Deep interactive text prediction and quality estimation in translation interfaces

The output of automatic translation systems is usually destined for human consumption. In most cases, translators use machine translation (MT) as the first step in the process of creating a fluent translation in a target language given a text in a source language. However, there are many possible ways for translators to interact with MT. The goal of this thesis is to investigate new interactive designs and interfaces for translation. In the first part of the thesis, we present pilot studies which investigate aspects of the interactive translation process, building upon insights from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Translation Studies. We developed HandyCAT, an open-source platform for translation process research, which was used to conduct two user studies: an investigation into interactive machine translation and evaluation of a novel component for post-editing. We then propose new models for quality estimation (QE) of MT, and new models for es- timating the confidence of prefix-based neural interactive MT (IMT) systems. We present a series of experiments using neural sequence models for QE and IMT. We focus upon token-level QE models, which can be used as standalone components or integrated into post-editing pipelines, guiding users in selecting phrases to edit. We introduce a strong recurrent baseline for neural QE, and show how state of the art automatic post-editing (APE) models can be re-purposed for word-level QE. We also propose an auxiliary con- fidence model, which can be attached to (I)-MT systems to use the model’s internal state to estimate confidence about the model’s predictions. The third part of the thesis introduces lexically constrained decoding using grid beam search (GBS), a means of expanding prefix-based interactive translation to general lexical constraints. By integrating lexically constrained decoding with word-level QE, we then suggest a novel interactive design for translation interfaces, and test our hypotheses using simulated editing. The final section focuses upon designing an interface for interactive post-editing, incorporating both GBS and QE. We design components which introduce a new way of interacting with translation models, and test these components in a user-study

Text prediction for translators

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

A Structural Equation Modeling Approach Combining Multitrait-Multimethod Designs with Moderated Mediation Analysis

Researchers who study clinical and developmental psychology are often interested in answering questions such as how interventions work, when treatment begins to improve health outcomes, or for whom treatment has the greatest impact. Answers to these and similar questions impact the general understanding of health and behavior, and can be imperative for effectively implementing intervention and prevention programs. To evaluate such complex relationships among variables, researchers have turned to moderated mediation analysis. Moderated mediation analysis is a statistical tool used to identify the conditional processes among observed or latent variables. However, in developmental and clinical psychology, variables are regularly measured using multiple sources or multiple methods. In fact, best practice recommendations in clinical psychology suggest measuring variables with multiple methods (Achenbach, 2006). The question arises how to use multimethod assessments in statistical analyses such as moderated mediation analysis. The objectives of the present study were to create a multimethod moderated mediation model, apply the model to an extant dataset of child developmental behaviors, and evaluate conditions under which the model performed well using a Monte Carlo simulation study. Results from the application showed that the indirect path from hyperactivity to academic impairment through oppositional defiant behavior was significant but not moderated by inattention. Results from the simulation study indicated that excluding true method effects from a moderated mediation model resulted in unacceptable parameter and standard error bias. These results point to the advantages of using the M4 model to evaluate moderated mediation in the presence of multimethod data

The effects of a peer-mediated synthetic phonics intervention with children from a rural Indian town

PhD ThesisIt’s a truism that children living in rural areas of India suffer from a lack of quality reading instruction and guidance. Singular rote pedagogies hinder children’s progress and potential for higher study. In light of this, research continues to find benefits in synthetic phonic and peer learning methods, offering a potential avenue for accelerating early reading achievement. This study investigated the effects of a peer-mediated synthetic phonics programme operating in a rural Northern Indian town. Following a sociocultural peer cooperative approach to reading instruction, children from a low-cost private school (N = 44) were recruited as Monitors and trained in a peer/synthetic method ahead of a four-month intervention. Given localised problems associated with education access and quality, children from a range of mainstream education providers (N = 701) were recruited as Learners and randomised into control and intervention groups. An embedded mix methods research design was incorporated into a three-phase research plan. Using an experimental random controlled trial (RCT) design, quantitative collections involved pre/post testing on all children’s phonological awareness, spelling, reading skills and reading attitudes. Qualitative collections during phase two developed pre-test findings by exploring Monitors’ reading attitudes ahead of the intervention. The main findings suggest children receiving peer-mediated synthetic phonic instructions are able to improve their English phonemic awareness, spelling, and reading skills. It demonstrates capacity for accelerating reading achievement over a short intervention period, potential for further study in this area and pedagogical reform. In addition to this, factors associated with peer reading opportunities, location and pedagogical structure improved reading attitudes. Attitudes to reading is an underdeveloped area in Indian education policy, it is not referred to in any policy documents or curricula. The significance of peer reading promotion in academic and recreational settings is crucial to accelerating reading achievement. Taken as a whole, this research has major implications for international development programmes looking to target progression in early reading achievement and the promotion of positive attitudes in reading activities

