Reading Of Text Research Articles

Prediction in reading: A review of predictability effects, their theoretical implications, and beyond.

Historically, prediction during reading has been considered an inefficient and cognitively expensive processing mechanism given the inherently generative nature of language, which allows upcoming text to unfold in an infinite number of possible ways. This article provides an accessible and comprehensive review of the psycholinguistic research that, over the past 40 or so years, has investigated whether readers are capable of generating predictions during reading, typically via experiments on the effects of predictability (i.e., how well a word can be predicted from its prior context). Five theoretically important issues are addressed: What is the best measure of predictability? What is the functional relationship between predictability and processing difficulty? What stage(s) of processing does predictability affect? Are predictability effects ubiquitous? What processes do predictability effects actually reflect? Insights from computational models of reading about how predictability manifests itself to facilitate the reading of text are also discussed. This review concludes by arguing that effects of predictability can, to a certain extent, be taken as demonstrating evidence that prediction is an important but flexible component of real-time language comprehension, in line with broader predictive accounts of cognitive functioning. However, converging evidence, especially from concurrent eye-tracking and brain-imaging methods, is necessary to refine theories of prediction.

READING MATERIALS IN THE LIFE TODAY ENGLISH BOOK: EFL TEACHERS’ VIEWS

Book is a vital media in EFL Learning process. Life Today book is an English book that becomes one of the primary reading references. However, this book likely has not been widely used by teachers in Indonesia because it is still new. It is interesting to study more on this based on the teachers who have used it. This study examines the reading materials in the English Life Today book of 12 grade in Senior High School level based on EFL Teachers’ view. This research applied mix-method with the use of close-ended and open-ended questionnaires to obtain the opinions of 50 English teachers in Jakarta and some vicinities areas. After gathering the data, the researchers tabulated, analyzed, and interpreted it systematically. The findings showed that 50 EFL teachers dominantly gave positive views towards reading materials in the English Life Today book based on its reading contents aspect, language use, pre-and post-reading, and presentation aspects. The EFL teachers also gave constructive suggestion including the more variation topics need to be added, the extra thesaurus also need to be provided, and the separated reading texts needs to be identified to differentiate low and high students’ level.

Exposure to information about sexual crimes and its relationship to perceptions of social threats and belief in a just world

Purpose The purpose of the two online experimental studies was to examine how information about threats related to sexual crimes influences personal beliefs regarding social threats (in line with the finite pool of worry concept) and belief in a just world, as proposed by Melvin Lerner. Design/methodology/approach In the first experiment (n = 256), female participants were presented with press information about a sexual crime that occurred at a student concert. Different groups were informed whether the perpetrator was apprehended (or not) and asked to indicate the punishment they thought should be imposed. In the second experiment (n = 251), participants in the experimental group were asked to read texts about various threats that may concern them. Findings In both experiments, the authors measured the perceived risk of being a victim of a sexual crime (and, in Study 1, other threats) as well as belief in just world (at both personal and general levels). Analysis of results has shown that participants’ focus on one threat did not reduce their concerns about other threats. However, belief in just world appears to be negatively associated with the fear of being a victim of a sexual crime. Originality/value The findings concern the relationship between the sense of threat and belief in a just world. In this regard, both of the studies consistently showed that the threats the authors induced did not affect the level of belief in a just world. However, the second experiment revealed that belief in a just world is related to the fear of being raped. Belief in a just world serves as a foundation for good adaptation and functioning. It provides cognitive control, motivates hard work and long-term goal-setting and gives life meaning (e.g. Dalbert, 1999; Dalbert and Sallay, 2004; Sutton and Winnard, 2007). Therefore, a woman’s fear of being a victim of rape has implications that extend beyond this narrowly defined issue.

Pre-9/11 Islamophobia: A Contrapuntal Reading of Don DeLillo’s Falling Man

Don DeLillo’s Falling Man reproduces the same Orientalist mantra of the Muslim terrorist. Although he is much celebrated for writing thrilling terrorism and assassination novels long before the 9/11 event, many critics situated his Falling Man within the 9/11 neo-Orientalist framework. This study argues that the 9/11 occurrence (while acknowledging its significance) is not the only trigger behind DeLillo’s representation of Muslims in his novel. As such, the study underscores DeLillo’s ideological inclinations by examining his records and the contextual circumstances that transpired before 9/11. By rereading Falling Man, this study situates the investigation within three parameters: the Iranian Revolution, the Rushdie affair and the Clash of Civilisations thesis, thus appropriating the novel within its Islamophobic implicature. Edward Said’s theory of contrapuntal reading, which urges a nonconventional reading of a canonical text, is employed as the theoretical underpinning of this study.

