Deuce: A Lightweight User Interface for Structured Editing

We present a structure-aware code editor, called Deuce, that is equipped with direct manipulation capabilities for invoking automated program transformations. Compared to traditional refactoring environments, Deuce employs a direct manipulation interface that is tightly integrated within a text-based editing workflow. In particular, Deuce draws (i) clickable widgets atop the source code that allow the user to structurally select the unstructured text for subexpressions and other relevant features, and (ii) a lightweight, interactive menu of potential transformations based on the current selections. We implement and evaluate our design with mostly standard transformations in the context of a small functional programming language. A controlled user study with 21 participants demonstrates that structural selection is preferred to a more traditional text-selection interface and may be faster overall once users gain experience with the tool. These results accord with Deuce's aim to provide human-friendly structural interactions on top of familiar text-based editing.Comment: ICSE 2018 Paper + Supplementary Appendice

What causes the word gap? Financial concerns may systematically suppress child-directed speech

Parents with fewer educational and economic resources (low socioeconomic-status, SES) tend to speak less to their children, with consequences for children’s later life outcomes. Despite this well-established and highly popularized link, surprisingly little research addresses why the SES “word gap” exists. Moreover, existing research focuses on individual-level explanations with little attention to structural constraints with which parents must contend. In two pre-registered studies, we test whether experiencing financial scarcity itself can suppress caregivers’ speech to their children. Study 1 suggests that caregivers who are prompted to reflect on scarcity—particularly those who reflect on financial scarcity—speak to their 3-year-olds less than a control group in a subsequent play session. Study 2 finds that caregivers speak less to their children at the end of the month—when they are more likely to be experiencing financial hardship—than the rest of the month. Thus, above and beyond the individual characteristics of parents, structural constraints may affect how much parents speak to their children

Deliberating stratospheric aerosols for climate geoengineering and the SPICE project

Increasing concerns about the narrowing window for averting dangerous climate change have prompted calls for research into geoengineering, alongside dialogue with the public regarding this as a possible response. We report results of the first public engagement study to explore the ethics and acceptability of stratospheric aerosol technology and a proposed field trial (the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) ‘pipe and balloon’ test bed) of components for an aerosol deployment mechanism. Although almost all of our participants were willing to allow the field trial to proceed, very few were comfortable with using stratospheric aerosols. This Perspective also discusses how these findings were used in a responsible innovation process for the SPICE project initiated by the UK’s research councils

Fluency in dialogue: Turn‐taking behavior shapes perceived fluency in native and nonnative speech

Fluency is an important part of research on second language learning, but most research on language proficiency typically has not included oral fluency as part of interaction, even though natural communication usually occurs in conversations. The present study considered aspects of turn-taking behavior as part of the construct of fluency and investigated whether these aspects differentially influence perceived fluency ratings of native and non-native speech. Results from two experiments using acoustically manipulated speech showed that, in native speech, too ‘eager’ (interrupting a question with a fast answer) and too ‘reluctant’ answers (answering slowly after a long turn gap) negatively affected fluency ratings. However, in non-native speech, only too ‘reluctant’ answers led to lower fluency ratings. Thus, we demonstrate that acoustic properties of dialogue are perceived as part of fluency. By adding to our current understanding of dialogue fluency, these lab-based findings carry implications for language teaching and assessmen

Design of Web Questionnaires: The Effect of Layout in Rating Scales

This article shows that respondents gain meaning from visual cues in a web survey as well as from verbal cues (words).We manipulated the layout of a five point rating scale using verbal, graphical, numerical, and symbolic language. This paper extends the existing literature in four directions: (1) all languages (verbal, graphical, numeric, and symbolic) are individually manipulated on the same rating scale, (2) a heterogeneous sample is used, (3) in which way personal characteristics and a respondent's need to think and evaluate account for variance in survey responding is analyzed, and (4) a web survey is used.Our experiments show differences due to verbal and graphical language but no effects of numeric or symbolic language are found.Respondents with a high need for cognition and a high need to evaluate are affected more by layout than respondents with a low need to think or evaluate.Furthermore, men, the elderly, and the highly educated are the most sensible for layout effects.web survey;questionnaire lay out;context effects;need for cognition;need to evaluate

