Reanalyzing language expectations: Native language knowledge modulates the sensitivity to intervening cues during anticipatory processing

Issue Online:21 September 2018We investigated how native language experience shapes anticipatory language processing. Two groups of bilinguals (either Spanish or Basque natives) performed a word matching task (WordMT) and a picture matching task (PictureMT). They indicated whether the stimuli they visually perceived matched with the noun they heard. Spanish noun endings were either diagnostic of the gender (transparent) or ambiguous (opaque). ERPs were time-locked to an intervening gender-marked determiner preceding the predicted noun. The determiner always gender agreed with the following noun but could also introduce a mismatching noun, so that it was not fully task diagnostic. Evoked brain activity time-locked to the determiner was considered as reflecting updating/reanalysis of the task-relevant preactivated representation. We focused on the timing of this effect by estimating the comparison between a gender-congruent and a gender-incongruent determiner. In the WordMT, both groups showed a late N400 effect. Crucially, only Basque natives displayed an earlier P200 effect for determiners preceding transparent nouns. In the PictureMT, both groups showed an early P200 effect for determiners preceding opaque nouns. The determiners of transparent nouns triggered a negative effect at similar to 430 ms in Spanish natives, but at similar to 550 ms in Basque natives. This pattern of results supports a "retracing hypothesis" according to which the neurocognitive system navigates through the intermediate (sublexical and lexical) linguistic representations available from previous processing to evaluate the need of an update in the linguistic expectation concerning a target lexical item.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO), Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI), Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) (grant PSI2015‐65694‐P to N. M.), Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centres/Units of Excellence in R&D (grant SEV‐2015‐490

Comprehensibility of UML-based Formal Model – A Series of Controlled Experiments

This paper summarises two controlled experiments conducted on a model that integrates the use of semi-formal notation, the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and a formal notation, B. The experiments assessed the comprehensibility of the model, namely UML-B. The first experiment compared the comprehensibility of a UML-B model and a B model. In the second experiment, the model was compared with an Event-B model, a new generation of B. The experiments assessed the ability of the model to present information and to promote problem domain understanding. The measurement focused on the efficiency in performing the comprehension tasks. The experiments employed a cross-over design and were conducted on third-year and masters students. The results suggest that the integration of semi-formal and formal notations expedites the subjects’ comprehension tasks with accuracy even with limited hours of training

Perceived Motivational Affordances: Capturing and Measuring Students' Sense-Making Around Visualizations of their Academic Achievement Information.

The efficacy of learning analytics is predicated on the validity of techniques used to uncover patterns about student learning and engagement, and the ways in which these patterns are communicated to various stakeholders. How students understand representations of their learning, and whether or not those representations motivate them in positive ways, is not well understood. This dissertation addresses this gap in the literature through two complementary studies. Study 1 utilizes qualitative interviews (n = 60) to investigate how students at-risk of college failure interpret visual representations of their potential academic achievement. Findings suggest an interplay between the information communicated by visualizations and students’ own inclinations towards the information they wished to see. Visualizations showing only the participants academic information, for example, evoked statements focused on personal growth from students when they interpreted the graphs. Visualizations that cast an individual student’s performance against the class average, however, evoked maladaptive responses. Study 2 designed and validated the Motivated Information-Seeking Questionnaire (MISQ) using a college student sample drawn from across the country (n = 551). The MISQ measures constructs that are parallel to mastery, performance-avoid, and performance approach goal orientations as theorized by Achievement Goal Theory. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was used to internally validate the MISQ scales, resulting in validation of the performance-approach information-seeking (PAIS) and performance-avoid information-seeking (PVIS) dimensions. Results of external validation indicated that PVIS and PAIS were empirically distinguishable from performance-approach and performance-avoid achievement goal orientations. Multiple regression analysis supported the predictive power of PVIS and PAIS with regard to students’ emotional responses to certain types of visualizations and to what they attributed their success and/or failure, after controlling for relevant demographic characteristics. Taken together, these studies increase our knowledge of the various dimensions students use while interpreting visualizations, and uncovered tensions between what students want to see, versus what it might be more motivationally appropriate for them to see. Both studies suggest three maxims for the design and use of visualizations: 1) Never assume that more information is better; 2) Anticipate and mitigate against potential harm; and 3) Always suggest a way for students to grow.PhDEducation and PsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133441/1/aguilars_1.pd

Language-specific cues: A cue to language?

