An in-depth examination of the implementation of the Disability Equality Duty in England

This seven-month study examined the implementation of the Disability Equality Duty (DED) in England. The DED, introduced through the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, applies to public authorities in England, Wales and Scotland

An In-Depth Examination of the Implementation of the Disability Equality Duty in England: Report for the Office for Disability Issues

This seven-month study examined the implementation of the Disability Equality Duty (DED) in England. The DED, introduced through the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, applies to public authorities in England, Wales and Scotland. The DED comprises a general duty and specific duties. The general duty requires public authorities to carry out their functions with due regard to the need to promote equality between disabled and non-disabled people. The specific duties require public authorities to publish a Disability Equality Scheme (DES) setting out how they intend to fulfil their general duty and specific duties. In addition, certain Secretaries of State must publish an overarching report for their policy sectors every three years. A Code of Practice1 to assist authorities with implementing the Duty was published by the then Disability Rights Commission

Cross-linguistic similarity and task demands in Japanese-English bilingual processing

Even in languages that do not share script, bilinguals process cognates faster than matched noncognates in a range of tasks. The current research more fully explores what underpins the cognate ‘advantage’ in different script bilinguals (Japanese-English). To do this, instead of the more traditional binary cognate/noncognate distinction, the current study uses continuous measures of phonological and semantic overlap, L2 (second language) proficiency and lexical variables (e.g., frequency). An L2 picture naming (Experiment 1) revealed a significant interaction between phonological and semantic similarity and demonstrates that degree of overlap modulates naming times. In lexical decision (Experiment 2), increased phonological similarity (e.g., bus/basu/vs. radio/rajio/) lead to faster response times. Interestingly, increased semantic similarity slowed response times in lexical decision. The studies also indicate how L2 proficiency and lexical variables modulate L2 word processing. These findings are explained in terms of current models of bilingual lexical processing

The Time Course of Processing of Natural Language Quantification

This thesis examines the processing of quantificational semantics during reading. It is motivated by some formal observations made by Barwise and Cooper (1981), and a psychological theory proposed by Moxey and Sanford (1987,1993a). Barwise and Cooper classify quantifiers in terms of the directional scalar inference they license. Quantifiers like a few and many are described as monotone-increasing which means that what is true about a subset is also true of the superset. For instance, if a few student passed the exam with ease, this entails that a few students passed the exam. Other quantifiers like few; and not many are monotone-decreasing, and license inferences in the opposite direction. If it is true that few students passed the exam, this entails [hat few students passed the exam with ease. Moxey and Sanford found that these categories of quantifier produce contrasting patterns of focus. They used an off-line production task to demonstrate the monotone-increasing quantifiers, like a few and many focus processing attention on that subset of the quantified NP which is true of the sentence predicate (called the 'refset'), and that subsequent pronouns are interpreted as referring to this set. This means that given a fragment like (1), the plural pronoun will be interpreted as referring to the set of students who passed the exam. (1) A few of the students passed the exam. They . .. In contrast, monotone-decreasing quantifiers like few and not many exhibit a more diffuse pattern of focus, and permit subsequent reference to either the refset, or the complement of this set (called the compset), which is false of the sentence predicate. This means that the plural pronoun in (2) can be interpreted as either referring to the set of student who passed the exam, or those who failed it. (2) A few of the students passed the exam. They ... However, the off-line nature of the Moxey and Sanford studies limit them as descriptions of reading processes, so this thesis reports a series of experimental investigations of pronominal reference during reading. The first two studies used materials like (3) in a self-paced reading experiment to demonstrate that reference is easier when the anaphor describes a property of the refset {their presence) following monotone- increasing quantification, but that reference to either a property of the refset (their presence) or compset (their absence) is possible following monotone-decreasing quantification, although there is a preference for compset reference. (3) [A few I Few] of the MPs attended the meeting. Their [presence | absence] helped the meeting run more smoothly. A second two experiments monitored subjects' eye movements as the read passages like (3) in order to determine the locus and time course of referential processes. In line with other studies (eg. Garrod, Freudenthal and Boyle, 1993), it was predicted that the anaphor would be immediately interpreted as anomalous when it describes the unfocused antecedent. However the studies failed to find any evidence of punctuate effects. A further eye movement study was conducted with a revised set of materials but still failed to find evidence of punctuate anomaly detection in the two quantificational conditions. It was concluded that pronominal reference to a quantified noun-phrase is not processed on-line, i.e. it is not processed as the anaphor is read. Chapter eight presents two experiments on the interpretation of the non-monotonic quantifier only a fezo. It was suggested that this has the simple function of marking a set relative to expectations, and that focus is pragmatically determined. Focus is maintained on the refset when the quantified sentence describes a situation which is consistent with expectations, but the compset is placed in focus when these expectations are violated. Experiment six uses a sentence-continuation task to demonstrate these preferences, and an interaction with sentence connectives. Experiment seven monitored subjects' eye movements are they read sentences which referred to either the refset or compset of a sentence quantified by only a few. There was no evidence that the processing of pronominal reference is contingent on the focusing properties of this quantifier. Chapters nine and ten make a digression to consider the interpretation of sentences with more than one quantifier. The resulting scope ambiguity has been the subject of considerable theoretical interest, but limited empirical research. The existing literature is reviewed in Chapter nine, and a preliminary off-line sentence-continuation study is reported in Chapter ten which examines the interaction of quantifier and pragmatic constraints on a doubly-quantified sentence. The experimental findings are summarised in Chapter eleven, where an effort is made to accommodate the quantifier focus and scope ambiguity strands of this thesis within a common representational framework