Measurement in marketing

We distinguish three senses of the concept of measurement (measurement as the selection of observable indicators of theoretical concepts, measurement as the collection of data from respondents, and measurement as the formulation of measurement models linking observable indicators to latent factors representing the theoretical concepts), and we review important issues related to measurement in each of these senses. With regard to measurement in the first sense, we distinguish the steps of construct definition and item generation, and we review scale development efforts reported in three major marketing journals since 2000 to illustrate these steps and derive practical guidelines. With regard to measurement in the second sense, we look at the survey process from the respondent's perspective and discuss the goals that may guide participants' behavior during a survey, the cognitive resources that respondents devote to answering survey questions, and the problems that may occur at the various steps of the survey process. Finally, with regard to measurement in the third sense, we cover both reflective and formative measurement models, and we explain how researchers can assess the quality of measurement in both types of measurement models and how they can ascertain the comparability of measurements across different populations of respondents or conditions of measurement. We also provide a detailed empirical example of measurement analysis for reflective measurement models

Head-mounted spatial instruments II: Synthetic reality or impossible dream

A spatial instrument is defined as a spatial display which has been either geometrically or symbolically enhanced to enable a user to accomplish a particular task. Research conducted over the past several years on 3-D spatial instruments has shown that perspective displays, even when viewed from the correct viewpoint, are subject to systematic viewer biases. These biases interfere with correct spatial judgements of the presented pictorial information. The design of spatial instruments may not only require the introduction of compensatory distortions to remove the naturally occurring biases but also may significantly benefit from the introduction of artificial distortions which enhance performance. However, these image manipulations can cause a loss of visual-vestibular coordination and induce motion sickness. Consequently, the design of head-mounted spatial instruments will require an understanding of the tolerable limits of visual-vestibular discord

Visual world studies of conversational perspective taking: similar findings, diverging interpretations

Visual-world eyetracking greatly expanded the potential for insight into how listeners access and use common ground during situated language comprehension. Past reviews of visual world studies on perspective taking have largely taken the diverging findings of the various studies at face value, and attributed these apparently different findings to differences in the extent to which the paradigms used by different labs afford collaborative interaction. Researchers are asking questions about perspective taking of an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated nature, a clear indicator of progress. But this research has the potential not only to improve our understanding of conversational perspective taking. Grappling with problems of data interpretation in such a complex domain has the unique potential to drive visual world researchers to a deeper understanding of how to best map visual world data onto psycholinguistic theory. I will argue against this interactional affordances explanation, on two counts. First, it implies that interactivity affects the overall ability to form common ground, and thus provides no straightforward explanation of why, within a single noninteractive study, common ground can have very large effects on some aspects of processing (referential anticipation) while having negligible effects on others (lexical processing). Second, and more importantly, the explanation accepts the divergence in published findings at face value. However, a closer look at several key studies shows that the divergences are more likely to reflect inconsistent practices of analysis and interpretation that have been applied to an underlying body of data that is, in fact, surprisingly consistent. The diverging interpretations, I will argue, are the result of differences in the handling of anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs) in the analysis of visual world data. ABEs arise in perspective-taking studies because listeners have earlier access to constraining information about who knows what than they have to referential speech, and thus can already show biases in visual attention even before the processing of any referential speech has begun. To be sure, these ABEs clearly indicate early access to common ground; however, access does not imply integration, since it is possible that this information is not used later to modulate the processing of incoming speech. Failing to account for these biases using statistical or experimental controls leads to over-optimistic assessments of listeners’ ability to integrate this information with incoming speech. I will show that several key studies with varying degrees of interactional affordances all show similar temporal profiles of common ground use during the interpretive process: early anticipatory effects, followed by bottom-up effects of lexical processing that are not modulated by common ground, followed (optionally) by further late effects that are likely to be post-lexical. Furthermore, this temporal profile for common ground radically differs from the profile of contextual effects related to verb semantics. Together, these findings are consistent with the proposal that lexical processes are encapsulated from common ground, but cannot be straightforwardly accounted for by probabilistic constraint-based approaches