Bilingual episodic memory: an introduction

Our current models of bilingual memory are essentially accounts of semantic memory whose goal is to explain bilingual lexical access to underlying imagistic and conceptual referents. While this research has included episodic memory, it has focused largely on recall for words, phrases, and sentences in the service of understanding the structure of semantic memory. Building on the four papers in this special issue, this article focuses on larger units of episodic memory(from quotidian events with simple narrative form to complex autobiographical memories) in service of developing a model of bilingual episodic memory. This requires integrating theory and research on how culture-specific narrative traditions inform encoding and retrieval with theory and research on the relation between(monolingual) semantic and episodic memory(Schank, 1982; Schank & Abelson, 1995; Tulving, 2002). Then, taking a cue from memory-based text processing studies in psycholinguistics(McKoon & Ratcliff, 1998), we suggest that as language forms surface in the progressive retrieval of features of an event, they trigger further forms within the same language serving to guide a within-language/ within-culture retrieval

Communicative success in spatial dialogue: The impact of functional features and dialogue strategies

This paper addresses the impact of dialogue strategies and functional features of spatial arrangements on communicative success. To examine the sharing of cognition between two minds in order to achieve a joint goal, we collected a corpus of 24 extended German-language dialogues in a referential communication task that involved furnishing a dolls’ house. Results show how successful communication, as evidenced by correct placement of furniture items, is affected by a) functionality of the furniture arrangement, b) previous task experience, and c) dialogue features such as description length and orientation information. To enhance research in this area, our 'Dolldialogue' corpus is now available as a free resource on www.dolldialogue.spac

Ontology in Coq for a Guided Message Composition

International audienceNatural language generation is based on messages that represent meanings , and goals that are the usual starting points for communicate. How to help people to provide this conceptual input or, in other words, how to communicate thoughts to the computer? In order to express something, one needs to have something to express as an idea, a thought or a concept. The question is how to represent this. In 2009, Michael Zock, Paul Sabatier and Line Jakubiec-Jamet suggested the building of a resource composed of a linguistically motivated ontology, a dictionary and a graph generator. The ontology guides the user to choose among a set of concepts (or words) to build the message from; the dictionary provides knowledge of how to link the chosen elements to yield a message (compositional rules); the graph generator displays the output in visual form (message graph representing the user's input). While the goal of the ontology is to generate (or analyse) sentences and to guide message composition (what to say), the graph's function is to show at an intermediate level the result of the encoding process. The Illico system already proposes a way to help a user for generating (or analyzing) sentences and guiding their composition. Another system, the Drill Tutor, is an exercise generator whose goal is to help people to become fluent in a foreign language. It helps people (users have to make choices from the interface in order to build their messages) to produce a sentence expressing a message from an idea (or a concept) to its linguistic realization (or a correct sentence given in a foreign language). These two systems led us to consider the representation of the conceptual information into a symbolic language; this representation is encoded in a logic system in order to automatically check conceptual well-formedness of messages. This logic system is the Coq system used here only for its high level language. Coq is based on a typed λ-calculus. It is used for analysing conceptual input interpreted as types and also for specifying general definitions representing messages. These definitions are typed and they will be instanciated for type-checking the conceptual well-formedness of messages. 2 Line Jakubiec-Jame

The Spread of ICT and Productivity Growth: Is Europe really lagging behind in the New Economy?