A key issue in psycholinguistic research on the nature of the coexistence of two (or more) languages in the cognitive system of a fluent bilingual speaker include the nature of lexical access (selective vs non-selective). In the context of the non-selective access view, we investigate the extent to which sub-lexical information (eg languagespecific cues, such as onset capitals for German nouns) is sufficient to constrain or eliminate lexical interaction between the bilingual’s languages. We also consider the extent to which the use of such information is affected by priming for a specific language from a preceding sentential context. To gain insight, experimental data from English-German bilinguals from three different proficiency levels was collected,who listened to a sentence frame in either L1 or L2, and then performed a German(L2) lexical decision task to a word presented visually immediately after the frame.Error data shows that language-specific cues have an increasingly facilitatory effect on lexical access with increasing proficiency levels. In addition, context languageeffects decrease with increasing proficiency level. Response time analyses, on the other hand, reveal a delay for German-biased items, ie those with onset capitalisation. We discuss these results in the context of models of bilingual language processing

Visual Representations Is Lexical Learning Environments: Application To The Alexia System

Cognition-based arguments in support of using multimedia aids for the learning of vocabulary have so far offered only an imprecise, general framework. CALL experimentalists have also tried to establish the effectiveness of multimedia for vocabulary learning, but their attempts reveal that the underlying representations have not been clearly defined. After reviewing these points, we propose criteria for evaluating the quality of a visual representation in a lexical environment. These criteria are then used to discuss visual representations in paper and electronic dictionaries and in CALL environments. A kind of confusion has been made between multimedia and nonverbal knowledge. Hence visual representations are scarce and limited to concrete words. One way to extend multimedia in lexical learning is to rely on linguistic knowledge and build lexical networks. We present the ALEXIA system, a lexical learning environment for French as a second/foreign language. We detail its network module which can automatically build graphs of some lexical semantic relations. It is a first step for offering learners representations they can easily interpret. Visual representations which can cover a significant part of the lexicon are computable, extendable and interactive

Adolescent Literacy and Textbooks: An Annotated Bibliography

A companion report to Carnegie's Time to Act, provides an annotated bibliography of research on textbook design and reading comprehension for fourth through twelfth grade, arranged by topic. Calls for a dialogue between publishers and researchers

A network model of interpersonal alignment in dialog

In dyadic communication, both interlocutors adapt to each other linguistically, that is, they align interpersonally. In this article, we develop a framework for modeling interpersonal alignment in terms of the structural similarity of the interlocutors’ dialog lexica. This is done by means of so-called two-layer time-aligned network series, that is, a time-adjusted graph model. The graph model is partitioned into two layers, so that the interlocutors’ lexica are captured as subgraphs of an encompassing dialog graph. Each constituent network of the series is updated utterance-wise. Thus, both the inherent bipartition of dyadic conversations and their gradual development are modeled. The notion of alignment is then operationalized within a quantitative model of structure formation based on the mutual information of the subgraphs that represent the interlocutor’s dialog lexica. By adapting and further developing several models of complex network theory, we show that dialog lexica evolve as a novel class of graphs that have not been considered before in the area of complex (linguistic) networks. Additionally, we show that our framework allows for classifying dialogs according to their alignment status. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach to measuring alignment in communication that explores the similarities of graph-like cognitive representations. Keywords: alignment in communication; structural coupling; linguistic networks; graph distance measures; mutual information of graphs; quantitative network analysi

Model-based teaching and learning of kinematics in an introductory physics course for underprepared students

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 170-182).This study concerns the application of a model-based approach for problem solving and conceptual understanding, in the context of kinematics, relating to the "foundation" component of an introductory physics course designed for students who are academically and scientifically underprepared. A new method for portraying objects in motion, "freeze frame" representation, was introduced. The particular visual conceptual model was employed as a representational bridge for translating physics information between different modes of representations as well as for eliciting qualitative information