Word Expert Research Articles

Atypical reliance on monocular visual pathway for face and word recognition in developmental dyslexia

Studies with individuals with developmental dyslexia (DD) have documented impaired perception of words and faces, both of which are domains of visual expertise for human adults. In this study, we examined a possible mechanism that might be associated with the impaired acquisition of visual expertise for words and faces in DD, namely, the atypical engagement of the monocular visual pathway. Participants with DD and typical readers (TR) judged whether a pair of sequentially presented unfamiliar faces or nonwords were the same or different, and the pair of stimuli were displayed in an eye-specific fashion using a stereoscope. Based on evidence of greater reliance on subcortical structures early in development, we predicted differences between the groups in the engagement of lower (monocular) versus higher (binocular) regions of the visual pathways. Whereas the TR group showed a monocular advantage for both stimulus types, the DD participants evinced a monocular advantage for faces and words that was much greater than that measured in the TRs. These findings indicate that the DD individuals have enhanced subcortical engagement and that this might arise from the failure to fine-tune cortical correlates mediating the discrimination of homogeneous exemplars in domains of expertise.

The Word “Expert” in Russian Media Discourse: Semantics and Pragmatics in Conditions of Uncertainty

The semantics of the word “expert” in the Russian language media space and the pragmatics of introducing expert commentary into a media text are studied using the method of content analysis and discourse analysis of expert media content. The studied media content includes interviews with experts on YouTube; expert comments introduced into the journalistic text of the leading socio-political mass media and online lifestyle media, which are in the top 10 according to Mediascope, as well as expert channels in Telegram. The method of associative experiment revealed the value-evaluative meanings attached to the word expert in the linguistic consciousness of journalism students. The relevance of the study is conditioned by the explosive increase in the use of the word expert in the Russian-language media space in the last two years, the increasing flow of requests for expert opinions on digital platforms, and the involvement of more and more humanities students in expert discourse in response to the media sphere’s demand for the formation of a stable picture of the world. The novelty of this article is predetermined by the material itself, which has not been systematically analyzed before, as well as by the approach to the research. The study has shown that in the conditions of socio-political instability and uncertainty of the future, the main function of the expert is to interpret events and orient in the modern world, which is expressed in the frequent combination of the word with verbs of speaking: explained, interpreted, analyzed. At the same time, the content of the concept of expert in the young generation of journalists is associated with such notions as high social status, communicative leadership, and realization in the media space, i. e. with those that describe a modern person immersed in the info-newsletter, an information specialist. The pragmatic element of the increase of expert media content in the media is connected, on the one hand, with the problem of media fake news, which was aggravated with the onset of the pandemic and special military operation (SMO), the problem of trust in the media, and, on the other hand, with the need for journalists to resort to the interpretation of an increasingly complex and turbulent world.

Who is an expert? A corpus-assisted analysis of the expert in Swedish Covid-19 discourse

This article explores a prevalent thematic strand of the Swedish public discourse on Covid-19 pandemic strategies. Analyzing the construction and role of the expert as it has been played out in the news media coverage of Covid-19 in four leading Swedish daily newspapers throughout the first two months of the pandemic in 2020 (February and March), the contribution asks who counts as a trustworthy expert, and to what extent such ascriptions are used in debates about the Swedish coronavirus strategy, which has aroused much interest and criticism. One of the important findings is the concept of a reliable and rational expert who is, primarily, a Swedish epidemiologist. Also noteworthy is the fact that the role of the expert and the very word expert seem to be under negotiation. This contribution is situated within the framework of discourse linguistics and explores segments of discourse understood as collectively shared knowledge. A partly corpus-assisted methodology is used. The study aims to link linguistic utterances on the expert’s role in the pandemic with the level of important social actors in the course of the pandemic in Sweden.

An application of neutrosophic logic in the confirmatory data analysis of the satisfaction with life scale