Text analysis and optimization strategy of an app’s privacy policy from the perspective of dual perception: taking Chinese shopping apps as an example

Purpose This paper aims to conduct an in-depth analysis of the shortcomings of apps’ privacy policies and to propose improvement and optimization strategies, which are of great significance for establishing a transparent and responsible privacy protection framework that ensures compliant collection and use of users’ information and effective protection of their privacy. Design/methodology/approach This paper obtained privacy policy texts for 100 shopping apps through Web crawlers and manual downloads. Based on the perspective of perceived usefulness, thematic analysis is conducted through the latent Dirichlet allocation topic model and comparison with existing policies. Based on the perspective of perceived ease of use, readability analysis is conducted through content analysis and formula calculation. Findings The apps privacy policies can be divided into seven themes. The authors benchmark these seven topics with the Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China, the E-Commerce Law of the People’s Republic of China and the General Data Protection Regulation. It is found that there are omissions in the information collection and use and juvenile protection of the existing apps. Through the indicators’ readability analysis and calculation, it is found that the existing apps privacy policies have good performance in the readability indicators such as naming method, frame directory and so on. However, text personalization and text readability need to be improved and optimized. Originality/value At the theoretical level, this paper constructs a model from the dual perception perspectives of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use and analyses the apps’ privacy policy texts at a fine-grained level. At the practical level, based on large-scale apps’ privacy policy text data, this paper conducts multi-dimensional research from theme analysis, authoritative law benchmarking analysis, content analysis and text readability calculation and analysis. At the same time, this paper identifies the current problems of apps’ privacy policies and puts forward countermeasure suggestions for their content improvement and optimization.

Vision assistant for visually impaired individuals

Visually impaired individuals face significant challenges in accessing environmental information, social interactions, and safety in their daily lives. This article aims to increase the independence of visually impaired individuals and simplify their daily lives using an AI-supported image and sound recognition system. The developed prototype is a pair of glasses consisting of a Raspberry Pi 4 microprocessor, integrated headphones, touch controls, and a powerful battery management system. The electronic diagram includes the integration of a camera and microprocessor. The AI algorithms developed successfully perform tasks such as object recognition, text reading, and facial recognition. The article provides a comprehensive literature review and introduces the prototype to visually impaired users. Based on the feedback from the introduction, the prototype's ease of use and effectiveness were evaluated, and improvements were made based on user feedback. The algorithms were tested for accuracy, with the prototype achieving a 78% accuracy score, close to GPT-4's 82%. Additionally, tests with 20 users resulted in an 85% user satisfaction rate.

The impact of interword spacing on inference processing during text reading: Evidence from eye movements

ABSTRACT Removing interword spacing has been shown to disrupt lower-level oculomotor processes and word identification during text reading. However, the impact of these disruptions on higher-level processes remains unclear. To examine the influence of spacing on inferential processing, we monitored eye movements while participants read spaced and unspaced passages that were strongly or weakly constrained toward an inference. Removing spaces disrupted reading fluency, as evidenced by longer reading times, longer fixation durations, reduced skipping, and shorter saccades. We also observed the effects of inferential constraint for spaced passages as characterized by longer reading times, more regressions, and longer regression-path durations for weakly than strongly constrained passages. However, these constraint effects were absent for unspaced passages, suggesting that removing spaces disrupts inferential processing. Our results are consistent with models of reading and discourse processing that assume that higher-level reading processes depend on the quality of lexical representations developed at earlier, word-level reading stages.

Development of an augmented reality (AR) glasses system for medical safety measures using artificial intelligence (AI)

Medical errors are not generally disclosed but they do happen and vary in severity. By prioritising patient safety, Dr Kohei Tanaka, a clinical engineer from the Tokyo University of Technology, wants to find a solution for preventing medical errors or, at the very least, ensuring they don’t escalate into serious incidents. The solution Tanaka is working on combines artificial intelligence (AI) with augmented reality (AR) glasses. The idea is that the glasses will provide medical professionals with accurate and reliable information at critical times. By providing them with rapid access to real-time data, the expectation is that this will reduce critical errors. As part of the validation process, newly qualified nurses will compare current training methods with training using his AR glasses and also complete a questionnaire on the viability of the glasses. So far, the researchers have been able to verify the retention of data provided through the glasses for a period of about three months and believe large-scale verification will reveal the mechanism of long-term memory in the future. By providing accurate, up-to-date information in a visual (still images and video) and auditory format, the glasses assist with the rapid delivery of critical data. However, there remain question marks regarding how much data can be effectively presented to the operator at the point of use as information overloading is to be avoided. The system included a voice-synthesised text reading guide as well as the display through the bone conduction earpiece within the device, which means the user can continue with the procedure while listening to the voice guide, reading reliance on visuals and thereby increasing safety.

