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18265 papers
The validity effect is the increase in perceived validity of repeated statements. In the first experiment, subjects rated repeated and nonrepeated statements for validity, familiarity, and source recognition. Validity and familiarity were enhanced by repetition, but source dissociation was not. A path analysis suggested that familiarity mediates perceived validity. In Experiment 2, statements presented in a natural setting were later rated for perceived validity, familiarity, and source recognition. Repetition had parallel effects on validity and familiarity ratings, but source dissociation was unaffected. Controlling for familiarity statistically eliminated the validity effect. In Experiment 3, the effect of prior knowledge on validity judgments was studied. Subjects rated the validity of statements that were related or unrelated to their field of expertise. Those most knowledgeable about the topic were most likely to exhibit the validity effect. Overall, the results suggest that familiarity is the basis of judged validity.
This paper describes a method for the semi-automatic linking of lexical databases (LDBs) based on different source dictionaries and their partial merging. Equivalent entries from different dictionaries are mapped together and links are created between them at the sense level. The results can be modified interactively by the user and saved to form part of a new merged LDB whose entries will contain all the information included in the separate source LDBs. The aim is to provide a tool which makes it easier to compare and study lexical data derived from different sources and also to permit linguistic and lexical analyses of much richer data.
The main objective is to develop robust methods for the understanding and generation of both written and spoken human language, including but not limited to English. Penn is pursuing development of: (1) New mathematical and computational frameworks which are highly constrained, yet adequate to allow a simple, concise description of complex linguistic phenomena. These new frameworks are tested by the explicit encoding within each framework of a wide range of phenomena across a diverse set of human languages. (2) Both statistical and symbolic learning methods which automatically extract and effectively utilize the implicit linguistic knowledge in the Penn Treebank and the corpora of the Linguistic Data Consortium. These techniques have been tested against the performance of the best current methods.
With this double issue of Technostyle, we have produced a second publication in our new format to constitute both the Spring and Fall 1994 installments of the journal.After the delays that come with transition, we can now synchronize our publications with the calendar.This issue addresses a range of topics ofrelevance to our diverse readership: studies of the relationship between discourse and power (Hom), the status and nature of written genres (Beaudet, Russell), issues of standardization of linguistic norms (Bosse-Andrieu), and certain political dimensions ofieaching technical writing (LaDuc and Schryer).With this edition we are also introducing new dimensions to Technostyle.One of these is the inclusion of reprints of note-worthy articles that have been written by CA TTW members and published elsewhere.We are very pleased to reproduce for our readers two such publications: an analysis of semantic bypassing in medical literature by Jennifer Connor (with J.T.H. Connor), and a study ofreader/writer collaboration in usability testing by Karen Schriver.These scholars have both distinguished themselves in their respective fields.This issue also initiates a conversation about our professional organization: we have included a series of pieces on the history of CA TTW, a panel debate about future directions, and a paper by one of our early members (Jennifer Connor) that essentially takes stock of the organization and those issues that have emerged as CA TTW continues to grow and change.A third component is the renewal of a former Technostyle section for our readers' responses and concerns.This "Forum" page will appear in the Spring, 1995 issue (see our invitation for comments elsewhere in this issue).
In this paper we present preliminary results of investigating the structure of the Penn Treebank and how these results can be used in probabilistic parsing of English. Penn Treebank is a corpus of 4.9 million part-of-speech tagged words and 2.9 million words of skeletally parsed data developed by the University of Pennsylvania (see 8). By matching skeletal parse files with POS-tagged files we extract rules used to produce parses and count the number of occurrences of each rule. Consequently, we acquire a stochastic context-free grammar (SCFG), or a CFG with a probability attached to each rule. The grammar we acquired is used in a simple chart probabilistic parser. This parser is capable of parsing a few short sentences. However, the grammar is still too large to be used in a real-time parser, and intelligent reduction of the number of rules is needed. We propose to develop a methodology for processing the acquired grammar and discuss techniques we have considered. Our approach...
I review evidence for the claim that syntactic ambiguities are resolved on the basis of the meaning of the competing analyses, not their structure. I identify a collection of ambiguities that do not yet have a meaning-based account and propose one which is based on the interaction of discourse and grammatical function. I provide evidence for my proposal by examining statistical properties of the Penn Treebank of syntactically annotated text.
