The Cinderella Complex: Word Embeddings Reveal Gender Stereotypes in Movies and Books

Our analysis of thousands of movies and books reveals how these cultural products weave stereotypical gender roles into morality tales and perpetuate gender inequality through storytelling. Using the word embedding techniques, we reveal the constructed emotional dependency of female characters on male characters in stories

Evaluating Centering for Information Ordering Using Corpora

In this article we discuss several metrics of coherence defined using centering theory and investigate the usefulness of such metrics for information ordering in automatic text generation. We estimate empirically which is the most promising metric and how useful this metric is using a general methodology applied on several corpora. Our main result is that the simplest metric (which relies exclusively on NOCB transitions) sets a robust baseline that cannot be outperformed by other metrics which make use of additional centering-based features. This baseline can be used for the development of both text-to-text and concept-to-text generation systems. </jats:p

Scientific Uncertainty in Media Content: Some Reflections on This Special Issue

It was an honor to be called upon to be the anchor reviewer for this special issue of Public Understanding of Science devoted to new perspectives on media presentations of scientific uncertainty. But more than that, it was for me a pleasure and an education. It is always rewarding when, as one of the reviewers of submitted manuscripts, you get so engaged by the content and quality of the research in the articles before you that you have to remind yourself that your task is that of the critic. That happened repeatedly with all of the research articles in this issue. Rather than summarize each of the articles, which Peters and Dunwoody (2016) have done so well in their introduction, and rather than repeat all the valuable roadmaps for further research already contained in the articles, please allow me to share a handful of sometimes oblique observations inspired, directly or indirectly, by all of the articles in this special issue. The following reflections may refer to some articles more than others, but that should not signal any differences in the high-quality and valuable contributions of each

Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation

This paper surveys the current state of the art in Natural Language Generation (NLG), defined as the task of generating text or speech from non-linguistic input. A survey of NLG is timely in view of the changes that the field has undergone over the past decade or so, especially in relation to new (usually data-driven) methods, as well as new applications of NLG technology. This survey therefore aims to (a) give an up-to-date synthesis of research on the core tasks in NLG and the architectures adopted in which such tasks are organised; (b) highlight a number of relatively recent research topics that have arisen partly as a result of growing synergies between NLG and other areas of artificial intelligence; (c) draw attention to the challenges in NLG evaluation, relating them to similar challenges faced in other areas of Natural Language Processing, with an emphasis on different evaluation methods and the relationships between them.Comment: Published in Journal of AI Research (JAIR), volume 61, pp 75-170. 118 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

English language knowledge of first-year university students on performance-based tests

As stated by the Guidelines of the Italian Ministry of Education, the aims and objectives of the fifth-year foreign language curriculum of lyceums correspond to the B2 level of the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR). At this level, students are expected to demonstrate an acceptable level of fluency in writing and speaking. This thesis addresses the issue of the ability of first-year university students to employ their English language knowledge to perform authentic tasks, such as writing an enquiry email. The test designed and administered to gather data aims at evaluating student knowledge at a B2 level, by means of two tasks and holistic and analytic rating scales based on the Bachman and Palmer framework of language competence. Together with the test, a student questionnaire was administered. The results reveal that only 7% of students who have completed the test meet the Ministry of Education Guidelines