The Effects of Negotiated Interactioni and Promodified input on Second Langauge Comprehension and Retention

This experiment tests hypotheses that premodified input and negotiated interaction facilitate comprehension and SLA (Krashen, 1980; Long, 1981) with Japanese as a foreign language. 41 beginning learners at the University of Hawaii had three listening tasks treatment sessions with native speakers in a pretest/posttest design. Treatment groups were 1) baseline input; 2) premodified input; 3) negotiated interaction. The tasks contained new vocabulary items and two locative structures, and were both learning treatments and on-line comprehension measures. Pre- and post tests included two vocabulary recognition tests and a sentence verification test. The hypothesis that negotiated interaction facilitates comprehension was supported (p< .05), but that for premodified input was not. No main effect for treatment was found for posttest gains in lexis and morphosyntax, though significant gains (p< .05) were found overall. The study thus supports the importance of negotiated interaction for on-line comprehension; however, task-focus on form-meaning relationships may have caused the posstest gains

Outline of indicators on microeconomic reforms based on the MICREF database

In order to track the reform efforts in the framework of the (renewed) Lisbon Strategy the MICREF database was created. The Joint Research Centre (JRC Ispra) supported Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN) and Directorate General Enterprise and Industry (DG ENTR) in the creation and the filling of the database and developed analytical tools based on the data contained in the MICREF database. The objective of these tools is to support the investigation of the reform activity and the reform characteristics in the microeconomic area. The indicators proposed in the present report are mostly based on the descriptive features of the database and try to shed light on reform characteristics such as the speed of implementation, the involvement of stakeholders or monitoring procedures.JRC.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic

Cost of Capital Indicator for EU Member States

The actions taken in the framework of the Lisbon Strategy and in the forthcoming EU2020 strategy are intended to improve the competitiveness of the EU¿s economy. To properly monitor the progress resulting from those actions, some indicators have been identified. One of those indicators is on the ¿cost of capital¿. The cost of capital is a key concept as it reflects the corporation¿s cost of investment funding. Thus, there is a need to develop an indicator to monitor how that cost changes over time. This report presents an overall cost of capital composite indicator that can be updated on a quarterly basis and is covering the EU-27, the euro area, and each of the 27 EU Member States. This composite indicator is based on the first three out of the four major sources of capital: loans, corporate bonds, listed equity, and unlisted equity.JRC.DG.G.9-Econometrics and applied statistic

Creating Structure-Based Communication Tasks for Second Language Development

Task based language teaching has gained favor among both second language teachers and researchers over the last decade. Arguments for the value of a "focus on fonn" and attention to forms in input have also been made by several SLA researchers, thus pointing to a role for grammar instruction in classroom SLA. It is suggested here that the use of communicative and meaningful classroom tasks can focus learners' attention on grammatical forms in input and, thus, facilitate their acquisition This proposal differs from other recent treatments of communicative grammar instruction in its emphasis on the following areas: 1) "closed" rather than "()pen" tasks; 2) comprehension-based before production-based tasks; 3) grammatical targets which have clear form-meaning relationships. Thus, while the proposal is more narrow in scope than some other treatments, it is much more specific: i.e., it proposes tasks in which communicative outcomes can be predicted and manipulated in advance by the designer and in which grammatical form and meaning are tightly linked. Such tasks are similar to those used to test learners' language processing capabilities in psycholinguistic research, though here they are used for pedagogical purposes. Examples include tasks covering a wide range of syntactic categories and functions. ln conclusion, we argue for an approach to designing tasks which incorporates: 1) a cognitive perspective on SLA and language processing, 2) insights from research on communicative task design from second language research, and 3) methods of measuring language development from psycholinguistics and inter1anguage variation studies. By combining these with language teachers' careful observations of their students' problems in comprehending and being comprehended, meaning and communicative tasks for grammar pedagogy can be designed

Focal and Ambient Processing of Built Environments: Intellectual and Atmospheric Experiences of Architecture