What\u27s past is prologue : our legacy - our future, 1990 National Interpreters Workshop

... the topics of the papers presented at the 1990 National Interpreters Workshop reflect a dynamic NAI membership. While firmly rooted to principles which have been developed in over a millennium, presenters show a healthy use of past knowledge as prologue to an active, vital present ...https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ebooks/1005/thumbnail.jp

Group Performance in Military Scenarios Under Deceptive Conditions

The goal of this research was to investigate how changes in modality (communication type) and external conditioning (warnings of player deception) relate to perceptions of deception and task difficulty and in turn how these perceptions relate to the final group game scores in a cooperative effort with conflicting goals. One hundred and eight participants were grouped into teams of three, given similar instructions but different goals, and asked to play a cooperative game called StrikeCOM that mimics the intelligence gathering needed to develop an air tasking order and subsequent air strike on three military targets. The analysis of the post-game surveys showed support for participants in games using a face-to-face communication method to have lower perceptions of deception and task difficulty when compared to games using real-time plain text chat

A Study of the Diffusion of Innovations and Hurricane Response Communication in the U.S. Coast Guard

Hurricane Harvey (HH) is considered to be the first natural disaster where social-network applications to request help surpassed already overloaded 911 systems (Seetharaman & Wells, 2017). Increasing interpersonal connectivity via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites correspond to an increasing need for researchers and responders to recognize how people use social media platforms to connect, share, and receive information especially during times of crisis such as natural disasters. Heightened public perceptions and expectations of response efforts in the digital era make it especially important for first responders to evaluate, monitor, and adapt to these shifts in communication. Disaster-relief groups and emergency responders are looking for help to navigate in this new landscape in order to better serve their constituents and explore new, innovative ways to improve both their efficiency and their empathy. Emergency-response managers must act fast to prevent incorrect or misleading information from reaching the public. Some organizations are expressing interest in social media as a potentially cost-efficient way to disseminate information and official communication. However, as research has shown, innovations take time to diffuse (Rogers, 2003). In this thesis, I examined the diffusion of social media in the ways the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) (first responder) and the public communicate during crises. Moreover, I examined facilitative and inhibitive factors shaping the diffusion of digital innovations within the USCG. I conclude that the pacing of the diffusion of social media among everyday users is incredibly rapid and, concurrently, is pressuring crisis communication systems like the USCG to quickly adopt these new innovations. I further conclude that Hurricane Harvey should function as a historical catalyst, a clarion call, that government agencies should incorporate social media and associated digital media to improve their future emergency response operations because lives will depend on it