Theory of Thomas Hobbes on the neccessity to move from the state of nature and form a state

This study demonstrated the theory of Thomas Hobbes on the necessity to move from the state of nature and form a state. Law is a prerequisite for ensuring peace, tranquillity and effective governance in a society. When law is in place, it fosters human beings' interaction with each other and creates a conducive environment for socio-economic empowerment. In the state of nature, according to Thomas Hobbes, there existed no government, no law, and nobody was above the other. There was no law, industry, civilisation, social life, economic and political order. If there was no law in place, then there was no morality. If there was no morality, then there was no justice or injustice. Life here was characterised by brutality, selfishness, and solitude and hence was short. The study was guided by Thomas Hobbes's political theory, which emphasises consent and consensus in the formation of government so as to move from the state of nature where life was unbearable. The study was library-based, and the researcher used a purposive sampling method to purposely sample three books that are inclined to materials related to Thomas Hobbes's political theory on the state of nature. The data was collected through reading texts, both published and unpublished. The location of the study was Chuka University Library. The study adopted a descriptive design and used a critical method that questions assumptions, examines the evidence, identifies biases, and strives for a deeper understanding of the state of nature and the necessity of forming a society. The study found that there is a need to have an organised society guided by law. The study recommended the need for equal distribution of resources.

Relevance of Thomas Hobbes's political theory in addressing the challenges facing the principle of public participation in Kenyan governance

This study sought to address the relevance of Thomas Hobbes's political theory in addressing the challenges facing the principle of public participation in Kenyan governance. Law brings order in the society, and it is a prerequisite for ensuring peace, tranquillity and effective governance in a society. Despite the principle of public participation being enshrined in the constitution, political leaders have not fully embraced it. The study was guided by Thomas Hobbes's political theory. This theory emphasises consent and consensus in the formation of government so as to move from the state of nature where life was unbearable. The study was library-based, and the researcher used a purposive sampling method to purposely sample four books that are inclined to materials related to Thomas Hobbes's political theory on the state of nature. The data was collected through reading texts, both published and unpublished. The location of the study was Chuka University Library. The study adopted a descriptive design and used a critical method that questions assumptions, examines evidence, identifies biases, and strives for a deeper understanding of the principle of Public participation under the constitution of Kenya. The study found that there is a need to have an organised society guided by law. The study recommended the need for the government to engage people in public participation so as to get their consent in developments and governance policies.

Along came this song

This article explores the use of songs in fantasy televisual media, considering what types of songs are being sung, where they are placed within the context of the show, and by whom they are being sung. I analyze elements of culture and character that enhance worldbuilding as well as explore the use of repetition through leitmotifs, context, and intertextual references. I focus on songs from The Witcher: Blood Origin , Game of Thrones , and The Witcher. Invoking Petra Zimmerman’s concept of the “semantic co-text” (2013), I examine the context of each song, including what occurs before and after the choice for characters to sing, considering what drives them to the point of song and what it adds to their internal story. This, combined with a hermeneutic approach to semiotic analysis, allows for a close reading of the lyric text. Finally, I draw together the analysis through a consideration of the phonaesthetic choices ( Fimi 2010 ) and the performance of each song as an act of “musicking” (Small 1998) to consider them as individual moments as well as connected motifs within the broader fantasy context. Songs in longform fantasy media enrich the fabric of the text and provide audiences textual clues to hook into and return to. Music is integral to cultural practices; therefore, when examining texts which create new fan communities and new fantastic contexts, it is imperative to pursue the elements which support interior authenticity and allow audiences to accept the context and authority of the story being told.