The main concept of neutrosophy is that any idea has not only a certain degree of truth but also a degree of falsity and indeterminacy in its own right. Although there are many applications of neutrosophy in different disciplines, the incorporation of its logic in education and psychology is rather scarce compared to other fields. In this study, the Satisfaction with Life Scale was converted into the neutrosophic form and the results were compared in terms of confirmatory analysis by convolutional neural networks. To sum up, two different formulas are proposed at the end of the study to determine the validity of any scale in terms of neutrosophy. While the Lawshe methodology concentrates on the dominating opinions of experts limited by a one-dimensional data space analysis, it should be advocated that the options can be placed in three-dimensional data space in the neutrosophic analysis . The effect may be negligible for a small number of items and participants, but it may create enormous changes for a large number of items and participants. Secondly, the degree of freedom of Lawshe technique is only 1 in 3D space, whereas the degree of freedom of neutrosophical scale is 3, so researchers have to employ three separate parameters of 3D space in neutrosophical scale while a resarcher is restricted in a 1D space in Lawshe technique in 3D space. The third distinction relates to the analysis of statistics. The Lawhe technical approach focuses on the experts' ratio of choices, whereas the importance and correlation level of each item for the analysis in neutrosophical logic are analysed. The fourth relates to the opinion of experts. The Lawshe technique is focused on expert opinions, yet in many ways the word expert is not defined. In a neutrosophical scale, however, researchers primarily address actual participants in order to understand whether the item is comprehended or opposed to or is imprecise. In this research, an alternative technique is presented to construct a valid scale in which the scale first is transformed into a neutrosophical one before being compared using neural networks. It may be concluded that each measuring scale is used for the desired aim to evaluate how suitable and representative the measurements obtained are so that its content validity can be evaluated.

Holistic word processing is correlated with efficiency in visual word recognition.

Holistic processing of visual words (i.e., obligatory encoding of/attending to all letters of a word) could be a marker of expert word recognition. In the present study, we thus examined for the first time whether there is a direct relation between the word-composite effect (i.e., all parts of a visual word are fully processed when observers perform a task on a word part) and fast access to the orthographic lexicon by visual word experts (i.e., fluent adult readers). We adopted an individual differences approach and used the word-frequency effect (i.e., faster recognition of high- than low-frequency words) in an independent lexical decision task as a proxy of fast access to lexical orthographic representations. Fluent readers with larger word-composite effect showed smaller word-frequency effect. This correlation was mainly driven by an association between a larger composite effect and faster lexical decision on low-frequency words, probably because these lexical representations are less stable and integrated/unitized, hence allowing differentiating among fluent readers. We thus showed that holistic processing of visual words is indeed related to higher efficiency in visual word recognition by skilled readers.

The Effect of Using games on Learning and Expanding Foreign Language Vocabulary

The present study aimed to examine the effect of using educational language games on gaining new vocabulary in EFL classes, 60 female participants from Othman Ben Affan School were chosen for the study. They were divided into two groups, 30 participants in each group. One group is the control group and it had been taught by the traditional ways while the other is the experimental group included also 30 participants, they were taught by using five types of language games known as Crossword Puzzle, Beanbag Toss, Treasure Hunt, Board Games and Word Expert Card. The same Pre- and Post-vocabulary test was applied for both groups before and after the teaching process. The results of the test were compared. Although there was no significant difference in scores between groups the performance of the experimental group surpassed that of the control group. Moreover, students enjoyed the environment in which they learned.

Event-related potential evidence in Chinese children

Visual word N170 is an index of perceptual expertise for visual words across different writing systems. Recent developmental studies have shown the early emergence of visual word N170 and its close association with individual’s reading ability. In the current study, we investigated whether fine-tuning N170 for Chinese characters could emerge after short-term literacy learning in young pre-literate children. Two groups of Chinese preschool children were trained for visual identification and free writing respectively. Results showed that visual identification learning led to enhanced N170 sensitivity to characters over radical-combinations in the left hemisphere and line-combinations in the right hemisphere, and writing learning led to enhanced N170 sensitivity to characters over radical-combinations and line-combinations in the right hemisphere. These results suggested that the N170 component became more sensitive for the local graphic feature (strokes) of characters rapidly after brief literacy learning even in young children; and writing learning experiences specifically led to enhanced orthographic sensitivity in the right hemisphere.

The Effect of Peer Interaction on Iranian EFL Learners’ Self-efficacy in Vocabulary Learning

The current study aimed to explore the effects of peer interaction on self-efficacy in vocabulary learning. The participants of the study included 64 EFL students in two intact classes at Takhti high school and Pardis language institute in Hamedan, Iran who were conveniently sampled to take part in the study. They aged 15-17 and were randomly positioned into one experimental and one control group. The participants were assigned as the experimental group and as control group 32 each. the experimental group received the intervention including peer interaction for example Word Expert Cards (Richek & McTague, 2008) while those in the control group had time to learn vocabularies and deepen their learningindividuallyand researcher monitored and told them to memorize or paraphrase the vocabularies themselves individually All the participants completed a self-efficacy questionnaire on vocabulary learning. The participants completed a questionnaire on self-efficacy learning twice, once before the treatment as the pretest and a second time after the treatment as the posttest. The data thus obtained were then analyzed through measuring the Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) to examine the trajectories of change in the participants’ self-efficacy over the treatment. The results indicated a significant increase in the self-efficacy indexes of the experimental group compared with the control group. The findings from the current study provide empirical evidence suggesting that through peer interaction it could be possible to enhance self-efficacy, which in turn may contribute to the development of language skills.