Citation: Rooney, K. K., Condia, R. J., & Loschky, L. C. (2017). Focal and Ambient Processing of Built Environments: Intellectual and Atmospheric Experiences of Architecture. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 20. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00326Neuroscience has well established that human vision divides into the central and peripheral fields of view. Central vision extends from the point of gaze (where we are looking) out to about 5 degrees of visual angle (the width of one's fist at arm's length), while peripheral vision is the vast remainder of the visual field. These visual fields project to the parvo and magno ganglion cells, which process distinctly different types of information from the world around us and project that information to the ventral and dorsal visual streams, respectively. Building on the dorsal/ventral stream dichotomy, we can further distinguish between focal processing of central vision, and ambient processing of peripheral vision. Thus, our visual processing of and attention to objects and scenes depends on how and where these stimuli fall on the retina. The built environment is no exception to these dependencies, specifically in terms of how focal object perception and ambient spatial perception create different types of experiences we have with built environments. We argue that these foundational mechanisms of the eye and the visual stream are limiting parameters of architectural experience. We hypothesize that people experience architecture in two basic ways based on these visual limitations; by intellectually assessing architecture consciously through focal object processing and assessing architecture in terms of atmosphere through pre-conscious ambient spatial processing. Furthermore, these separate ways of processing architectural stimuli operate in parallel throughout the visual perceptual system. Thus, a more comprehensive understanding of architecture must take into account that built environments are stimuli that are treated differently by focal and ambient vision, which enable intellectual analysis of architectural experience versus the experience of architectural atmosphere, respectively. We offer this theoretical model to help advance a more precise understanding of the experience of architecture, which can be tested through future experimentation. (298 words

What would Jaws do? The tyranny of film and the relationship between gaze and higher-level narrative film comprehension

What is the relationship between film viewers’ eye movements and their film comprehension? Typical Hollywood movies induce strong attentional synchrony—most viewers look at the same things at the same time. Thus, we asked whether film viewers’ eye movements would differ based on their understanding—the mental model hypothesis—or whether any such differences would be overwhelmed by viewers’ attentional synchrony—the tyranny of film hypothesis. To investigate this question, we manipulated the presence/absence of prior film context and measured resulting differences in film comprehension and eye movements. Viewers watched a 12-second James Bond movie clip, ending just as a critical predictive inference should be drawn that Bond’s nemesis, “Jaws,” would fall from the sky onto a circus tent. The No-context condition saw only the 12-second clip, but the Context condition also saw the preceding 2.5 minutes of the movie before seeing the critical 12-second portion. Importantly, the Context condition viewers were more likely to draw the critical inference and were more likely to perceive coherence across the entire 6 shot sequence (as shown by event segmentation), indicating greater comprehension. Viewers’ eye movements showed strong attentional synchrony in both conditions as compared to a chance level baseline, but smaller differences between conditions. Specifically, the Context condition viewers showed slightly, but significantly, greater attentional synchrony and lower cognitive load (as shown by fixation probability) during the critical first circus tent shot. Thus, overall, the results were more consistent with the tyranny of film hypothesis than the mental model hypothesis. These results suggest the need for a theory that encompasses processes from the perception to the comprehension of film

Impairing the useful field of view in natural scenes: Tunnel vision versus general interference

