Semantic Feedback Research Articles

Toward a frontal lobe disconnection model of deep dyslexia: The role of semantic feedback in phonological false memories

We use a false memory paradigm to investigate the extent to which phonologically relations of a target word may be implicated in semantically driven access of that target word. We are specifically interested in understanding how access to orthography may limit the scope of this implication. Our interest in these questions is directly motivated by the claim that the probability of deep dyslexics making a semantic error in reading a word is affected by the number of close phonological relations of the word (Buchanan, L., Hildebrandt, N., & MacKinnon, G. E. (1994). Phonological processing of non-words by a deep dyslexic patient: A rowse is implicitly a rose. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 8, 163–181; Buchanan, L., Hildebrandt, N., & MacKinnon, G. E. (1996). Phonological processing of non-words in deep dyslexia: Typical and independent? Journal of Neurolinguistics, 9, 113–133). We use the study list in a false memory paradigm to semantically prime words. We look for false recognition effects among phonological relations of the semantically primed words in both modalities, with and without simultaneous orthographic overlap. The critical lures of interest in the experiments are words that are related by orthographic or phonological overlap to the unseen semantic target. We found increased false recognition rates for phonological associates of the unseen semantically-primed target in the auditory modality, only among words with no orthographic overlap with the unseen semantically-primed target. The locus of overlap and the phonological neighborhood size of the phonological relation also plays a role in the false memory rate. In a related experiment, we showed that the phonological neighborhood and concreteness of critical lures also mediates the probability of a semantic false memory. These results are discussed with respect to a frontal lobe disconnection theory of deep dyslexia, which posits that semantic errors in deep dyslexia are result from impoverished constraints to prefrontal regions that are implicated in semantic and phonological access of written words.

Semantic neighborhood effects on the recognition of ambiguous words.

The effect of semantic neighborhood on the processing of ambiguous words was examined in two lexical decision experiments. Semantic neighborhood was defined in terms of semantic set size and network connectivity. In Experiment 1, the variables of semantic set size, network connectivity, and ambiguity were crossed. An ambiguity advantage was observed only within small-set low-connectivity words. In Experiment 2, the effect of network connectivity on the processing of words of high and low meaning relatedness was examined. Participants responded more rapidly to words of high meaning relatedness, relative to words of low meaning relatedness, but only within high-connectivity words. These results are interpreted within a framework in which both semantic feedback processes and meaning-level competition can affect the recognition of semantically ambiguous words.

Ambiguity and synonymy effects in lexical decision, naming, and semantic categorization tasks: Interactions between orthography, phonology, and semantics.

In this article, ambiguity and synonymy effects were examined in lexical decision, naming, and semantic categorization tasks. Whereas the typical ambiguity advantage was observed in lexical decision and naming, an ambiguity disadvantage was observed in semantic categorization. In addition, a synonymy effect (slower latencies for words with many synonyms than for words with few synonyms) was observed in lexical decision and naming but not in semantic categorization. These results suggest that (a) an ambiguity disadvantage arises only when a task requires semantic processing, (b) the ambiguity advantage and the synonymy disadvantage in lexical decision and naming are due to semantic feedback, and (c) these effects are determined by the nature of the feedback relationships from semantics to orthography and phonology.

The Desert environment

The Desert software engineering environment is a suite of tools developed to enhance programmer productivity through increased tool integration. It introduces an inexpensive form of data integration to provide additional tool capabilities and information sharing among tools, uses a common editor to give high-quality semantic feedback and to integrate different types of software artifacts, and builds virtual files on demand to address specific tasks. All this is done in an open and extensible environment capable of handling large software systems.

THESEUS++: A high level user interface toolkit for graphical applications

THESEUS++ is an object-oriented high level user interface toolkit especially designed to ease development of application-specific interaction with 2 1 2 D graphics. THESEUS++ enforces the separation between the application and user interface in a flexible way. These parts of the dialogue, that don't require application-specific knowledge, can be described on a high level of abstraction, while semantic feedback on a low level is possible for those dialogue cycles needing application knowledge. This is accomplished by the following features: • • A description model for the separate specification of interaction components like prompt, feedback, and semantics on each level of the interaction hierarchy • • Dynamic composition mechanisms both for the definition of complex interactions (dialogue hierarchy) and for complex graphical objects (picture hierarchy) • • Support for constraint-based direct manipulation of application-defined graphics including continuous interactions like dragging and stretching • • Mechanisms to support extensibility by new classes of domain-specific interaction techniques and graphical objects. THESEUS++ has been implemented in object-oriented C++ on top of X Window System and OSF/Motif.

BD-UIMS: How it supports semantic feedback and direct manipulation

In this paper we present some results from our research on representation methods and architectural model of UIMS, suitable for accommodating various interactive styles. By roughly describing an experimental system of BD-UIMS, we lay emphasis on how to support direct manipulation and semantic feedback. Particular attention is given to a simple conceptual model of user interface as well. Based on this modek, the designing process of user interface is rather easy. Although current work is under DOS environment, the approach of transplanting it to UNIX is being developed.

Kaleidoscope: a cooperative menu-guided query interface (SQL version)

Kaleidoscope's approach is presented in the context of seeking improvement in the usability of interactive structured query language (SQL) interfaces. The system's cooperation is summarized as proposing valid query constituents step-by-step and providing lexical and semantic feedback immediately to users. To implement this intraquery guidance, the context-free grammar (CFG) is extended to capture the constraints useful for intraquery guidance, and the knowledge useful for pruning nonsensical queries and providing semantic feedback is articulated. For the SQL interface, this knowledge includes a strong domain concept, functional dependency, and integrity constraint rules, which can be acquired once in the database design step. The same types of knowledge are useful both for postquery cooperation and intraquery guidance. As SQL is supported bv virtually all database management system (DBMS) vendors, the approach presents a practical solution for casual database access. >

Interactive specification of flexible user interface displays

One of the problems with conventional UIMSs is that very often there is no graphical way to specify interfaces. This paper describesOPUS, the user interface editor of thePenguimsUIMS. This system allows the presentation component of graphical user interfaces to be specified interactively in a graphical notation without explicit programming. The Penguims UIMS supports an underlying model of computation based loosely on spreadsheets. In particular, it supports incremental computations based on a system of equations (one-way constraints) over a set of named values (spreadsheet cells). These equations are used to provide immediate feedback at all levels of the interface. They are used to incrementally determine the position and dynamic appearance of the individual interactor objects that make up the interface. They are also used to connect the presentation directly to underlying application data thereby supporting semantic feedback. The OPUS user interface editor employs a special graphical notation for specifying the presentation component of a user interface. This notation allows the power of the underlying computational model to be expressed simply and quickly. The resulting presentations are very flexible in nature. They can automatically respond to changes in the size and position of display objects and can directly support derivation of their appearance from application data objects.

UIMS support for direct manipulation interfaces

Recently direct manipulation interfaces have received a lot of attention. The direct manipulation paradigm seems to offer significant advantages, particularly for novice users. In this paper we will consider what direct manipulation is, what this means to user interface management systems, and what we should do about it. We will conclude that to support direct manipulation, syntax should be de-emphasized and decentralized, the presentation component of the system should be made more flexible than most exiting systems, and feedback, particularly semantic feedback, is very important and should be supported in a much more automatic fashion.