possible by developers. They need to receive software documentation i.e. (development, designing and testing etc.) in a short period of time. Important documents are able to record in software documentation. There live a space between information which developer wants and software documentation. To solve this problem, an approach for extracting relevant task that is based on heuristically matching the structure of the documentation under three phases of software documentation (i.e. documentation, development and testing) is described. Our main idea is that task is extracted automatically from the software documentation, freeing the developer easily get the required data from software documentation with customize portal using WordNet library and machine learning technique. And then the category of task can be generated easily from existing applications using natural language processing. Our approach use WordNet library to identify relevant tasks for calculating frequency of each word which allows developers in a piece of software to discover the word usage
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