From production to selection of interpretations for novel conceptual combinations: A developmental approach

This study looks at how combinations of two French nouns are interpreted. The order of occurrence of the constituents of two types of conceptual combinations, relation and property, was manipulated in view of determining how property-based and relation-based interpretations evolve with age. Three groups of French-speaking children (ages 6, 8, and 10) and a group of adults performed an interpretation-selection task. The results for the children indicated that while property-based interpretations increased with age, relation-based interpretations were in the majority for both combination types, whereas for the adults, relation-based interpretations were in the minority for property combinations. For the children and adults alike, the most frequent interpretations were ones in which the head noun came first and was followed by the modifier (the opposite of the order observed for English)

Influence of Expertise, Coherence, and Causal Connectives on Comprehension and Recall of an Expository Text

Des experts et des novices en biologie lisaient un texte sur l’évolution des espèces dont les paragraphes étaient (ou non) accompagnés de 2 questions, l’une de rappel, l’autre de compréhension. Chaque paragraphe comprenait une phrase cible – conséquence, localement cohérente ou non cohérente, qui était précédée (ou non) par l’expression causale “c’est pourquoi”. L’ajout de l’expression causale et des questions augmente les temps de lecture de la phrase cible. Les informations relevant du modèle de situation sont mieux comprises dans les versions cohérentes (explicites) que dans les versions non cohérentes (implicites). Le connecteur causal tend à améliorer le rappel et la compréhension seulement dans les versions cohérentes (explicites). Dans la discussion, on souligne la nécessité de mieux examiner comment les experts, comparés aux novices, traitent les connecteurs causaux au cours même de la lecture.Experts and novices read a biology text whose paragraphs were or were not accompanied by questions. The Text paragraphs contained target sentences that were locally coherent or incoherent and preceded or not preceded by the cause-effect connective "That’s why". Connectives and questions during reading increased target sentence reading time. During reading, the coherent (explicit) text versions benefited from better comprehension of information related to the situation model, but not the recall of textbase-related information. The Connective tended to improve text recall and comprehension but only for the coherent (explicit) versions. More specific research on on-line processing should further examine how experts process causal connectives as compared to novices

Influence of Expertise, Coherence, and Causal Connectives on Comprehension and Recall of an Expository Text

Des experts et des novices en biologie lisaient un texte sur l’évolution des espèces dont les paragraphes étaient (ou non) accompagnés de 2 questions, l’une de rappel, l’autre de compréhension. Chaque paragraphe comprenait une phrase cible – conséquence, localement cohérente ou non cohérente, qui était précédée (ou non) par l’expression causale “c’est pourquoi”. L’ajout de l’expression causale et des questions augmente les temps de lecture de la phrase cible. Les informations relevant du modèle de situation sont mieux comprises dans les versions cohérentes (explicites) que dans les versions non cohérentes (implicites). Le connecteur causal tend à améliorer le rappel et la compréhension seulement dans les versions cohérentes (explicites). Dans la discussion, on souligne la nécessité de mieux examiner comment les experts, comparés aux novices, traitent les connecteurs causaux au cours même de la lecture.Experts and novices read a biology text whose paragraphs were or were not accompanied by questions. The Text paragraphs contained target sentences that were locally coherent or incoherent and preceded or not preceded by the cause-effect connective "That’s why". Connectives and questions during reading increased target sentence reading time. During reading, the coherent (explicit) text versions benefited from better comprehension of information related to the situation model, but not the recall of textbase-related information. The Connective tended to improve text recall and comprehension but only for the coherent (explicit) versions. More specific research on on-line processing should further examine how experts process causal connectives as compared to novices

Effect of Tuned Parameters on a LSA MCQ Answering Model

This paper presents the current state of a work in progress, whose objective is to better understand the effects of factors that significantly influence the performance of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). A difficult task, which consists in answering (French) biology Multiple Choice Questions, is used to test the semantic properties of the truncated singular space and to study the relative influence of main parameters. A dedicated software has been designed to fine tune the LSA semantic space for the Multiple Choice Questions task. With optimal parameters, the performances of our simple model are quite surprisingly equal or superior to those of 7th and 8th grades students. This indicates that semantic spaces were quite good despite their low dimensions and the small sizes of training data sets. Besides, we present an original entropy global weighting of answers' terms of each question of the Multiple Choice Questions which was necessary to achieve the model's success.Comment: 9 page

Pertinence d'une approche psychologique de la vérité propositionnelle

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MÉMOIRE ET LANGAGE : APPORTS DE L'« ANALYSE DE LA SÉMANTIQUE LATENTE » À L'ÉTUDE DU DÉVELOPPEMENT

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Étude des processus cognitifs de construction et d'interprétation de combinaisons conceptuelles nouvelles

Cognitive processes in new conceptual combinations interpretation This paper describes and discusses recent theories of conceptual combination made up of a Modifier (adjective or noun) and a head noun. If all models assume that the interpretation of a conceptual combination implies that a relation is established between the Modifier and the Head Noun to create a new concept, they differ by the kind of link and process implied to create this connexion between the two concepts. The first category of models (Gagné et Shoben, 1997) assume that the world knwledge concerning the relations that are typically used with the Modifier concept is brought to bear immediately as part of the interpretation process (Gagné, 2000, 2001). The second category puts forward the notion of schema with its structural and functional properties to determine the meaning of combined concepts (Smith, Osherson, Rips and Keane, 1988; Murphy, 1988). Among this category, the «Dual Process» model (Wisniewski (1997, 2001) and the «Constraint-Guided Conceptual Combination Model» (Costello et Keane, 2000, 2001) first try to take into account the different types of interpretation: relational, transfert of property and hybrid, and secondly to describe how and when world knowledge influences conceptual combination.Dans cet article, nous présentons et nous discutons les principaux modèles explicatifs de l’interprétation de combinaisons conceptuelles «Adjectif-Nom» («grive rocheuse») et «Nom-Nom» («cheval zèbre», «chaise lit») proposés ces dernières années. S’ils postulent tous que l’interprétation d’une combinaison conceptuelle implique la mise en relation de ses constituants (Modificateur et Nom Principal), ces modèles se distinguent par la nature des processus invoqués pour établir cette relation et par le rôle joué par les connaissances du monde. La première catégorie (Gagné et Shoben, 1997, Gagné, 2000, 2001) suppose que le Modificateur et le Nom Principal sont liés par un ensemble limité de relations thématiques. La seconde catégorie invoque la notion de schéma et ses propriétés structurales et fonctionnelles pour rendre compte de l’élaboration de la signification (Smith, Osherson, Rips and Keane, 1988; Murphy, 1988). Au sein de cette dernière, les modèles du «double processus» de Wisniewski (1997, 2001) et de «la combinaison conceptuelle guidée par la satisfaction de contraintes» de Costello et Keane (2000, 2001) visent à rendre compte d’une part, de l’ensemble des interprétations en termes de relation, de propriété ou d’hybridation entre les composants de la combinaison et, d’autre part, du rôle joué par les connaissances sur les processus d’interprétation.Jhean-Larose Sandra, Denhière Guy. Étude des processus cognitifs de construction et d'interprétation de combinaisons conceptuelles nouvelles. In: L'année psychologique. 2006 vol. 106, n°2. pp. 265-304

Emoval: Automatic evaluation of texts and emotional dimensions using an emotional metanorm.

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