The economic performance of some OECD countries over the past decade, most notably the United States, has renewed the interest of analysts and policy makers on economic growth and on how policy can eventually support it. This report sheds some light on this issue by relying on harmonised macro and sectoral data for OECD countries and a unique cross-country firm-level dataset. This allows to address a number of issues. What are the key factors explaining differences in output and productivity performances across OECD countries? What is the role of ICT-producing industry and the ICT-driven capital deepening in explaining the different growth patterns of countries? Does the adoption of IC technologies require organisational changes and/or changes in the composition of inputs? What is the contribution of new firms to overall productivity growth in general and in ICT-related sectors? Do ICT-industries show stronger firm and employment turnover rates? Is there any relationship between the spread of ICT and institutional features of the product and labour markets? For example, do stringent regulations on start-ups (as well as those affecting incumbents) affect the diffusion of ICT? Do differences in labour market policy and institutions explain different patterns of adoption of new technologies?Macro data clearly point to widening disparities in growth performance across the OECD countries, even on the basis of cyclically-adjusted series. These disparities are related to differences in labour utilisation rather than to widening differences in labour productivity growth rates: i.e. higher growth rates in output per capita observed in a number of countries have been accompanied by improvements in the utilisation of labour, while sluggish employment in others (mainly in continental Europe) have not been fully compensated by higher labour productivity growth, thereby leading to a further slowdown in output growth. However, observed changes in growth patterns in some countries are also the result of the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution. In particular, it is argued that those countries that have developed an ICT-producing industry -- and/or where other industries have been quick in adopting highly productive ICT equipment -- have been able to shift to higher output and productivity growth paths. In this respect, the United States and some smaller countries (e.g. Australia, Ireland) have benefited the most from this ICT revolution, while most large European economies are still lagging behind. The sectoral and micro analysis also reveals important cross-country differences. The U.S. economy seems to be better able to acquire comparative advantage in rapidly growing ICT market segments than most of its trading partners. At the micro level, there seems to be a different degree of "market experimentation" in the United States compared with Europe, even if aggregate firm turnover rates are similar. The findings suggest that in the U.S. new firms tend to be smaller (relative to average incumbent) and less productive when compared with their European counterparts, but, if successful, they also tend to grow much more rapidly.The micro evidence reported in the paper offers additional elements in our discussion of a growth-enhancing policy setting. Our results seem to suggest that certain institutional and regulatory settings may reduce the degree of market experimentation of new firms. This, in turn, could lower the speed with which a country shifts to a new technology, thereby offering an interpretation to the observed differences in innovation and adoption across the Atlantic. For example, low administrative costs of start-ups and not unduly strict regulations on labour adjustments in the United States, may stimulate potential entrepreneurs to start on a small scale, test the market and, if successful with their business plan, expand rapidly to reach the minimum efficient scale. In contrast, higher entry and adjustment costs in Europe may stimulate a pre-market selection of business plans with less market experimentation. Our econometric results lend some support to these considerations. By using pooled data (country, industry and time) we find that stringent regulatory settings in the product and labour markets contribute to hinder innovation activity and the adoption of leading technologies

Metaphoric coherence: Distinguishing verbal metaphor from `anomaly\u27

Theories and computational models of metaphor comprehension generally circumvent the question of metaphor versus “anomaly” in favor of a treatment of metaphor versus literal language. Making the distinction between metaphoric and “anomalous” expressions is subject to wide variation in judgment, yet humans agree that some potentially metaphoric expressions are much more comprehensible than others. In the context of a program which interprets simple isolated sentences that are potential instances of cross‐modal and other verbal metaphor, I consider some possible coherence criteria which must be satisfied for an expression to be “conceivable” metaphorically. Metaphoric constraints on object nominals are represented as abstracted or extended along with the invariant structural components of the verb meaning in a metaphor. This approach distinguishes what is preserved in metaphoric extension from that which is “violated”, thus referring to both “similarity” and “dissimilarity” views of metaphor. The role and potential limits of represented abstracted properties and constraints is discussed as they relate to the recognition of incoherent semantic combinations and the rejection or adjustment of metaphoric interpretations

Toward a script theory of guidance in computer-supported collaborative learning

This article presents an outline of a script theory of guidance for computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). With its four types of components of internal and external scripts (play, scene, role, and scriptlet) and seven principles, this theory addresses the question how CSCL practices are shaped by dynamically re-configured internal collaboration scripts of the participating learners. Furthermore, it explains how internal collaboration scripts develop through participation in CSCL practices. It emphasizes the importance of active application of subject matter knowledge in CSCL practices, and it prioritizes transactive over non-transactive forms of knowledge application in order to facilitate learning. Further, the theory explains how external collaboration scripts modify CSCL practices and how they influence the development of internal collaboration scripts. The principles specify an optimal scaffolding level for external collaboration scripts and allow for the formulation of hypotheses about the fading of external collaboration scripts. Finally, the article points towards conceptual challenges and future research questions

Agents’ interaction in virtual storytelling

In this paper we describe a fully implemented prototype for interactive storytelling using the Unreal engine. Using a sit-com like scenario as an example of how the dynamic interactions between agents and/or the user dramatise the emerging story. Hierarchical Task Networks (HTNs) are formalised using AND/OR graphs, which are used to describe the many possible variations of the story at a sub-goal level, and the set of all behaviours (from a narrative perspective) of the primary actors at a terminal action level. We introduc