Attention To Speakers Research Articles

Effects of Visual Priming and Event Orientation on Word Order Choice in Russian Sentence Production.

Existing research shows that distribution of the speaker’s attention among event’s protagonists affects syntactic choice during sentence production. One of the debated issues concerns the extent of the attentional contribution to syntactic choice in languages that put stronger emphasis on word order arrangement rather than the choice of the overall syntactic frame. To address this, the current study used a sentence production task, in which Russian native speakers were asked to verbally describe visually perceived transitive events. Prior to describing the target event, a visual cue directed the participants’ attention to the location of either the agent or the patient of the subsequently presented visual event. In addition, we also manipulated event orientation (agent-left vs. agent-right) as another potential contributor to syntactic choice. The number of patient-initial sentences was the dependent variable compared between conditions. First, the obtained results replicated the effect of visual cueing on the word order in Russian language: more patient-initial sentences in patient cued condition. Second, we registered a novel effect of event orientation: Russian native speakers produced more patient-initial sentences after seeing events developing from right to left as opposed to left-to-right events. Our study provides new evidence about the role of the speaker’s attention and event orientation in syntactic choice in language with flexible word order.

Motor (but not auditory) attention affects syntactic choice.

Understanding the determinants of syntactic choice in sentence production is a salient topic in psycholinguistics. Existing evidence suggests that syntactic choice results from an interplay between linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and a speaker’s attention to the elements of a described event represents one such factor. Whereas multimodal accounts of attention suggest a role for different modalities in this process, existing studies examining attention effects in syntactic choice are primarily based on visual cueing paradigms. Hence, it remains unclear whether attentional effects on syntactic choice are limited to the visual modality or are indeed more general. This issue is addressed by the current study. Native English participants viewed and described line drawings of simple transitive events while their attention was directed to the location of the agent or the patient of the depicted event by means of either an auditory (monaural beep) or a motor (unilateral key press) lateral cue. Our results show an effect of cue location, with participants producing more passive-voice descriptions in the patient-cued conditions. Crucially, this cue location effect emerged in the motor-cue but not (or substantially less so) in the auditory-cue condition, as confirmed by a reliable interaction between cue location (agent vs. patient) and cue type (auditory vs. motor). Our data suggest that attentional effects on the speaker’s syntactic choices are modality-specific and limited to the visual and motor, but not the auditory, domain.

Utterance-final -ketun in spoken Korean: A particle for managing information structure in discourse

This paper explores the functions of the utterance-final particle -ketun in Modern Spoken Korean. In it, I analyze naturally occurring spontaneous conversational data to provide a unified account of utterance-final -ketun's several apparently disparate functions, arguing that its basic function is to manage the flow of information in discourse. Specifically, I claim that -ketun presents a pragmatic assertion that, in the speaker's view, should be or should have been a pragmatic presupposition, as if it were a pragmatic presupposition. The data analyzed in this study suggest that -ketun is a useful device by which speakers can ease the disorderly flow of information in spontaneous conversations, in particular to repair or avoid potential hitches in the order of presentation. This basic information-management function can be extended to highlight or manage mismatches between the speaker's and the hearer's states of knowledge, as part of either politeness strategies or impoliteness strategies. Collectively, the usages of -ketun discussed in this paper suggest that it is a highly intersubjective marker, in that it reflects the speaker's attention to the hearer's state of knowledge and changes in that state of knowledge.

Participation during First Social Encounters in Schizophrenia

BackgroundPatients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia are socially excluded. The aim of this study was to investigate how patients participate in first encounters with unfamiliar healthy participants, who are unaware of their diagnosis.MethodsPatterns of participation were investigated during interactions involving three-people. Three conversation roles were analysed: (i) speaker, (ii) primary recipient- focus of the speaker’s attention and (iii) secondary recipient- unaddressed individual. Twenty patient interactions (1 patient, 2 healthy controls) and 20 control interactions (3 healthy participants) were recorded and motion captured in 3D. The participation of patients and their partners, in each conversation role, was compared with controls at the start, middle and end of the interaction. The relationship between patients’ participation, their symptoms and the rapport others experienced with them was also explored.ResultsAt the start of the interaction patients spoke less (ß = −.639, p = .02) and spent more time as secondary recipient (ß = .349, p = .02). Patients’ participation at the middle and end of the interaction did not differ from controls. Patients’ partners experienced poorer rapport with patients who spent more time as a primary recipient at the start of the interaction (Rho(11) = −.755, p<.01). Patients’ participation was not associated with symptoms.ConclusionDespite their increased participation over time, patients’ initial participation appears to be associated with others’ experience of rapport with them. Thus, the opening moments of patients’ first encounters appear to be interpersonally significant. Further investigation of patient and others’ behaviour during these critical moments is warranted in order to understand, and possibly develop interventions to address, the difficulties schizophrenia patients experience here.