The present dissertation was conducted to gain a better theoretical understanding of the contribution of outcome expectancies to male undergraduate drinking behaviour. Two assumptions important to the construct validity of outcome expectancies were investigated: (1) outcome expectancies are situation-specific and (2) outcome expectancies are different from attitudes toward drinking.;In each of the four studies conducted in the first series of studies, environmental setting (i.e., bar vs. lab) was manipulated and a second variable was manipulated through instructional set. Specifically, expected beverage content (i.e., beer vs. soda pop), social context (i.e., alone, with friends, no explicit instructions), and level of intoxication (i.e., early vs. latter) was manipulated in Experiments 1, 2, and 3 respectively. In Experiments 1 through 3, "weighted" outcome expectancies (i.e., likelihood x valence ratings) were assessed using a modified version of the Alcohol Effects Questionnaire, REQ-Revised (Rohsenow, 1983). Experiment 4 was a partial replication of Experiment 3, however, a modified version of the Alcohol Effects Scale, AES-Revised (Southwick, Steele, Marlatt, & Lindell, 1981) was administered. Evidence for the situational-specificity hypothesis was obtained only in Experiment 4 in which the AES-Revised was employed.;In Experiment 5, the contribution of outcome expectancies (as assessed by both the REQ-Revised and the AES-Revised) to the Theory of Reasoned Action-TRA (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour-TPB (Ajzen, 1988) was investigated. Overall, the TPB was superior to the TRA in predicting self-report excessive consumption episodes among male undergraduates. Outcome expectancies, as assessed by the AES-Revised, did not make a unique contribution to the TPB. In contrast, weighted expectancies for Enhanced Sexual Functioning (as assessed by the REQ-Revised) improved the prediction of self-report excessive monthly drinking episodes, over and above components of the TPB.;Three tentative conclusions are drawn. First, two types of outcome expectancies may exist: generalized and situation-specific. Secondly, investigations that examine the sole contribution of outcome expectancies to drinking behaviour may be too narrow in their approach. Finally, the TPB is a useful theoretical framework to explore both the construct validity of outcome expectancies and how these processes contribute to drinking behaviour.
In this paper we present a new approach to lexicographical design for the description of German speech act verbs. This approach is based on an action-theoretical semantic conception. The several conditions for linguistic action provide the basis for the elaboration of the central semantic features. The systematic relationship of these features is reflected in the organization of a lexical database which allows various possibilities of access to different types of lexical information. In the following paper we shall give an outline of the semantic framework for describing speech act verbs, i. e. verbs of communication, with the practical goal of a semantical database for a (dictionary of) synonymy of German speech act verbs which enables the user not only to find a list of synonymous verbs but also enables him to gain an insight into the semantic relations between the words. The semantic framework is based on (i) a set of conditions for performing speech acts as the relevant domain of reference (ii) the introduction of a notion of situation, or better type of situation The performative as well as the descriptive use of the verbs can be reduced to their fundamental dependency on the situations in which they are used: on the one hand with regard to the possibility of the action itself, and on the other hand with regard to the possibility of their designation. For both ways of use the relevant aspects of the situation constitute the necessary conditions.
The use of metacognitive strategies of learning and instruction such as content abstracts or previews, subtitles and captioning (on-screen foreign language subtitles) have been recurrent pedagogical tools for facilitating foreign language (L2) instruction. New technology has broadened their scope and multiplied the ways in which they can be used in L2 computer-based applications. A pilot test was carried out using a hypermedia instructional application for Spanish: “Operación Futuro.” The test addresses the question of how two types of metacognitive strategies, written and spoken Advance Organizers (AOs) and verbatim Captioning (CP) may facilitate L2 comprehension and recall.
André Gide's collection offaits divers spans a period of fifty years and includes more than 650 documents. A database analysis offers an efficient means of handling such extensive material. Our goal is to trace statistically this author's varied interests as they evolved throughout his career.
After failing to solve items from the Remote Associates Test (RAT), subjects showed significant priming effects when the solutions were presented in a lexical-decision task (Experiment 1). Experiments 2 and 3 found no significant priming effect when subjects were asked merely to remember the RAT elements, or for targets that were associates of only two of the three elements in incoherent RAT items. Experiment 4 showed that identifying a correct solution took longer than lexical decision, and that the probability of correct identifications for a given item was uncorrelated to the priming effect for the item. Experiment 5 yielded item-difficulty norms for 68 RAT items as well as a replication of the priming effect observed for unsolved items in Experiment 1. In Experiment 6, a significant priming was observed for targets that were solutions to hard items but not for solutions to easy items. This research provides evidence for implicit problem-solving, which is nonconscious but not automatic, and is neither a perceptual nor a purely memory-related phenomenon.