Cleaning up the big muddy: A meta-synthesis of the research on the social impact of dams

Scholars have been exploring the social impacts of dams for over 50years, but a lack of systematic approaches has resulted in many research gaps remaining. This paper presents the first systematic review of the literature on the social impacts of dams. For this purpose, we built a sample of 217 articles published in the past 25years via key word searches, expert consultations and bibliography reviews. All articles were assessed against an aggregate matrix framework on the social impact of dams, which combines 27 existing frameworks. We find that existing literature is highly biased with regard to: perspective (45% negative versus 5% positive); dam size (large dams are overrepresented); spatial focus (on the resettlement area); and temporal focus (5–10years ex-post resettlement). Additionally, there is bias in terms of whose views are included, with those of dam developers rarely examined by scholars. These gaps need to be addressed in future research to advance our knowledge on the social impact of dams to support more transparency in the trade-offs being made in dam development decisions.

Evolved computers with culture. Commentary: From computers to cultivation: reconceptualizing evolutionary psychology

Evolved computers with culture. Commentary: From computers to cultivation: reconceptualizing evolutionary psychology

Left-lateralized N170 Effects of Visual Expertise in Reading: Evidence from Japanese Syllabic and Logographic Scripts

The N170 component of the event-related potential (ERP) reflects experience-dependent neural changes in several forms of visual expertise, including expertise for visual words. Readers skilled in writing systems that link characters to phonemes (i.e., alphabetic writing) typically produce a left-lateralized N170 to visual word forms. This study examined the N170 in three Japanese scripts that link characters to larger phonological units. Participants were monolingual English speakers (EL1) and native Japanese speakers (JL1) who were also proficient in English. ERPs were collected using a 129-channel array, as participants performed a series of experiments viewing words or novel control stimuli in a repetition detection task. The N170 was strongly left-lateralized for all three Japanese scripts (including logographic Kanji characters) in JL1 participants, but bilateral in EL1 participants viewing these same stimuli. This demonstrates that left-lateralization of the N170 is dependent on specific reading expertise and is not limited to alphabetic scripts. Additional contrasts within the moraic Katakana script revealed equivalent N170 responses in JL1 speakers for familiar Katakana words and for Kanji words transcribed into novel Katakana words, suggesting that the N170 expertise effect is driven by script familiarity rather than familiarity with particular visual word forms. Finally, for English words and novel symbol string stimuli, both EL1 and JL1 subjects produced equivalent responses for the novel symbols, and more left-lateralized N170 responses for the English words, indicating that such effects are not limited to the first language. Taken together, these cross-linguistic results suggest that similar neural processes underlie visual expertise for print in very different writing systems.

Words Are Wonderful: Interactive, Time-Efficient Strategies to Teach Meaning Vocabulary

Vocabulary is important, yet instruction in word meaning is often tedious and ineffective. This article presents motivating and time-efficient strategies for introducing and practicing the meaning vocabulary students will encounter across subject areas and texts in school. In the “Semantic Impressions” word-introduction strategy, students write a story using words that will later be presented in published text. In the “Word Expert Cards” introductory activity, each student prepares a few word cards and then teaches them to peers. Because words are learned gradually, review is important. Four game-like review strategies are also suggested. In the quick-paced “Anything Goes,” the teacher points to words and asks students to reply to questions about meaning, part of speech, or use in a sentence. In “Connect Two,” the teacher displays two columns of words and asks students to find similarities across columns. In the game “Two in One,” students are asked to put two or more words into one sentence. Finally, in”Find That Word,” students must find and record examples of words as they are used in books, speech, or the media.

Memory-Based Word Sense Disambiguation

We describe a memory-based classification architecture for word sense disambiguation and its application to the SENSEVAL evaluation task. For each ambiguous word, a semantic word expert is automatically trained using a memory-based approach. In each expert, selecting the correct sense of a word in a new context is achieved by finding the closest match to stored examples of this task. Advantages of the approach include (i) fast development time for word experts, (ii) easy and elegant automatic integration of information sources, (iii) use of all available data for training the experts, and (iv) relatively high accuracy with minimal linguistic engineering.