Men Athletes' Self-Compassion and Masculinities

Self-compassion, a kind and understanding way of treating oneself, has gained traction as a useful resource for helping individuals adaptively deal with and manage the difficult or challenging situations they encounter (Neff, 2003a). However, despite a number of studies focused on ways that women athletes can benefit from self-compassion (e.g., Ferguson et al., 2014; Ingstrup et al., 2017; Mosewich et al., 2011), little research has been done with samples of exclusively men athletes. One unique consideration of men athletes’ self-compassion, due to its pivotal role in the sport-specific difficult experiences of men athletes, is masculinity. Thus, the overlying purpose of my dissertation research was to explore and better understand the potential role(s) of self-compassion as a resource for men athletes, with masculinity being an important consideration. To accomplish this goal, three studies were conducted that complement and build on one another. Study 1 was a quantitative study, with a focus placed on identifying key variables relevant to men athletes’ self-compassion, and exploring the role, if any, that masculinity plays in men athletes’ self-compassion and difficult experiences in sport. In sampling 172 men athletes (via an online survey) between 16 and 35 years of age from a variety of sports, we found that self-compassion was related to all variables but one (i.e., attitudes towards gay men) in hypothesized, healthy directions. Also, it appears that men athletes’ individual representations of masculinity (i.e., traditional or hegemonic masculinity; inclusive masculinity) may impact their likelihood of embracing and/or practicing self-compassion when they encounter challenges in sport. Study 2 was a qualitative study, looking at men athletes’ self-compassion through the lens of masculinity, with a focus on how self-compassion might be perceived, interpreted, and experienced by men athletes, with an in-depth exploration of the interplay between self-compassion and masculinity in the challenges that men encounter in sport. After interviewing 16 men athletes between 16 and 35 years of age at two time points, with a reflexive photography task (i.e., a qualitative research technique that enables participants to depict their environmental interactions and interpretations though reflection on images they captured; Amerson & Livingston, 2014) in between interviews, the findings suggest that self-compassion does appear to be a viable resource for the majority of our participants, though potential barriers to self-compassion may be rooted in representations of masculinity and include the language of self-compassion. Study 3 featured the examination of the feasibility of a previously administered athlete oriented one-week self-compassion intervention (i.e., Mosewich et al.’s 2013 self-compassion intervention, which featured a series of modules designed to enhance self-compassion levels, while providing sport-specific context to athletes), delivered to competitive men athletes between 16 and 35 years of age. Of the 83 men athletes that completed the Time 1, baseline measures, 43 started the intervention, and 38 finished the intervention. The men athletes completed the same series of online measures at two time points (i.e., pre intervention, one-week post intervention), with the one-week self-compassion intervention in between. After finishing the one-week post intervention survey, they engaged in a follow-up one-on-one semi-structured interview with myself. Our findings are encouraging for the self-compassion intervention’s feasibility in our sample of men athletes. While we did not include a control group, and thus cannot make any causal claims about intervention efficacy, the majority of outcome measures, including self-compassion, changed in conceptually healthy ways from pre-intervention to post-intervention, as did the outcome measures as a collective whole. In their follow-up interviews, the men athletes generally viewed the self-compassion intervention in a positive way, and suggested minor changes to the intervention (e.g., inclusion of an online small group session with other participants and the lead researcher) when asked how it could be improved. Additional analyses revealed that men athletes representing body-contact confrontational sports (e.g., football) had lower self-compassion levels than men athletes representing non body-contact confrontational sports (e.g., soccer), along with generally less healthy responses at baseline, so we encourage future researchers to further explore this trend. Importantly, we also encourage future researchers that plan to deliver the self-compassion intervention to men athletes to include an attention control group and a four-week follow-up test of measures, which would align with Mosewich et al.’s (2013) original approach. Ultimately, our findings are encouraging for the feasibility of a fully online one-week self-compassion intervention delivered to competitive men athletes

Building task-oriented machine translation systems

La principal meta de esta tesis es desarrollar sistemas de traduccion interactiva que presenten mayor sinergia con sus usuarios potenciales. Por ello, el objetivo es hacer los sistemas estado del arte mas ergonomicos, intuitivos y eficientes, con el fin de que el experto humano se sienta mas comodo al utilizarlos. Con este fin se presentan diferentes t�ecnicas enfocadas a mejorar la adaptabilidad y el tiempo de respuesta de los sistemas de traduccion automatica subyacentes, as�ÿ como tambien se presenta una estrategia cuya finalidad es mejorar la interaccion hombre-m�aquina. Todo ello con el proposito ultimo de rellenar el hueco existente entre el estado del arte en traduccion automatica y las herramientas que los traductores humanos tienen a su disposici�on. En lo que respecta al tiempo de respuesta de los sistemas de traducci�on autom�atica, en esta tesis se presenta una t�ecnica de poda de los par�ametros de los modelos de traducci�on actuales, cuya intuici�on est�a basada en el concepto de segmentaci�on biling¤ue, pero que termina por evolucionar hacia una estrategia de re-estimaci�on de dichos par�ametros. Utilizando esta estrategia se obtienen resultados experimentales que demuestran que es posible podar la tabla de segmentos hasta en un 97%, sin mermar por ello la calidad de las traducciones obtenidas. Adem�as, estos resultados son coherentes en diferentes pares de lenguas, lo cual evidencia que la t�ecnica que se presenta aqu�ÿ es efectiva en un entorno de traducci�on autom�atica tradicional, y por lo tanto podr�ÿa ser utilizada directamente en un escenario de post-edici�on. Sin embargo, los experimentos llevados a cabo en traducci�on interactiva son ligeramente menos convincentes, pues implican la necesidad de llegar a un compromiso entre el tiempo de respuesta y la calidad de los sufijos producidos. Por otra parte, se presentan dos t�ecnicas de adaptaci�on, con el prop�osito de mejorar la adaptabilidad de los sistemas de traducci�on autom�atica. La primeraSanchis Trilles, G. (2012). Building task-oriented machine translation systems [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/17174Palanci