Citation: Ringer, R. V., Throneburg, Z., Johnson, A. P., Kramer, A. F., & Loschky, L. C. (2016). Impairing the useful field of view in natural scenes: Tunnel vision versus general interference. Journal of Vision, 16(2), 25. doi:10.1167/16.2.7A fundamental issue in visual attention is the relationship between the useful field of view (UFOV), the region of visual space where information is encoded within a single fixation, and eccentricity. A common assumption is that impairing attentional resources reduces the size of the UFOV (i. e., tunnel vision). However, most research has not accounted for eccentricity-dependent changes in spatial resolution, potentially conflating fixed visual properties with flexible changes in visual attention. Williams (1988, 1989) argued that foveal loads are necessary to reduce the size of the UFOV, producing tunnel vision. Without a foveal load, it is argued that the attentional decrement is constant across the visual field (i. e., general interference). However, other research asserts that auditory working memory (WM) loads produce tunnel vision. To date, foveal versus auditory WM loads have not been compared to determine if they differentially change the size of the UFOV. In two experiments, we tested the effects of a foveal (rotated L vs. T discrimination) task and an auditory WM (N-back) task on an extrafoveal (Gabor) discrimination task. Gabor patches were scaled for size and processing time to produce equal performance across the visual field under single-task conditions, thus removing the confound of eccentricity-dependent differences in visual sensitivity. The results showed that although both foveal and auditory loads reduced Gabor orientation sensitivity, only the foveal load interacted with retinal eccentricity to produce tunnel vision, clearly demonstrating task-specific changes to the form of the UFOV. This has theoretical implications for understanding the UFOV

Linking attentional processes and conceptual problem solving: visual cues facilitate the automaticity of extracting relevant information from diagrams

This study investigated links between visual attention processes and conceptual problem solving. This was done by overlaying visual cues on conceptual physics problem diagrams to direct participants’ attention to relevant areas to facilitate problem solving. Participants (N = 80) individually worked through four problem sets, each containing a diagram, while their eye movements were recorded. Each diagram contained regions that were relevant to solving the problem correctly and separate regions related to common incorrect responses. Problem sets contained an initial problem, six isomorphic training problems, and a transfer problem. The cued condition saw visual cues overlaid on the training problems. Participants’ verbal responses were used to determine their accuracy. This study produced two major findings. First, short duration visual cues which draw attention to solution-relevant information and aid in the organizing and integrating of it, facilitate both immediate problem solving and generalization of that ability to new problems. Thus, visual cues can facilitate re-representing a problem and overcoming impasse, enabling a correct solution. Importantly, these cueing effects on problem solving did not involve the solvers’ attention necessarily embodying the solution to the problem, but were instead caused by solvers attending to and integrating relevant information in the problems into a solution path. Second, this study demonstrates that when such cues are used across multiple problems, solvers can automatize the extraction of problem-relevant information extraction. These results suggest that low-level attentional selection processes provide a necessary gateway for relevant information to be used in problem solving, but are generally not sufficient for correct problem solving. Instead, factors that lead a solver to an impasse and to organize and integrate problem information also greatly facilitate arriving at correct solutions

A comparative study of the variables used to measure syntactic complexity and accuracy in task-based research

The constructs of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) have been used extensively to investigate learner performance on second language tasks. However, a serious concern is that the variables used to measure these constructs are sometimes used conventionally without any empirical justification. It is crucial for researchers to understand how results might be different depending on which measurements are used, and accordingly, choose the most appropriate variables for their research aims. The first strand of this article examines the variables conventionally used to measure syntactic complexity in order to identify which may be the best indicators of different proficiency levels, following suggestions by Norris and Ortega. The second strand compares the three variables used to measure accuracy in order to identify which one is most valid. The data analysed were spoken performances by 64 Japanese EFL students on two picture-based narrative tasks, which were rated at Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) A2 to B2 according to Rasch-adjusted ratings by seven human judges. The tasks performed were very similar, but had different degrees of what Loschky and Bley-Vroman term ‘task-essentialness’ for subordinate clauses. It was found that the variables used to measure syntactic complexity yielded results that were not consistent with suggestions by Norris and Ortega. The variable found to be the most valid for measuring accuracy was errors per 100 words. Analysis of transcripts revealed that results were strongly influenced by the differing degrees of task-essentialness for subordination between the two tasks, as well as the spread of errors across different units of analysis. This implies that the characteristics of test tasks need to be carefully scrutinised, followed by careful piloting, in order to ensure greater validity and reliability in task-based research