The aesthetics of textual production: reading and writing with Umberto Eco

In The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco essentially presents an educative vision of some basic semiotic principles that infuse the textual form of a popular fictional genre—the detective story. In effect, it characterizes the postmodernization of the traditional “whodunnit” moving the genre from the realm of “the real” or the plausible into the realm of “the metaphysical” or the unthinkable. The Name of the Rose is a practical application in semiotics. Or, how the aesthetics of textual production as generated through the lexical signs and codes manifest the discursive text of a novel work. The semiotic twists and turns of the detective story facilitate this educational function and the purposeful transformation of the reader into an individual capable of appreciating and grasping the conflicting ideological viewpoints expressed through its dialogical structure. The detective genre enables the Umberto Eco to produce an educational narrative via the intricacies of plot in the detective story while teaching main aspects of semiotic theory.     

Future prediction with automatically extracted morphosemantic patterns

In the following paper, we investigated the usefulness of future reference sentence patterns in the prediction of the unfolding of future events. To obtain such patterns we first collected sentences that have any reference to the future from newspapers and Web news. Based on this collection, we developed a novel method for automatic extraction of frequent patterns from such sentences. The extracted patterns, consisting of multilayer semantic information and morphological information, were implemented in the formation of a general model of linguistically expressed future. To fully assess the performance of the proposed method we performed a number of evaluation experiments. In the first experiment, we evaluated the automatic extraction of future reference sentence patterns with the proposed extraction algorithm. In the second set of experiments, we estimated the effectiveness of those patterns and applied them to automatically classify sentences into future referring and other. The final model was then tested for performance in retrieving a new set of future reference sentences from a large news corpus. The obtained results confirmed that the proposed method outperformed state-of-the-art method in fully automatic retrieval of future reference sentences. Lastly, we applied the method in practice to confirm its usefulness in two tasks. The first is to support human readers in the everyday prediction of unfolding future events. In the second task, we developed a fully automatic prototype method for future prediction and tested its performance using the tasks included in the official Future Prediction Competence Test. The results indicate that the prototype system outperforms natural human foreseeing capability.     

文本阅读双加工理论与实验证据

文本阅读信息加工过程研究一直是国内外心理学界高度重视和关注的领域, 形成了建构主义理论、最低限度假设理论和记忆基础文本加工理论等派别百家争鸣的局面。这些理论争议的焦点在于自然阅读是主动的、积极的、目标策略驱动的过程, 还是被动的、消极的、自动的过程。在全面总结国内外心理学界有关文本阅读的研究成果的基础上, 文本阅读双加工理论提出并对文本阅读的主要争议进行了整合。该理论的核心观点是文本的自然阅读过程是连贯阅读与焦点阅读的双加工过程。文本阅读中读者所阅读的材料特点不同, 引发的阅读信息加工活动也不同, 而不同性质的阅读过程, 又会引发不同的推理整合, 从而会建构不同类型的文本表征。文本阅读双加工理论已经形成了比较完整的理论框架, 并获得了很多实验证据的支持。当然, 文本阅读双加工理论作为一个新的理论, 其中的有些观点还需要进一步检验。在未来的文本阅读研究领域, 有很多问题还需要研究者进一步关注。     

Psychological predictors of texting while driving among university students

Although text messaging while driving is illegal in Spain previous research has shown that a substantial proportion of drivers, particularly young drivers, engage in this risky behaviour. The present study set out to investigate the psychological predictors of this behaviour using the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). This study also measured the drivers’ perceptions regarding the effectiveness of the ban on mobile phone use while driving, their perceived crash risk, the risk of being fined and the drivers perceived ability to compensate for the distraction caused by reading or writing text messages while driving. Data were collected using an online questionnaire from 1082 university students who were drivers and owned a mobile phone. Attitude and perceived behavioural control significantly predicted the intention to send and read text messages while driving, even after controlling for exposure and demographic variables. Furthermore, intention was found to be a significant predictor of retrospective measures of both sending and reading text messages while driving, as was perceived behavioural control for several of the outcome measures. The present findings provide support for the TPB and also demonstrate the additional contributions that the mobile phone ban and perceived ability to compensate for the distraction had in predicting intentions. In addition, perceived crash risk was positively related to the prediction of intentions to send text messages and the number of messages read in the last week. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Perceived risk vs actual driving performance during distracted driving: A comparative analysis of phone use and other secondary distractions

