Verbal Annotations Research Articles

Real and Imagined Smellscapes.

The smellscape is the olfactory environment as perceived and understood, consisting of odours and scents from multiple smell sources. To what extent can audiovisual information evoke the smells of a real, complex, and multimodal environment? To investigate smellscape imagination, we compared results from two studies. In the first, onsite participants (N = 15) made a sensory walk through seven locations of an open-air market. In the second, online participants (N = 53) made a virtual walk through the same locations reproduced with audio and video recordings. Responses in the form of free-form verbal annotations, ratings with semantic scales, and a ‘smell wheel’, were analysed for environmental quality, smell source type and strength, and hedonic tone. The degree of association between real and imagined smellscapes was measured through canonical correlation analysis. Hedonic tone, as expressed through frequency counts of keywords in free-form annotations was significantly associated, suggesting that smell sources might generally be correctly inferred from audiovisual information, when such imagination is required. On the other hand, onsite ratings of olfactory quality were not significantly associated with online ratings of audiovisual reproductions, when participants were not specifically asked to imagine smells. We discuss findings in the light of cross-modal association, categorisation, and memory recall of smells.

Reconstructing an Ancient Monument to Mid-Victorian Liberalism, One Annotation at a Time: John Stuart Mill’s Marginalia in George Grote’s History of Greece

Abstract John Stuart Mill inscribed nearly 1,200 individual examples of marginalia into his personal copy of George Grote’s twelve-volume History of Greece (1846–56). Of these, roughly two-thirds are verbal annotations ranging in length from a single letter to a short paragraph. Analysis of the 136 annotations found in volumes one and two, and comparison of each page containing annotations across five editions of Grote’s History, reveal not only that Mill was directly responsible for sixty revisions made to the text of volumes one and two but also that Mill read and annotated his friend’s “opus magnum” multiple times. Considered not just in terms of its significance in intellectual history—when ancient Greece, specifically Athens, was repositioned as central to modern Britain, particularly as it was being reimagined by Victorian liberal reformers—but also as a case study for how to approach the epistemological challenges posed by marginalia more broadly, Mill’s interactive and durable relationship with Grote’s History testifies to the ongoing influence of reading conventions inherited by the Victorians from their Enlightenment and Romantic predecessors and demonstrates the heuristic value of considering marginalia’s effects in order to discern its content, attribution, intent, and chronology.

Supporting Listening Comprehension and Vocabulary Acquisition with Multimedia Annotations

This study extends Mayer's (1997, 2001) generative theory of multimedia learning and investigates under what conditions multimedia annotations can support listening comprehension in a second language. This paper highlights students' views on the effectiveness of multimedia annotations (visual and verbal) in assisting them in their comprehension and acquisition of vocabulary from aural texts. English-speaking college students listened to a 2 min 20 sec historical account in French presented by a computer program. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four listening treatments: the aural text (a) with no annotations, (b) with only verbal annotations, (c) with only visual annotations, and (d) with both visual and verbal annotations. For purposes of this paper, 20 students were purposively selected to participate in interviews. Overall, students remembered word translations and recalled the passage best when they had selected both verbal and visual annotations while listening. Students' voices reflected these results and revealed that they should have options for viewing material in both a visual mode and a verbal mode in a multimedia listening comprehension environment. This study provides qualitative evidence for a generative theory of multimedia learning that suggests that the availability and the choice of visual and verbal annotations in listening comprehension activities enhances students' abilities to comprehend the material presented and to acquire vocabulary.

Causal Inference in Graph-Text Constellations: Designing Verbally Annotated Graphs

Multimodal documents combining language and graphs are wide-spread in print media as well as in electronic media. One of the most important tasks to be solved in comprehending graph-text combinations is construction of causal chains among the meaning entities provided by modalities. In this study we focus on the role of annotation position and shape of graph lines in simple line graphs on causal attributions concerning the event presented by the annotation and the processes (i.e. increases and decreases) and states (no-changes) in the domain value of the graphs presented by the process-lines and state-lines. Based on the experimental investigation of readers’ inferences under different conditions, guidelines for the design of multimodal documents including text and statistical information graphics are suggested. One suggestion is that the position and the number of verbal annotations should be selected appropriately, another is that the graph line smoothing should be done cautiously.