Word Learning with Multiple Cues in Children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder: Evidence from Eye Movements

Several previous studies consistently reported that children with Autistic Spectrum Disorder(ASD) had impairments in referential word learning when they are provided with only social eye gaze cues. More recent studies, however, suggested that children with ASD could use a speaker's gaze direction to learn words when there were abundant additional perceptual cues enhancing the salience of the referent object. But their findings could not exclude the possibility that children in these studies just relied on perceptual cues to guide their word learning without noticing any social cues. In addition, it is also unknown that how ASD children in late childhood should respond when social cues conflict with perceptual cues. In order to examine the relative roles of social cues on word learning task compared to perceptual cues, the study recorded the eye movements of 18 verbally able children with ASD(M ages = 134.83 months) and their typical developing peers matched on receptive language and non-verbal intelligence(M ages = 71.61 months) while these two groups were completing word learning tasks under the following conditions: when gaze cues were no provided(No Gaze condition), when gaze cues were consistent with perceptual cues(Consistent Gaze condition), and when gaze cues were inconsistent with perceptual cues(Inconsistent Gaze condition). We found that, like typically developing(TD) children, children with ASD would map the novel word to the interesting object in the No Gaze condition and in the Consistent Gaze condition and the performance in the Consistent Gaze condition was better than that in the No Gaze condition. We also found that the ASD children would overlook perceptual cues to follow the speaker's attention focus to pick up the boring object in the Inconsistent Gaze condition. Eye movement data results showed that: 1) the correct rate of first gaze following(the first saccades from face to target objects/ the first saccades from face to target and non-target objects) and the frequency of gaze following(saccades from face to target objects) in ASD children were lower than TD children; 2) the proportion of duration on eye region(fixation to eye region/ fixation to face region) in ASD children was higher than TD children; 3)there were no differences between two groups in the proportion of fixation to interesting object(fixation to interesting objects/ fixation to interesting and boring objects) and the proportion of gaze following(saccades from face to target objects/ saccades from face to target and non-target objects). The results illustrated that although social cues facilitated word learning in autism in overlapping cues condition and children with ASD also weighted social cues more heavily than perceptual cues, the style of capturing social cues in ASD children were different from TD children. They could not flexibly distribute attention resource according to the change in social scene, captured social information with the analytic way of feature process, and lacked the sensitivity of social information and the understanding of social meaning of social information.

Peer assessment of oral presentations: effects of student gender, university affiliation and participation in the development of assessment criteria

Peer assessment provides a useful mechanism to develop many positive qualities in students studying in higher education (HE). Potential influences on peer‐awarded marks include student qualities such as gender, HE background (e.g. university affiliation) and participation in the development of the assessment criteria. Many studies that have investigated peer assessment have placed great emphasis on marks from a single tutor, or very few tutors, from a single university. This study examined grades awarded by 11 tutors (affiliated with four universities) to oral presentations delivered on a residential field course by second‐year undergraduate students from two universities studying environmental or biological disciplines. Student assessors awarded marks of fairly high precision (correlating strongly with tutor grades) but averaged 5% higher than their tutors (i.e. of only moderate accuracy). Marginally higher marks (circa 1.6%) were awarded by student assessors to speakers studying at the same university. Gender influences were detected as males tended to grade other male speakers very slightly more highly than female speakers. Marks from females were unaffected by speaker gender. Students who participated in the development of the assessment criteria did not achieve higher grades for their presentations. However, when these ‘participants’ were assessing, they awarded lower marks than their peers (i.e. closer to, but not as low as, those awarded by tutors). Lower marks were also awarded during the middle of sessions, possibly resulting from factors associated with motivation and attention of speakers and markers. Overall, the potential biases in marking by naive assessors examined in this study may influence the validity of marks generated by peer assessment schemes, but the experience of this type of assessment had positive effects on those involved.

