The Optimal Behaviour of a Split Model of Word Recognition Resembles Observed Fixation Behaviour

We expand upon the case for believing that the initial precise splitting of the foveal projection to the visual cortex fundamentally conditions the whole process of visual word recognition. We explore the optimal behaviour of a split architecture that attempts to divide its processing load equally between its two halves. We successfully model three aspects of fixation behaviour in human readers: (a) the positioning of the optimal viewing position to the left of the midpoint of the word, (b) a displaced Gaussian curve of letter-report accuracy resembling an RVF advantage, (c) the tendency for shorter words not to be directly fixated

Synchrony and asynchrony of the two eyes in binocular fixationsin the reading of English and Chinese; the implications for ocular prevalence

We explore low-level, behavioural universals in reading,across English and Chinese. We investigated binocularcoordination in terms of the small non-alignments betweenthe two eyes’ fixations in time. We define a typology of ninesuch asynchronies and report the different spatial distributionsof these types across the screen of text. We interpret them interms of their implications for ocular prevalence—theprioritizing of the input from one eye over the input from theother eye in higher perception/cognition, after binocularfusion. The results show striking similarities of binocularreading behaviours across the two very differentorthographies. Asynchronies in which one eye begins thefixation earlier and/or ends it later occur most frequently inthe hemifield corresponding to that eye. We propose that suchsmall asynchronies in binocular fixations prioritize the higherprocessing of the input from that eye, after binocular fusion

ValuED: A Blockchain-based Trading Platform to EncourageStudent Engagement in Higher Education

The provision of higher education has been changing ever more quickly in the UK and worldwide, as a result of technological, economic, and geopolitical factors. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated such changes. The “student experience”—the interaction of students with their institution and with each other—has been changing accordingly, with less face-to-face contact. In this work, we have explored a way to improve student engagement in higher education. We describe “ValuED”, a blockchain-based trading platform using a cryptocurrency. It allows students both to buy and sell goods and services within their university community and to be rewarded for academic engagement. ValuED involves a reputation system to further incentivise participants. We describe the implementation and piloting of this platform and draw conclusions for its future use. The platform’s source code is publicly available

How arbitrary is language?

It is a long established convention that the relationship between sounds and meanings of words is essentially arbitrary-typically the sound of a word gives no hint of its meaning. However, there are numerous reported instances of systematic sound meaning mappings in language, and this systematicity has been claimed to be important for early language development. In a large-scale corpus analysis of English, we show that sound-meaning mappings are more systematic than would be expected by chance. Furthermore, this systematicity is more pronounced for words involved in the early stages of language acquisition and reduces in later vocabulary development. We propose that the vocabulary is structured to enable systematicity in early language learning to promote language acquisition, while also incorporating arbitrariness for later language in order to facilitate communicative expressivity and efficiency

Letters and their sounds are not perfectly arbitrary : exploring grapho-phonemic systematicity in multiple orthography systems

Language, as a complex system, suggests coordination between subsystems. Recent studies demonstrated that semantically similar words tend to have similar pronunciation (Blasi et al., 2016; Dautrich et al., 2017; Jee, Tamariz, & Shillcock, 2022; Monaghan et al., 2014; Tamariz, 2008). The current research, for the first time, quantified mapping between letters and their canonical pronunciations, or grapho-phonemic systematicity. We examined naturally developed phonograms (Arabic, English, Greek, and Hebrew), consciously designed phonograms (Korean, Shavian alphabet, and Pitman's shorthand), a logographic orthography (Chinese) and fictitious orthography systems (Aurebesh and Klingon). We measured all the pairwise phonological distances between phonemes in the respective alphabet system, and the corresponding pairwise orthographical distances between letters. We then tested Pearson's r between these two lists of pairwise distances. The positive correlation coefficient means that similar letter-shapes have similar canonical pronunciation. In contrast, the negative correlation means that similar letter-shapes have more distinct sounds, or vice versa. We verified the significance of the correlations by conducting Monte-Carlo permutation tests. For the phonological distance, phonemes were encoded into vectors according to the articulatory features and the distance between the vectors were calculated in various ways. We applied three methods to measure the pairwise distances between letter-shapes. Pixel count simply defines the distances as the difference in the number of pixels between two characters. Perimetric complexity is defined 354 This paper is distributed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 license