Online management of text production from pictures:a comparison between fifth graders and undergraduate students

This study was designed to enhance our understanding of the online management of writing processes by two groups of writers with a different level of expertise, and to explore the impact of this online management on text quality. To this aim, fifth graders (mean age 10.5 years) and undergraduate students (mean age 22.6 years) were asked to compose a narrative from a visual source of images, while their handwriting activity and eye movements were recorded by means of Eye & Pen software and a digitizing tablet. Results showed that fifth graders and undergraduate students used different strategies to engage in high-level source-based text elaboration processes throughout their writing. The main differences concerned the density of source consultation during prewriting, on the one hand, and during pauses, on the other hand. Relationships between these characteristics of online management and text quality were minimal in fifth graders, while in undergraduate students they were more substantial as in the case of syntactic complexity. These findings suggest that with age, the online management of writing becomes more closely related to text quality. In line with a capacity view of writing, it is also concluded that the online management of writing processes of fifth graders is highly constrained by a lack of fluent text production skills which ultimately affects their text quality

Reading during the composition of multi-sentence texts: an eye-movement study

Writers composing multi-sentence texts have immediate access to a visual representation of what they have written. Little is known about the detail of writers’ eye movements within this text during production. We describe two experiments in which competent adult writers’ eye-movements were tracked while performing short expository writing tasks. These are contrasted with conditions in which participants read and evaluated researcher-provided texts. Writers spent a mean of around 13% of their time looking back into their text. Initiation of these look-back sequences was strongly predicted by linguistically important boundaries in their ongoing production (e.g., writers were much more likely to look back immediately prior to starting a new sentence). 36% of look-back sequences were associated with sustained reading and the remainder with less patterned forward and backward saccades between words ("hopping"). Fixation and gaze durations and the presence of word-length effects suggested lexical processing of fixated words in both reading and hopping sequences. Word frequency effects were not present when writers read their own text. Findings demonstrate the technical possibility and potential value of examining writers’ fixations within their just-written text. We suggest that these fixations do not serve solely, or even primarily, in monitoring for error, but play an important role in planning ongoing production

Detection of infectious bronchitis virus 793B, avian metapneumovirus, Mycoplasma gallisepticum and Mycoplasma synoviae in poultry in Ethiopia

A survey was conducted into respiratory infectious diseases of poultry on a chicken breeder farm run by the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR), located in Debre Zeit, Ethiopia. Oropharyngeal swabs were collected from 117 randomly selected birds, and blood was taken from a subset of 73 of these birds. A combination of serological and molecular methods was used for detection of pathogens. For the first time in Ethiopia, we report the detection of variant infectious bronchitis virus (793B genotype), avian metapneumovirus subtype B and Mycoplasma synoviae in poultry. Mycoplasma gallisepticum was also found to be present; however, infectious laryngotracheitis virus was not detected by PCR. Newcastle disease virus (NDV) was not detected by PCR, but variable levels of anti-NDV HI antibody titres shows possible exposure to virulent strains or poor vaccine take, or both. For the burgeoning-intensive industry in Ethiopia, this study highlights several circulating infectious respiratory pathogens that can impact on poultry welfare and productivity