What do database (DB) querying and information retrieval imply for linguistics? What are data for the linguist? How can one envisage efficient access to data? I propose that DB querying in language sciences be designed linguistically and directly determined by linguistic data. Linguists from various backgrounds could then use a consensual query tool. An implemented data-directed DB querying system, which was developed for research on French interrogative structures, is presented in detail.
The Elemental Driving Simulator (EDS) is a PC-based software and hardware system for advising people with known or suspected cognitive impairment. It is elemental in its simplicity and in its simulation of the elements of driving-related cognitive abilities. The EDS explicitly addresses metacognition and quantitatively relates it to performance. A neuropsychological case example, with an EDS Personal Report, is complemented by statistical findings from (1) working-age drivers (norms), (2) patients with central nervous system impairment seeking driver rehabilitation, and (3) a large sample of older drivers. The EDS proved to be a challenging procedure that all the normals completed more consistently, efficiently, and accurately than the other groups. Clinically, it discriminated extreme cases and, for those who fell in between, it helped focus the issues for further assessment and intervention. The discussion addresses how much realism is necessary, as well as the psychometric limitations of on-road testing.
Critics have condemned English Romantic tragedies as a series of poor imitations of Renaissance tragedy. This paper tests such “literary-critical” questions through statistical comparisons of ten plays from each group. The measures chosen give evidence of a strong and consistent difference between the groups, going beyond historical changes in the language. The Romantic tragedies are more expository; the Renaissance ones include more commonplace interactions between characters. The later plays do not show the marked variations in function-word frequencies of their predecessors. Of the Renaissance plays, Shakespeare's show the closest affinity to the Romantic tragedies, and the most telling contrasts.
The focus of the paper is on the use of computer corpora in language research. The historical background is touched on, with special reference to work within the International Computer Archive of Modern English (ICAME). Developments in the use of corpora are surveyed. Issues taken up include the representativeness and structure of corpora. Special attention is paid to pitfalls in the use of corpora. Corpus compilers must provide adequate documentation on the texts. Corpus users must know the corpus in order to evaluate whether it is appropriate for their research problem and in order to evaluate the results of their studies.
The analysis of sound symbolism in poetry is one of the more promising applications of computational methods. This paper proposes using database software with spreadsheet capabilities to give maximum versatility in the examination of consonant alliteration. In this case the database is drawn from a 10th century anthology of classical Japanese verse called theKokinshû. In recent years scholars have pointed out a few obvious examples of sound symbolism inKokinshû poetry. This study attempts to show that with these few notable exceptions, poetry of the period seems to have striven toward a balance in sound, avoiding techniques such as word initial alliteration which might call attention to itself.
The statistical process of seriation arranges a set of objects along a one-dimensional line so that the distance between each pair of objects reflects the dissimilarity between them. The process has recently been cast into an algorithm which makes it feasible to seriate a few tens of objects efficiently on a personal computer. This algorithm is now used for establishing a chronology of the Troubadours according to certain melodic features in their works. Other musicological uses for seriation are proposed.
TACT, a freeware program from the University of Toronto's Centre for Computing in the Humanities, is a highly sophisticated tool for text retrieval; although written for experienced critics and researchers, it can teach undergraduate students to read literature in new, fresh ways. Without requiring that the user become either a programmer, linguist, mathematician, or statistician,TACT introduces the literature student to the computer as a research tool. Studies of imagery and symbolism, of structural patterns, and of prosody can result from the student's careful tagging of a literary text and can yield significant insights into the work of literature. Students who use the computer as such a tool learn to read literary texts more closely and to think more clearly about literary problems.
