Limited Attention and Discourse Structure

This squib examines the role of limited attention in a theory of discourse structure and proposes a model of attentional state that relates current hierarchical theories of discourse structure to empirical evidence about human discourse processing capabilities. First, I present examples that are not predicted by Grosz and Sidner's stack model of attentional state. Then I consider an alternative model of attentional state, the cache model, which accounts for the examples, and which makes particular processing predictions. Finally I suggest a number of ways that future research could distinguish the predictions of the cache model and the stack model.Comment: 9 pages, uses twoside,cl,lingmacro

Reflections on the Practicality of Good Theory

Jennifer Kennison noticed something different about the way her high school chemistry students were working together during Complex Instruction rotation. Her attention to the change in her students’ learning caused me to think about how Elizabeth Cohen’s often referenced Kurt Lewin’s comment “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” As a result, I decided to ask two students who were teaching CI rotations if they would be interested in working together on a conference presentation that looked at their work through the eyes of Lewin’s dictum. They would take on responsibility for documenting and writing about their CI units and I, their advisor, would take on Lewin. Both Jennifer, an experienced teacher and MEd. candidate, and Bethany Brodeur, a senior elementary education major, agreed to this task. The resulting papers formed the core of our presentation at the 2004 conference of the New England Educational Research Organization. Together, they form a short volume that integrates learning about CI with the practical implications of implementation of CI at the elementary and secondary levels. This paper reports my observations of their work confirming Lewin’s dictum and Cohen’s wisdom. C

Inferring Acceptance and Rejection in Dialogue by Default Rules of Inference

This paper discusses the processes by which conversants in a dialogue can infer whether their assertions and proposals have been accepted or rejected by their conversational partners. It expands on previous work by showing that logical consistency is a necessary indicator of acceptance, but that it is not sufficient, and that logical inconsistency is sufficient as an indicator of rejection, but it is not necessary. I show how conversants can use information structure and prosody as well as logical reasoning in distinguishing between acceptances and logically consistent rejections, and relate this work to previous work on implicature and default reasoning by introducing three new classes of rejection: {\sc implicature rejections}, {\sc epistemic rejections} and {\sc deliberation rejections}. I show how these rejections are inferred as a result of default inferences, which, by other analyses, would have been blocked by the context. In order to account for these facts, I propose a model of the common ground that allows these default inferences to go through, and show how the model, originally proposed to account for the various forms of acceptance, can also model all types of rejection.Comment: 37 pages, uses fullpage, lingmacros, name

Collective learning experiences in planning: the potential of experimental living labs

‘Living labs’ originate from an R&D environment, and intend to innovate commodities by experience-based knowledge, with a direct involvement of users. Meanwhile, the living labs approach has been shifting into a wider range of applications, and has also ended up in the toolbox of actor- and action-oriented planners. The approach is (implicitly) promoted as a new and better way of combining capacities of different stakeholders by exploring and experimenting in realworld situations. In this paper, we attempt to critically discuss the use of the living lab approach. The first section explores the potential thereof for planning issues: How univocal is the concept of Living Labs? How much do different interpretations and practices of Living Labs resemble in terms of actors involved, actions stimulated, processes promoted and criteria for good practices accepted? The exploration is based on the experience of two experimental living labs, which are compared with a range of international examples. The second section turns to a series of alternative approaches in spatial planning in Flanders: How do the aims and means of these collaborative learning experiences differ? What is the role of users and how important is experimentation? What is the innovative contribution to planning (if any)? How do the practices deal with path dependencies and uncertainties in complex multi-actor settings? We will answer these questions based on research seminars on ‘collective learning’, which are organized for the Policy Research Center Spatial Planning in Flanders, as a part of a work-package which focusses on methodologies for future explorations

"Challenge Current Practice and Assumptions! Make waves!!” : What Works Scotland Collaborative Learning Event 23 & 24 February 2016 Queens Hotel, Perth

No abstract available