The present study attempts to explore the association of drivers’ risk perception towards phone usage as well as other everyday distractions (operating a music player and eating during driving), and their driving performance observed during these distracted conditions. For this purpose, driving simulator experiments were conducted with 90 participants to collect their driving performance data and a questionnaire was conducted to obtain their basic details along with their risk perceptions. Firstly, the driving performance was divided into clusters using hierarchical clustering and the clustered subgroups were compared for crash and non-crash cases to identify the groups having significant performance degradation. Based on this comparison, the driving performance subgroups were then divided into the following crash risk probabilities: High risk, Moderate risk and Low risk. Further, the associations of perceived risk with these performance subgroups and other potential factors were analyzed using association rules mining technique. Most of the drivers (72.06%) reported texting as an extremely risky task. But, surprisingly none of them considered conversation as an extremely risky task. However, in case of conversation, it was found that even though the professional drivers reported the task to be not at all risky, the observed crash risk was high for them (S = 5.21%, C = 67.86%), indicating an underestimation of the associated risk by the drivers. Similarly, the results revealed that for music player and eating tasks, drivers reported the distracting tasks to be less risky, but, in some instances, their driving performance was associated with higher chances of crash occurrence. Many interesting associations of risk perception and driving performance with respect to demographic and driving characteristics were also obtained. The findings can be useful while designing the awareness programs related to distracted driving with an aim to reduce such practices.     

EEG decoding of semantic category reveals distributed representations for single concepts

Achieving a clearer picture of categorial distinctions in the brain is essential for our understanding of the conceptual lexicon, but much more fine-grained investigations are required in order for this evidence to contribute to lexical research. Here we present a collection of advanced data-mining techniques that allows the category of individual concepts to be decoded from single trials of EEG data. Neural activity was recorded while participants silently named images of mammals and tools, and category could be detected in single trials with an accuracy well above chance, both when considering data from single participants, and when group-training across participants. By aggregating across all trials, single concepts could be correctly assigned to their category with an accuracy of 98%. The pattern of classifications made by the algorithm confirmed that the neural patterns identified are due to conceptual category, and not any of a series of processing-related confounds. The time intervals, frequency bands and scalp locations that proved most informative for prediction permit physiological interpretation: the widespread activation shortly after appearance of the stimulus (from 100 ms) is consistent both with accounts of multi-pass processing, and distributed representations of categories. These methods provide an alternative to fMRI for fine-grained, large-scale investigations of the conceptual lexicon.     

Generating keywords improves metacomprehension and self-regulation in elementary and middle school children

The ability to monitor understanding of texts, usually referred to as metacomprehension accuracy, is typically quite poor in adult learners; however, recently interventions have been developed to improve accuracy. In two experiments, we evaluated whether generating delayed keywords prior to judging comprehension improved metacomprehension accuracy for children. For sixth and seventh graders, metacomprehension accuracy was greater when generating keywords. By contrast, for fourth graders, metacomprehension accuracy did not differ across conditions. Improved metacomprehension accuracy led to improved regulation of study. The delayed keyword effect in children reported here is discussed in terms of situation model activation.     

论《易经》非占筮记录

自20世纪初古史辨运动兴起,易学界受科学主义思潮影响,多视"经"为卜筮记录,"传"为哲理新创,"经"与"传"必须分别而观,不可以以"经"释"传",亦不可以以"传"解"经"。本文列举九个论点,论证《易记》为政治典册,蕴含义理;《易传》义理之精义即多承继自"经"。《周易》"经""传"关系,一如父母子女之关系。父母之基因为子女所承继,"经"之基因亦为"传"所传承。"经"与"传"固有区别,就像父母子女各具独立人格。我们当然不应混"经""传"为一,但亦不宜认"经""传"为绝无关系之两种文献。     

Digital dream analysis: A revised method

This article demonstrates the use of a digital word search method designed to provide greater accuracy, objectivity, and speed in the study of dreams. A revised template of 40 word search categories, built into the website of the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), is applied to four “classic” sets of dreams: The male and female “Norm” dreams of Hall and Van de Castle (1966), the “Engine Man” dreams discussed by Hobson (1988), and the “Barb Sanders Baseline 250” dreams examined by Domhoff (2003). A word search analysis of these original dream reports shows that a digital approach can accurately identify many of the same distinctive patterns of content found by previous investigators using much more laborious and time-consuming methods. The results of this study emphasize the compatibility of word search technologies with traditional approaches to dream content analysis.