We have revised the mainframe EYEBALL, written in the early 1970s and used by several researchers during that decade, to run on microcomputers. This program parses English language texts and provides a statistical description of many linguistic features which are of interest to those involved in stylistics. In order to produce an analytical approach which goes beyond the simple reporting of linguistic data, we have selected a small number of features which characterize noticeable elements of the language used and we have written programs to facilitate statistical comparisons among texts. While EYEBALL is not automatic, the interactive parsing routines are elegant enough that the users spend most of their time confirming accurate guesses, rather than having to determine the structure of each phrase and clause. We hope that the program will be used by humanities scholars who have not previously been inclined to wrestle with the barriers of mainframe computing in the past.
A lexicon is an essential part of any natural language processing system. The size, content and format of the lexicon is crucial in determining the power and sophistication of a natural language processing system. However, a lexicon which provides comprehensive, consistent and accurate lexical information and which is in a format facilitating fast retrieval is not easily available. This paper reports on a project which aims at the development of such a lexicon. The resulting lexicon is actually the modified and extended version of the machine tractable version of the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. The modification and extension concentrate mainly on the aspects of comprehensiveness, consistency, explicitness, accuracy and the dictionary format. The modified and extended version is considered a desirable source of lexical information for any natural language processing system.
The primary objective of this project is to develop a robust, high-performance parser for English by automatically extracting a grammar from an annotated corpus of bracketed sentences, called the Treebank. The project is a collaboration between the IBM Continuous Speech Recognition Group and the University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer Sciences. Our initial focus is the domain of computer manuals with a vocabulary of 3000 words. We use a Treebank that was developed jointly by IBM and the University of Lancaster, England.
ABSTRACT: Nigeria is a member of the British Commonwealth, having once been a colony of Britain. The English language that developed as a result of the contact with Nigerian indigenous languages over three or more centuries, is the standard British variety mediated by some Nigerian linguistic colour. It can therefore be described as distinctly Nigerian, but British norm‐dependent. Years of political, social and economic interaction between Nigeria and the USA have motivated an increasing use of the American variety of English (in addition to British English) in Nigeria. This paper examines some of the linguistic features of the emerging Americanisms in Nigerian English, especially at the phonological and lexical levels, and attempts to account for these features. Findings point in the direction of a growing bidialectism ‐ American and British norms ‐ in Nigerian English. The paper also analyzes Nigerian usage quantitatively in relation to some sociological variables. It concludes that Nigerian speakers of English now face challenges much more complex than bi‐competence in the language.
Many projects are conducted to develop multilingual lexical databases. Some of these projects use an interlingual approach (KBMT-89, EDR,...), where others choose a bilingual approach (Multilex,...).
Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of Radicalism in the 1790s. By Jon Mee. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1992. x + 251 pp. Price: £30.00. Silence and Sound: Theories of Poetics from the Eighteenth Century. By Richard Bradford. Rutherford, Madison, Tea‐neck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses. 1992. 231 pp. Price: £26.95. The Knowledge that Endures. Coleridge, German Philosophy and the Logic of Romantic Thought. By Gerald Mcneice. Basingstoke: Macmillan. 1992. xvii + 226 pp. Price: £40.00. Linguistic Exploitation of Syntactic Databases: the Use of the Nijmegen Linguistic DataBase Program. By Hans van Halte‐Ren and Theo van den Heuvel. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi. 1990. 207 pp. Price: Dfl. 65.00/$33.50.
Contains one file (pulo1.txt), a Sonsorolese lexical database with English glosses. This file was taken from a 3.5-inch microdisk labeled to indicate that it has accompanying tapes numbered 11, 12, and 13. The tapes were not with the microdisk, and there is no indication of who created the lexical database or tapes.
ABSTRACT: Despite the current extensive research on many variables associated with English language testing, little attention has been focused on the inherent variability in the linguistic ‘norms’ for Standard English that are generally tested. This paper examines data from domains of Standard English in several native‐speaker (e.g. British) and non‐native (e.g. Malaysian) varieties of English, focusing on linguistic and attitudinal factors leading to changes in these norms. It then discusses implications of these changes for test construction aimed at assessing proficiency in English as a global language, particularly through such standardized instruments as the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC).
Contains two files: arc.lst and arc1.srt. Together these files have a list of all the files in items KMF-007 through KMF-018. These files were taken from a 3.5-inch microdisk labeled to indicate that it has accompanying tapes numbered 11, 12, and 13. The tapes were not with the microdisk, and there is no indication of who created the lexical database or tapes.