ENHANCING ESL LEARNERS READING COMPREHENSION AND MOTIVATION VIA AI-GENERATED PERSONALISED READING TEXTS

This study identifies the effect of AI-generated personalised reading texts on ESL learners’ reading comprehension and motivation at the secondary school level in Sabah, Malaysia. Drawing on the research of Jendia and Ismail (2023), the current study extends the exploration of AI’s potential in tailoring reading materials to cater to individual learner needs. Conducted with 20 students from SMK Desa Kencana, Lahad Datu, the study employed a mixed-methods approach that incorporates both quantitative (pre-assessment and post-assessment scores) and qualitative (open-ended questions) data. The findings reveal significant improvements in reading comprehension, specifically among low and intermediate-proficiency groups. Advanced learners, however, failed to show maximal gains from the intervention which suggests the need for materials challenging materials yet suitable for higher proficiency levels. The intervention’s effectiveness is due to the personalised and engaging nature of the AI-generated texts, which enhanced learners’ motivation and engagement. Qualitative feedback obtained from the students also indicates the relevance of the personalised materials in the classroom. Despite the positive outcomes, limitations such as small sample size, external factors, and convenience sampling that may affect the generalizability of data are recognized. The study concludes with practical and theoretical implications, recommending integrating AI-based personalised materials in ESL education to support differentiated instruction and meet diverse learning needs. Future research should consider more extensive yet diverse samples and control for external variables to validate and broaden these findings.

Viki LibraRy: collaborative hypertext browsing and navigation in virtual reality

ABSTRACT We present Viki LibraRy, a dynamically built library in virtual reality (VR) designed to visualise hypertext systems, with an emphasis on collaborative interaction and spatial immersion. Viki LibraRy goes beyond traditional methods of text distribution by providing a platform where users can share, process, and engage with textual information. It operates at the interface of VR, collaborative learning and spatial data processing to make reading tangible and memorable in a spatially mediated way. The article describes the building blocks of Viki LibraRy, its underlying architecture, and several use cases. It evaluates Viki LibraRy in comparison to a conventional web interface for text retrieval and reading. The article shows that Viki LibraRy provides users with spatial references for structuring their recall, so that they can better remember consulted texts and their meta-information (e.g. in terms of subject areas and content categories).

Women leaders lost in translation?: A Study in Romans 16:1-16

This paper sets out a study in the text, interpretation, translation, and reception history of key terms and phrases relating to the ministry of particular women in Romans 16:1–16. It aims to show the complexity of translation and interpretation and demonstrate the importance of careful reading of the Greek text. It argues that terms and phrases relating to the women have not always been given their wider sense, thereby diminishing or denying the (leadership) roles of women in the early church. The phrases investigated are: διάκονος (v1) and προστάτις πολλῶν (v. 2) relating to Phoebe; συνεργούς (v. 3) and κοπιάω (vv. 6, 12) relating to Prisca, Mary, Tryphena, Tryphosa and Persis; Ἰουνιαν (v. 7) and ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις (v. 7) relating to Junia.

Transitory sensitivity in automatic chemical kinetic mechanism analysis

AbstractDetailed chemical kinetic mechanisms are necessary for resolving many important chemical processes. As the chemistry of smaller molecules has become better grounded and quantum chemistry calculations have become cheaper, kineticists have become interested in constructing progressively larger kinetic mechanisms to model increasingly complex chemical processes. These large kinetic mechanisms prove incredibly difficult to refine and time‐consuming to interpret. Traditional sensitivity analysis on a large mechanism can range from inconvenient to practically impossible without special techniques to reduce the computational cost. We first present a new time‐local sensitivity analysis we term transitory sensitivity analysis. Transitory sensitivity analysis is demonstrated in an example to accurately identify traditionally sensitive reactions at an 18,000x speed up over traditional sensitivities. By fusing transitory sensitivity analysis with more traditional time‐local branching, pathway, and cluster analyses, we develop an algorithm for efficient automatic mechanism analysis. This automatic mechanism analysis at a time point is able to identify the reactions a target is most sensitive to using transitory sensitivity analysis and then propose hypotheses why the reaction might be sensitive using branching, pathway, and cluster analyses. We implement these algorithms within the reaction mechanism simulator (RMS) package, which enables us to report the automatic mechanism analysis results in highly readable text formats and in molecular flux diagrams.

Researching Organic Solar Cells from the Perspective of Literature Big Data Analysis

Solar cell research aims to improve power conversion efficiency (PCE). This field has an extensive body of literature on the Web of Science. For researchers, it is impossible to understand the development of the entire field comprehensively through traditional reading methods. Knowledge is recorded in the literature by text and numbers. Researchers acquire knowledge through literature surveying, text reading, and thinking. The conversion from text and numbers to knowledge can be automatically completed by machines, which can avoid path‐dependent perspectives. In this work, an intelligent machine learning method for literature structure delineation and information extraction is proposed. As an example, a knowledge base of organic solar cells (OSCs) is extracted including topic analysis of literature, numerical characteristics of performance, and material information. Seven major research directions of OSCs are identified. The correlations between key performance parameters, including PCE, short‐circuit current density (JSC), open‐circuit voltage (VOC), and fill factor (FF), are revealed from text mining. A donor–acceptor material map of PCE is constructed which provides a road map for OSCs, indicating the bottleneck of this field. Moreover, the method of machine intelligence developed here can be used in any other materials field, aiding a comprehensive understanding of the development quickly.

