Search results for "Task"
showing 10 items of 1658 documents
Deep neural attention-based model for the evaluation of italian sentences complexity
2020
In this paper, the Automatic Text Complexity Evaluation problem is modeled as a binary classification task tackled by a Neural Network based system. It exploits Recurrent Neural Units and the Attention mechanism to measure the complexity of sentences written in the Italian language. An accurate test phase has been carried out, and the system has been compared with state-of-art tools that tackle the same problem. The computed performances proof the model suitability to evaluate sentence complexity improving the results achieved by other state-of-the-art systems.
The integration of content and language in students’ task answer production in the bilingual classroom
2016
The notion of content and language integration has recently become a key topic of inquiry in research on content and language integrated learning and other kinds of bilingual educational programmes. Understanding what integration is and how it happens is of fundamental importance not only for researchers interested in gauging the possibilities and limitations of bilingual programmes, but also for practitioners seeking optimal ways to support student development. This study investigates integration as it takes place in the context of collaborative writing in the classroom. Drawing on conversation analytic methodology, text production is investigated as a social and sequentially evolving phen…
‘Monitoring’ in translation
2019
Abstract We assume that visual feedback from the written trace during translation plays an important role in monitoring the emerging translation. In this study, 44 participants translated with and without visual feedback from the target text (TT). Numerous measures were used to explore the differences between the texts that were created in the two conditions and the characteristics of the task performance in the two conditions. The impact of ST-TT semantic and syntactic relationships showed that there were differences on two of three behavioural measures across conditions. In the comparison of features of the translation process, findings show that ST reading times were longer without visua…
Recycling a genre for news automation: The production of Valtteri the Election Bot
2020
Abstract The amount of available digital data is increasing at a tremendous rate. These data, however, are of limited use unless converted into a user-friendly form. We took on this task and built a natural language generation (NLG) driven system that generates journalistic news stories about elections without human intervention. In this paper, after presenting an overview of state-of-the-art technologies in NLG, we explain systematically how we identified and then recontextualized the determinant aspects of the genre of an online news story in the algorithm of our NLG software. In the discussion, we introduce the key results of a user test we carried out and some improvements that these re…
Professional Embodiment: Walking, Re-engagement of Desk Interactions, and Provision of Instruction during Classroom Rounds
2018
Abstract Unlike continuous whole-class (plenary) interaction, independent task work involves incipient teacher–student talk, as the teacher typically ‘makes rounds’ to engage in brief desk interactions with students. This article draws on multimodal conversation analysis to investigate how teacher movement during tasks offers resources for re-engaging in desk interactions and offering task-related guidance. The focus is on teachers’ walking trajectories and ways of positioning the body, and students’ orientation to them, in (i) (pre-)opening moments of a desk interaction, and (ii) during a subsequent instructional turn that guides students with the ongoing task. The analysis shows how the p…
Multi-class Text Complexity Evaluation via Deep Neural Networks
2019
Automatic Text Complexity Evaluation (ATE) is a natural language processing task which aims to assess texts difficulty taking into account many facets related to complexity. A large number of papers tackle the problem of ATE by means of machine learning algorithms in order to classify texts into complex or simple classes. In this paper, we try to go beyond the methodologies presented so far by introducing a preliminary system based on a deep neural network model whose objective is to classify sentences into more of two classes. Experiments have been carried out on a manually annotated corpus which has been preprocessed in order to make it suitable for the scope of the paper. The results sho…
Cognitive Biases in Pathological Health Anxiety
2016
Pathological health anxiety refers to the medically unfounded fear of suffering from a severe illness. Differences in cognitive processes related to attention, memory, and evaluation of health threat have been hypothesized to underlie pathological health anxiety. In no study, however, have researchers systematically and simultaneously assessed different cognitive biases. On the basis of the idea that multiple cognitive biases simultaneously contribute to psychopathology (the combined-cognitive-bias hypothesis), we compared 88 patients with pathological health anxiety, 52 patients with depressive disorder, and 52 healthy participants on their performance in several cognitive tasks involving…
Context Effects in the Evaluation of Bodily Symptoms: Comparing Three Versions of the Health Norms Sorting Task
2017
The illness-related evaluation of bodily symptoms is considered to be an important maintaining factor in somatoform disorders. However, little is known about context variables that could influence this evaluation process. In the current study, participants completed three versions of the Health Norms Sorting Task (HNST) and evaluated bodily symptoms in different contexts (i.e., different evaluation perspectives and time frames of evaluation). Additionally, the three HNST versions were presented in different orders. Bodily symptoms were evaluated more often as a sign of illness when a specific time frame (i.e., one week) was given. However, this context effect was only large when participan…
Teaching hand-washing with pictorial cues
2016
<p><span style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: medium;">Applied behavior analysis has been shown to be an effective means to teach daily living skills to individuals with intellectual disability. In the present study pictorial cues based on task analysis, system of least prompts, and social reinforcement were used to teach a man with mild intellectual disability to wash his hands correctly. An ABAB reversal design was used with follow-up after two weeks. The results show a rapid increase in hand-washing skills.</span></p>
Examining the relationship between public speaking anxiety, distress tolerance and psychological flexibility
2020
Public speaking is an important skill for university students to learn and practice as they progress through education and into their careers. However, individuals often avoid facing public speaking, as they lack the skills to cope with the anxiety that arises when speaking in front of others. The current study aimed to investigate the relationship between public speaking anxiety, distress tolerance, and psychological flexibility. A sample of 95 college students completed psychological flexibility measures and self-ratings of public speaking anxiety before and after a public speaking challenge. A behavioral index of public speaking distress tolerance (i.e., speech duration) was also recorde…