The effectiveness of multimedia programmes in children's vocabulary learning

AbstractThe present experiment investigated the effect of three different presentation modes in children's vocabulary learning with a self‐guided multimedia programmes. Participants were 135 third and fourth grade children who read a short English language story presented by a computer programme. For 12 key (previously unknown) words in the story, children received verbal annotations (written translation), visual annotations (picture representing the word), or both. Recall of word translations was better for children who only received verbal annotations than for children who received simultaneously visual and verbal annotations or visual annotations only. Results support previous research about cognitive load in e‐learning environments, and show that children's learning processes are hindered by limited working memory. This finding implies a challenge for multimedia programmes designed for children and based on self‐regulated learning.

Leaving a Trace

(2003). Leaving a Trace. Journal of Museum Education: Vol. 28, Sociocultural Perspectives on Museums: Part 2, pp. 25-31.

Graphic representation of configuration in two-dimensional space. Current conventions, clarifications, and proposed extensions.

The chemical vocabulary can describe, in a single term, a racemate or a specific enantiomer or a compound that is enantiopure, but whose absolute configuration is unknown. Regardless of these differentiations, the corresponding conventional graphic representations display but one specific enantiomer. Because of this inflexibility, verbal annotations to stereostructures in chemical publications and databases are unavoidable. In the expanding era of chirotechnology, the limited descriptive power of stereostructures in two-dimensional space is of serious concern. To provide a solution to this problem, targeted redeployment of established stereobonds serve as stereodescriptors that differentiate between enantiopure and racemic compounds and those that are enantiopure but whose chirality sense is unknown. Graphic displays then share the explicitness and accuracy of the chemical vocabulary. Fischer projections, recently expanded to accommodate alkenes and axially stereogenic compounds, can display favorably comparative configurational aspects of molecules with a multiplicity of stereogenic units.

Cognitive load in reading a foreign language text with multimedia aids and the influence of verbal and spatial abilities

When do multiple representations of information in second-language learning help and when do they hinder learning? English-speaking college students ( N=152), enrolled in a second-year German course, read a 762-word German story presented by a multimedia computer program. Students received no annotations, verbal annotations, visual annotations, or both for 35 key words in the story. Recall of word translations was worse for low-verbal and low-spatial ability students than for high-verbal and high-spatial ability students, respectively, when they received visual annotations for vocabulary words, but did not differ when they received verbal annotations. Text comprehension was worst for all learners when they received visual annotations. Results are consistent with a generative theory of multimedia learning and with cognitive load theory which assume that multimedia learning processes are executed under the constraints of limited working memory.

An analysis of Jean-Claude Risset's Contours

This paper discusses an analysis of Jean-Claude Risset's Contours, a tape work composed in 1982 using only computer sound synthesis. The analysis is based on recorded traces of the compositional process (Music code listings, verbal and graphical annotations), and focuses on sound design criteria. It attempts to elucidate the connection between these criteria and the overall structure of the musical work. In short, it investigates the observable link between “composing-the-sound” and “composing-with-sounds” in the making of Contours. The psychoacoustic relationship of pitch to timbre is crucial, and was a primary concern in all of Risset's operations in composing this work. In order to let a particular pitch contour either dissolve, or emerge from various timbral transformations, the composer devised several ad hoc sound design strategies strictly functional to the compositional concept. Further remarks are proposed concerning a twofold aesthetic dimension peculiar to this music: on the one hand, we have a legacy to the French tradition of musical impressionism; on the other, we have a more constructivist attitude, hidden behind what at first may sound as a decorative interplay of fascinating sound colors.

Supporting visual and verbal learning preferences in a second-language multimedia learning environment.

Erfurt University of Education English-speaking college students who were enrolled in a German course read a 762-word German language story presented by a computer program. For key words in the story, students could choose to see a translation on the screen in English (i.e., verbal annotation) or view a picture or video clip representing the word (i.e,, visual annotation), or both. Students remembered word translations better when they had selected both visual and verbal annotations during learning than only 1 or no annotation; students comprehended the story better when they had the opportunity to receive their preferred mode of annotation. Results are consistent with a generative theory of multimedia learning that assumes that learners actively select relevant verbal and visual information, organize the information into coherent mental representations, and integrate these newly constructed visual and verbal representations with one another. Current developments in information technologies have resulted in rapid advances in the application of instructional and educational technology. There seem to be, however, only small advances in corresponding basic research on the psychological principles of human learning in a multimedia learning environment (Kozma, 1991). This article deals with two of these psychological principles. On the one hand, multimedia learning requires the learner to process information presented in different modes (e.g., in a verbal and a visual mode). Thus, cognitive psychological theories on processing information such as Mayer's (1997) generative theory of multimedia learning are relevant. On the other hand, the term