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Although lexical frequencies are familiar measures of stylistic and thematic analysis, only recently have some stylostatisticians been tempted to investigate the relationship between the frequency and topography of repeated lexical items. In the present paper the authors have turned to the study of the four focal types of discursive narratology, using Marguerite Duras'Moderato Cantabile. Their intent is to uncover aspects of narratological performance which further elucidate the communicative strategies in the story. Part 1 summarizes the problematic between frequency and topography. It describes how a topographical index can be computed for any repeated item and how a Global Topography Index (GTI) can summarize the major topographical characteristics of any text sequence. Part 2 presents a four-cell typology of narrational mode: a segmentation of the verbal chain into narrating and narrated speech acts, with each text sequence tagged according to its discursive function: overt sender intervention for story coherence or comment on the focal level of a narrating present; representation of discrete or unlocalized events on the focal level of a mimeticized past. In Part 3 the focal encodings are displayed in numerical and graphic form, first according to the eight surface chapter divisions and then according to twenty-six subsets of approximately equal length. The fluctuations of the topography indices are reviewed, with particular attention being paid to the manifestation of cluster effects. Although sender interventions predominate, the relativized behavior of each focal type contributes to a climactic unraveling of the intrigue in the final chapters. In conclusion, the authors stress the dichotomy between the calm surface of the chapters and the agitated tensions of the twenty-six subsets.
This article uses recent work on the computer-aided analysis of texts by the French writer Céline as a framework to discuss Olsen's paper on the current state of computer-aided literary analysis. Drawing on analysis of syntactic structures, lexical creativity and use of proper names, it makes two points: (1) given a rich theoretical framework and sufficiently precise models, even simple computer tools such as text editors and concordances can make a valuable contribution to literary scholarship; (2) it is important to view the computer not as a device for finding what we as readers have failed to notice, but rather as a means of focussing more closely on what we have already felt as readers, and of verifying hypotheses we have produced as researchers.
The MR Report Assistant is designed to perform the types of routine tasks that computers do well, while freeing the skilled psychologist to concentrate on tasks that are best done by knowledgeable humans. The Assistant is intended for reporting the results of psychological evaluation of known or suspected mental retardation patients using a standard battery consisting of the WAIS-R, the Vineland, and an interview. The program encourages the inclusion of additional information by writing to a disk file suitable for editing with a word processor, rather than directly to a printer. Research and training are encouraged by making the program available to qualified persons at no charge.
This paper describes a procedure for obtaining conditional accuracy functions(CAFs) from naive observers and a restricted number of trials. The method permits the experimenter to counter the subjects’ tendency to favor accuracy in tasks in which stimulus discrimination is easy. Each time a block of 12 trials contains less than three errors, observers are instructed, by means of a speed-up signal, to respond faster. The subject is continuously informed about her/his effective reaction time. The data show that the desired speed-accuracy tradeoff was obtained within each of the 7 observers. The mean percent error was around 25%.
Efficient exploratory data analysis (EDA) may be aided by succinct, but informative, graphical representations (e.g., Tukey plots) that convey information about central tendency, variability, and shape of distributions, and that permit detection of outliers. Using research strategies adapted from studies of cross-modal perceptual equivalence, we show how auditory analogies of such displays may offer an effective alternative to visual plots for EDA.
This paper concurs with Mark Olsen's premise that computer-aided literature studies should take a different direction, one that is more suited to the computer's strength in analyzing large corpora of texts. However, the authors take issue with his conclusion that a reorientation of the notions of textual analysis is necessary in order to exploit the computer's capabilities. Contemporary medieval studies already provides us with models of textual analysis which are well suited to computer development. Though they stem from the particularities of medieval textual production, these models can perhaps be useful in the study of modern literatures.
Although the literature suggests that computers cannot completely replace traditional learning environments, a closer examination of factors that confound method with medium offers new research avenues for successful implementation of computer-based learning at the college level. Five suggestions for successful implementation of computers in the university setting are discussed.
Lack of a critical mass of scholars involved with the computer-assisted analysis of texts (CAAT), coupled with insufficient communication among various sectors of the literary and linguistic disciplines, has led to a skewed notion of computing humanists' work among their colleagues. This paper highlights the gap through examples of misunderstood humanist needs and achievements drawn from both recent media reports and humanities conferences. It suggests that networking and less modesty in manuscript submission can be at least partial solutions. The author cites some of his own published work and work-in-progress on Stendhal and Gobineau in refuting Mark Olsen's thesis that the dominance of single- or dual-author studies must be the cause of CAAT's “failure” to make significant inroads in mainstream literary journals. The author builds a case for the use of both diachronic and synchronic lexico-statistical data in carrying out such studies successfully. He recommends a new “Synthetic Criticism” where relevant quantitative methods would not be absent.