LEARN: SOFTWARE FOR FOREIGN LANGUAGE VOCABULARY ACQUISITION FROM ENGLISH UNRESTRICTED TEXT

This paper describes LEARN, a software system for computer assisted foreign language vocabulary acquisition. LEARN uses unrestricted text to assist in learning because its potential value is clear: unrestricted text can be chosen by the learner to suit the learner's own interests. LEARN processes English unrestricted text by translating selected English words in it into foreign words before presenting the text to the learner. Learners can then practice their foreign language vocabulary in the course of reading the text of their choice. Currently LEARN can translate a significant number of words into Chinese and Bengali. Ambiguity in translation is addressed by ‘word experts’, miniature expert systems, each of which translates some word from English into a particular language by examining its context. The natural path for the future of LEARN is to extend it by adding more languages, having it take input in languages other than English, adding more word experts, adding more extensive interactive hint facilities for helping readers, allowing it to be used seamlessly while browsing with a World Wide Web browser, and testing and evaluating its educational value.

Engineering “word experts” for word disambiguation

AbstractEvery word in the lexicon of a natural language is used distinctly from all the other words. A word expert is a small expert system-like module for processing a particular word based on other words in its vicinity. A word expert exploits the idiosyncratic nature of a word by using a set of context testing decision rules that test the identity and placement of context words to infer the word's role in the passage.The main application of word experts is disambiguating words. Work on word experts has never fully recognized previous related work, and a comprehensive review of that work would therefore contribute to the field. This paper both provides such a review, and describes guidelines and considerations useful in the design and construction of word expert based systems.

Topic parsing: Accounting for text macro structures in full-text analysis

The rapid proliferation of full-text databases poses serious problems to the natural language processing components of information retrieval systems. Not taking text-level phenomena of written natural language discourse into account causes a marked decrease of performance for many text information system applications. Consequently, appropriate text parsing facilities must be capable of recognizing the rich internal structure of full-texts on lower levels of text connectivity as well as on the global organizational level of text coherence. This paper introduces such a parser which is based on the conceptual knowledge of its domain and is organized as a collection of distributed lexicalized grammar modules (word experts) which communicate through message-passing. Emphasis is put on text grammatical specifications which state formal conditions for recognizing higher-order text constituents and their coherent configuration on the global level of textual macro organization.

Making understanders out of parsers: Semantically driven parsing as a key concept for realistic text understanding applications

Semantically driven natural language parsers have found wide-spread application as a text processing methodology for knowledge-based information retrieval systems. It is argued that this parsing technique particularly corresponds to the requirements inherent to large-scale text analysis. Unfortunately, this approach suffers from several shortcomings which demand a thorough reformulation of its paradigm. Incorporating principles from conceptual analysis and word expert parsing in a model of lexically distributed text parsing, the focus of the modifications proposed in this article, is on a clean declarative separation of linguistio and other knowledge representation levels, abstraction mechanisms leading to a small collection of specification primitives for the parser, and an attempt to incorporate linguistic generalizations and modularization principles into the design of a semantic text grammar. A sample parse illustrates the operation and linguistic coverage of a lexically distributed text parser based on these theoretical considerations with respect to the semantic analysis of noun groups, simple assertional sentences, nominal anaphora, and textual ellipsis.

A generalized word expert model of lexically distributed text parsing: Udo Hahn, Informationswissenschaft, Universitaet Konstanz, FRG, April 1986.

A generalized word expert model of lexically distributed text parsing: Udo Hahn, Informationswissenschaft, Universitaet Konstanz, FRG, April 1986.

Word expert parsing: An approach to text parsing with a distributed lexical grammar: Udo Hahn and Ulrich Reimer, TOPIC-6 / 83, Universitaet Konstanz, Projekt Informations-Vermittlung, Konstanz, FRG (1983)

Word expert parsing: An approach to text parsing with a distributed lexical grammar: Udo Hahn and Ulrich Reimer, TOPIC-6 / 83, Universitaet Konstanz, Projekt Informations-Vermittlung, Konstanz, FRG (1983)

Toward a Theory of Distributed Word Expert Natural Language Parsing

An approach to natural language meaning-based parsing in which the unit of linguistic knowledge is the word rather than the rewrite rule is described. In the word expert parser, knowledge about language is distributed across a population of procedural experts, each representing a word of the language, and each an expert at diagnosing that word's intended usage in context. The parser is structured around a coroutine control environment in which the generator-like word experts ask questions and exchange information in coming to collective agreement on sentence meaning. The word expert theory is advanced as a better cognitive model of human language expertise than the traditional rule-based approach. The technical discussion is organized around examples taken from the prototype LISP system which implements parts of the theory.