The White Fire of Time (review)

already hissing . . ./[what] they know to the flowers on the dawn curtain." In "After Rain," the final lines offer an important insight into Grennan's view of the creative struggle. He writes of "getting to the other side of turbulence," an indirect reference that stands up much better than some of his other, more seti-conscious comparisons to the process. In "Detati," the book's final poem, the speaker sounds opportunistic, if not possessive, as he describes a hawk's attack on a surprised robin. Though the observation leads him to "understand/how a poem can happen," the effect is that the bird almost seems caged in by the speaker 's attention. Here and elsewhere, a great deal of feeling gets sacrificed from the image. For the most part, however, Grennan 's coUection strikes the right balance . With Bonnard as a model, he shows the mistake of trying too hard to impose harmony on a subject rarely willing, and certainly not deserving, to be tamed. It's a task Grennan accomplishes without falling too often into the same trap himself. (JL) The White Fire of Time by Ellen Hinsey Wesleyan U.P, 2002, 93 pp., $12.95 (paper) EUenHinsey's The WhiteFireofTime deals with theology, with the pursuit of knowledge in aU of its forms and with how that pursuit defines us as human beings. These are certainly ambitious themes, not often found in contemporary American poetry. And despite the repeated biblical references in this new coUection, these are much more than religious poems. Indeed, Hinsey wants nothing less than to create a new cosmology, a mythos with which to resuscitate the old BibUcal stories and imbue them with a new relevancy. Hinsey first burst into national prominence with Cities of Memory, which won the 1995 Yale Series of Younger Poets award. The strength ofthis earlier collection lay initslyric exploration ofhistorical and cultural themes, especiaUy in how the poet's images and voice were used to estabUsh connections between this history and the present. This new collection, however, moves in a markedly different direction . The first prose "Fragment" introduces us to the hero of these poems, the so-called "fragile I." She is a hero in the sense that it is her spiritual journey that becomes the metaphor for the evolution of all moral and ethical human consciousness . This journey is one from innocence to experience, for the I "must be tested"—must have and overcome negative experience—in order to evolve. Poems such as "On the Nature of Things" and "On the Endurance of the Hesh of the World" work then to inform this journey. The hero must "abandon simpUcity and climb the tilted ladder of paradox," as it is only through this movement outward, away from what is safe, that she can find "where the soul is hiding from evU" and reclaim it. WhUe other reviewers have noted, with reason, the resonance of Dante and MUton in Hinsey's poems, one wonders how anyone could read this coUection and not think of Blake. Too many parallels exist to have been The Missouri Review · 193 accidental. Both poets reteU bibUcal stories in a contemporary (though elevated) language, attempting to delineate through this retelling a cohesive, redemptive theology. The necessity of experience to Hinsey's theology, the idea that human salvation arises out of action—both these elements also have correlations in Blake. Structurally, the "Thirteen Aphorisms on the Nature of Evil" is certainly reminiscent of Blake's "Proverbs of Hell," and the various prose "Fragments" are simUar in both construct and theme to a number of Blake's prose passages as well. Hinsey's coUection is anything but derivative, however. Reclaiming one's soul is a central theme, but the path to this is very different than in Blake. The self-awareness that serves as the prerequisite to propermoral and ethical acts can only come through experiencing its opposite, for "only firsthand knowledge ofevU can transform meditation into action." The problem, according to Hinsey, ties in the temptation that evU represents, a temptation strengthened by the love evil "borrows from the heart." Indeed, whUe love, in aU its aspects, is a key element to salvation in Blake's work...

Discussion at spring convention: Synchronous-motor drive for rubber mills

S. H. Mortensen: Mr. Drake's paper recognizes the importance of the application of dynamic braking to motors driving rubber mills and similar industrial installations where quick stops are necessary for safety reasons. The importance of this was brought to the speaker's attention in 1918, in connection with the design and operation of a 500-h. p., 450-rev. per min., self-starting synchronous motor, geared to a four-roll rubber-mill drive in the plant of the B. F. Goodrich Company in Akron, Ohio. This motor was installed for power-factor improvement and as it replaced a wound-rotor induction motor, it was connected to the mill by means of the magnetic clutch which formed part of the original motor drive, together with a solenoid-operated brake for stopping the mill in case of accident. As this installation was a novelty at that time, extensive tests were made on this motor. These proved not only its suitability for this type of drive but also that it did have ample starting torque to bring the mill up to speed with the clutch energized. Its pull-out was beyond any load that could be put upon it by overloading the mills with the toughest rubber available.