Training rapid automatized naming in children with developmental Dyslexia

ABSTRACT The recommended rehabilitation procedures for Developmental Dyslexia (DD) are not well defined, and there is currently a large debate on which therapeutic approaches are shown to be more useful and effective. Among the trainings focused on general dysfunctional cognitive processes associated with a reading disorder, recent studies suggested the efficacy of trainings on Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) compared to others. The present study was aimed at confirming the effectiveness of RAN training (RANt) to improve the reading performances of children with DD (n = 32) compared to children on a waiting list (WL, n = 25) and to children in different treatment groups, one following a text reading training (RT, n = 26) and the other combining RAN and text reading exercises (RANt+RT, n = 20), through an online platform that allows intensive and self-adaptive activities. Results confirmed the efficacy of RANt in improving reading speed and accuracy compared to the WL group (r2 ranging from small (.16) to medium (.48)) and found the absence of differences with the other active control groups. The single-subject level analysis confirmed the results, a high inter-subject variability in treatment response and pre-post differences were found. Further studies could consider such variability in the functional profile of the DD subjects, but RANt was confirmed to be a valid tool for improving decoding skills.

Rethinking a fundamentalist literalist reading of Mark 16:18 by some new prophetic churches

Some of the New Prophetic Churches apply the fundamentalist literalist reading of the biblical text in their sermons and theology because of a lack of knowledge and application of proper reading and interpretation of scripture. The fundamentalist literalist reading of scripture particularly Mark 16:18 is linked here to the abuses by some of the pastors in New Prophetic Churches. In addressing these challenges, this article proposes a proper exegetical study of Mark 16:18 that pays attention to the context of the text, the historical background and the grammar of the text. This will be achieved by giving a background to a fundamentalist literalist reading of scripture in Pentecostalism particularly as practised by New Prophetic Churches in South Africa. The article will also highlight some of the challenges posed by the fundamentalist literalist reading of scripture. The final section is an exegetical study of Mark 16:18, which is interpreted by recognising the whole passage of Mark 16:9–20 even though some New Testament scholars do not recognise this longer ending. This article reflected on this passage in response to the fundamentalist literalist reading among New Prophetic Churches not necessarily to enter the debate between the short ending and longer ending.Contribution: This article challenges fundamentalist literalist reading of scripture in New Prophetic Churches. The article proposes a thorough exegetical reading of Mark 16:18 that recognises the exegetical tools such as history, grammar and the context of the text.

Text-based and memory-based metrics of cognitive coupling.

The present study was an investigation of the relation between cognitive coupling, a correlation between text difficulty and reading time, and other measures of mind wandering during reading. To measure cognitive coupling, we manipulated the text difficulty of individual sentences. Because mind wandering may shift attention away from the text, we predicted a cognitive coupling interaction, that is, that the effect of difficulty on processing time should be less when readers are off task. We also manipulated the consistency of a target sentence's content with a prior information. Analogous to the text-based cognitive coupling, we predicted an interaction of consistency with task focus: The impact of this consistency should be less noticeable when readers are off task. The results demonstrated the predicted text-based cognitive-coupling effect: There was less of an effect of text difficulty when readers reported being off task. However, there was no such interaction between consistency and task focus. We conclude that the consistency effect may depend on the relatively automatic activation of prior information rather than requiring consciously retrieving related information from memory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Analysis of Grammatical Cohesion of Reading Texts in "Paragraph Writing" Textbook

This study aims to find out the types of grammatical cohesion in the reading texts in “Paragraph Writing” textbook. The data were the reading texts taken from a textbook entitled “Paragraph Writing” and analyzed using the theory proposed by Halliday & Hasan (1976). This study uses a qualitative approach with a descriptive qualitative design and documentary technique as data collection procedures. The findings show that all types of grammatical cohesion are found in the total 22 reading texts. From 211 sentences, 569 data are classified as grammatical cohesion items and all types of it are found. The reference occurs 442 times, ellipsis 17 times, substitution only once, and conjunction 109 times. To sum up, “Paragraph Writing” Textbook is a good supplementary teaching material for lecturers in teaching grammatical cohesion, and a suitable additional learning material for students in mastering discourse analysis, especially the grammatical cohesion.