Visual speech perception in foveal and extrafoveal vision: Further implications for divisions in hemispheric projections

When observing a talking face, it has often been argued that visual speech to the left and right of fixation may produce differences in performance due to divided projections to the two cerebral hemispheres. However, while it seems likely that such a division in hemispheric projections exists for areas away from fixation, the nature and existence of a functional division in visual speech perception at the foveal midline remains to be determined. We investigated this issue by presenting visual speech in matched hemiface displays to the left and right of a central fixation point, either exactly abutting the foveal midline or else located away from the midline in extrafoveal vision. The location of displays relative to the foveal midline was controlled precisely using an automated, gaze-contingent eye-tracking procedure. Visual speech perception showed a clear right hemifield advantage when presented in extrafoveal locations but no hemifield advantage (left or right) when presented abutting the foveal midline. Thus, while visual speech observed in extrafoveal vision appears to benefit from unilateral projections to left-hemisphere processes, no evidence was obtained to indicate that a functional division exists when visual speech is observed around the point of fixation. Implications of these findings for understanding visual speech perception and the nature of functional divisions in hemispheric projection are discussed. © 2014 Jordan et al

A new demonstration of the illusory letters phenomenon: Graphemic restoration in Arabic word perception

© 2015 a Pion publication. The illusory letters phenomenon (ILP) is a unique demonstration that words can be perceived as complete even when letters are physically absent. However, the ILP has only ever been reported for a Latinate language (English), and it is unknown whether the illusion occurs for alphabetic languages with fundamentally different visual properties. Here we report a demonstration of the ILP for Arabic in which stimuli containing only the exterior letters of three-letter Arabic words and a nonsense pattern in the interior position were presented to fluent Arabic readers. Despite being incomplete, participants perceived these stimuli as complete Arabic words with all letters visible in their appropriate positions, and were unable to distinguish between illusory and normal displays. This finding provides an important extension of the original ILP and suggests that alphabetic languages may be widely susceptible to the phenomenon and reading generally may occur as a process augmented by illusory percepts

Programme of the 21st European Conference on Eye Movements

About ECEM ECEM was initiated by Rudolf Groner (Bern), Dieter Heller (Bayreuth at the time) and Henk Breimer (Tilburg) in the 198 to provide a forum for an interdisciplinary group of scientists interested in eye movements. Since the inaugural meeting in Bern, the conference has been held every two years in different venues across Europe until 2021, when it was planned to take place in Leicester but was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic. It was decided to hold the meeting in Leicester in August 2022 instead, and as an in person meeting rather than an online or hybrid event. Incidentally, the present meeting is the third time the conference has come to the English East Midlands, now in Leicester following previous meetings in the neighbouring cities of Derby and Nottingham. The sites of previous ECEMs and webpages can be found here

A further look at postview effects in reading: An eye-movements study of influences from the left of fixation

When reading from left to right, useful information acquired during each fixational pause is widely assumed to extend 14 to 15 characters to the right of fixation but just 3 to 4 characters to the left, and certainly no further than the beginning of the fixated word. However, this leftward extent is strikingly small and seems inconsistent with other aspects of reading performance and with the general horizontal symmetry of visual input. Accordingly, 2 experiments were conducted to examine the influence of text located to the left of fixation during each fixational pause using an eye-tracking paradigm in which invisible boundaries were created in sentence displays. Each boundary corresponded to the leftmost edge of each word so that, as each sentence was read, the normal letter content of text to the left of each fixated word was corrupted by letter replacements that were either visually similar or visually dissimilar to the originals. The proximity of corrupted text to the left of fixation was maintained at 1, 2, 3, or 4 words from the left boundary of each fixated word. In both experiments, relative to completely normal text, reading performance was impaired when each type of letter replacement was up to 2 words to the left of fixated words but letter replacements further from fixation produced no impairment. These findings suggest that key aspects of reading are influenced by information acquired during each fixational pause from much further leftward than is usually assumed. Some of the implications of these findings for reading are discussed

Outage Detection via Real-time Social Stream Analysis: Leveraging the Power of Online Complaints

Over the past couple of years, Netflix has significantly expanded its online streaming offerings, which now encompass multiple delivery platforms and thousands of titles available for instant view. This paper documents the design and development of an outage detection system for the online services provided by Netflix. Unlike other internal quality control measures used at Netflix, this system uses only publicly available information: the tweets, or Twitter posts, that mention the word “Netflix,” and has been developed and deployed externally, on servers independent of the Netflix infrastructure. This paper discussed the system and provides assessment of the accuracy of its real-time detection and alert mechanisms