Dictionary form in decoding, encoding and retention: Further insights

© European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/recall/article/dictionary-form-in-decoding-encoding-and-retention-further-insights/A91F5AB5CBF5C8538844D1DF2D65F070 doi:10.1017/S0958344017000131 doi:10.1017/S095834401700013

Pictures in online dictionaries : shall we see them?

The aim of the paper is to examine the influence of different access paths to pictures in online English learners’ dictionaries on meaning reception and retention. The article also explores the influence of pictures on the time of meaning comprehension. The following aspects of access to pictures in online learners’ dictionaries are investigated: making pictures instantly visible in entries, hyperlinking pictures, providing no pictures. In an online experiment, upper-intermediate foreign learners of English took part. They explained infrequent English concrete nouns based on reference to purpose-built monolingual dictionary entries. Three experimental conditions were created, depending on access to pictures in the entries: definitions with pictures visible by default (instantly visible pictures), definitions with pictures available upon clicking a hyperlink (hyperlinked pictures), definitions only (no pictures). Meaning comprehension and retention were evaluated based on L1 equivalents of the target nouns provided by the participants. The results reveal that instantly visible pictures and hyperlinked pictures improve meaning comprehension to a similar extent in comparison with the no-picture condition. However, meaning retention checked immediately after exposure is the most successful when pictures are visible by default in entries. Hyperlinked pictures prove to be no more useful for learning meaning than definitions without any pictorial support. They also extend comprehension time the most. Instantly visible pictures, in turn, neither speed up the comprehension of meaning nor slow it down compared to entries with no pictures. Considering their significant contribution to meaning comprehension and retention, instantly visible pictures seem to be the most recommendable in online dictionaries for learners of English

SUBJECT-VERB CONCORD WITH COLLECTIVE NOUNS OR THE COUNT-MASS DISTINCTION: WHICH IS MORE DIFFICULT FOR POLISH LEARNERS OF ENGLISH?

Two aspects of English syntax were chosen for closer analysis in the present paper, i.e., subject- verb concord involving collective nouns in the singular and the syntactic marking of noun reclas- sification from the category of uncountable nouns to that of countable ones with the help of the indefinite article. The study aims to find out which of them is more difficult for Polish learners of English and whether the degree of difficulty depends on the learners’ proficiency in the foreign language. The discussion is based on the results yielded by an empirical study in which interme- diate and advanced Polish students of English took part. The subjects had to complete partial English translations of Polish sentences with specific low-frequency English nouns which substi- tuted true English equivalents of the Polish nouns shown in the sentences. The study reveals that marking subject-verb concord in the case of collective subject nouns was as difficult for the sub- jects as signaling the count-mass distinction by means of the indefinite article and the zero arti- cle, respectively

Modelling eye movements and visual attention in synchronous visual and linguistic processing

This thesis focuses on modelling visual attention in tasks in which vision interacts with language and other sources of contextual information. The work is based on insights provided by experimental studies in visual cognition and psycholinguistics, particularly cross-modal processing. We present a series of models of eye-movements in situated language comprehension capable of generating human-like scan-paths. Moreover we investigate the existence of high level structure of the scan-paths and applicability of tools used in Natural Language Processing in the analysis of this structure. We show that scan paths carry interesting information that is currently neglected in both experimental and modelling studies. This information, studied at a level beyond simple statistical measures such as proportion of looks, can be used to extract knowledge of more complicated patterns of behaviour, and to build models capable of simulating human behaviour in the presence of linguistic material. We also revisit classical model saliency and its extensions, in particular the Contextual Guidance Model of Torralba et al. (2006), and extend it with memory of target positions in visual search. We show that models of contextual guidance should contain components responsible for short term learning and memorisation. We also investigate the applicability of this type of model to prediction of human behaviour in tasks with incremental stimuli as in situated language comprehension. Finally we investigate the issue of objectness and object saliency, including their effects on eye-movements and human responses to experimental tasks. In a simple experiment we show that when using an object-based notion of saliency it is possible to predict fixation locations better than using pixel-based saliency as formulated by Itti et al. (1998). In addition we show that object based saliency fits into current theories such as cognitive relevance and can be used to build unified models of cross-referential visual and linguistic processing. This thesis forms a foundation towards a more detailed study of scan-paths within an object-based framework such as Cognitive Relevance Framework (Henderson et al., 2007, 2009) by providing models capable of explaining human behaviour, and the delivery of tools and methodologies to predict which objects would be attended to during synchronous visual and linguistic processing

Dictionaries and their users

It is only recently that dictionary users have become a central consideration in the design of dictionaries, and this focus has both stimulated and benefited from research into dictionary use. The present contribution reviews the major issues in dictionary design from the user perspective, taking stock of the relevant findings from user research, insofar as such research can assist lexicographers in producing improved lexical tools