Describes a synthesis-by-analogy system which is a model of novel-word pronunciation by humans. It uses analogy in both orthographic and phonological domains and is applied to the pronunciation of novel words in British English and German. A major part of this cross-language study concerned the impact of implementational choices on performance, where this was defined as the ability of the system to produce pronunciations in line with those given by humans. The size and content of the lexical database on which any analogy system must be based were also considered. The better performing implementations produced useful results for both British English and German. However, best results for each of the 2 languages were obtained from different implementations. The system described is also a psychological model of reading aloud. (German & French abstracts) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved)
The Kay Elemetrics nasometer measures nasalance, a parameter of speech that reflects the proportion of total acoustic energy that is emitted nasally, making it possible to infer velopharyngeal (VP) function noninvasively. Nasometric evaluation is potentially widely applicable in the clinical assessment of suspected VF impairment. For clinical use, a patient’s mean nasalance on a passage of known phonetic composition must be compared to age-appropriate population norms. Most potential clinical subjects are young; many are preliterate. Passages for which norms have been established (Zoo, Rainbow, NasalSentences) are syntactically, semantically, and lexically complex, phonetically heterogeneous, phonologically mature, and long. Individual child subjects’ nasalance scores, if obtained at all, are therefore likely to be contaminated by artifacts created through hesitation noises, filled pauses, phonetic deviance from normed target, age differences, and measurement errors induced by coaching procedures. Differences in phonetic content between normed and actual utterances are almost inevitable; they lead to uninterpretable results. This study reports a technique for obtaining clinically useful nasalance scores from young, preliterate subjects, even those evidencing phonological deficits or noncompliant behavior. Large-n norms for preschool and primary children are presented.
The electronic generation of documents in modern offices will trasform the nature of archives, and also the techniques of historical research. Although considerable attention has been directed to developing research methodologies for social and economic history using computerized numeric data, almost no attention has been paid to the impact of machine readable textual records on historical writing. This article considers the advantages and disadvantages for the historian of the shift from paper records to electronic documents, and suggests a number of approaches to historical research made possible by the new technology.
The Learning Systems Department at Siemens Corporate Research is investigating the use of concept spaces to increase retrieval effectiveness. Similar to a semantic net, a concept space is a construct that defines the semantic relationships among ideas. The current focus of our research is to exploit the information in such a structure to ameliorate known shortcomings of statistical retrieval methods while maintaining the statistical methods' robustness. Our initial concept space is extracted from WordNet, a manually-constructed lexical database developed at Princeton University.
Although many scholars in literature currently seem mainly interested in theory, the focus on literary texts is what defines literature studies. Computer technology and the statistical methods it fosters are applicable to both the theoretical and to the interpretative issues which scholars of literature habitually address. Genette's distinction between the homodiegetic and the autodiegetic perspective in first-person narrative can be confirmed statistically. Roquentin's loneliness inLa nausée can be shown to be a formal characteristic of the type of novel he narrates, thus validating his commentary on his society. The computer can be used to deal with standard literary questions in a principled fashion, and a new orientation of literature studies on a cultural history model, which Mark Olsen recommends, is not necessary.
The study of signs is divided between those scholars who use the Saussurian binary sign (semiology) and those who prefer Charles Peirce's tripartite sign (semiotics). The common view of the opposition between the two types of signs does not take into consideration the methodological conditions of applicability of these two types of signs. This is particularly important in the field of literary studies and hence for the preparation of electronic programs for text analysis. The Peircian sign explicitly entails the discovery of a truth of meaning that claims to be universal and not reducible to a collection of opinions based on fragmented information; it also imposes the task of elucidating a transhistorical and universal significantion encoded in a text. Contrary to Peirce's view of the sign, our use of computer programs for text analysis, however, demonstrates that we implicitly treat every literary text as a set of linguistic data (letters, phonemes, syntagmatic segments, etc.) which are reducible to units that can be treated separately. A brief comparison of the results obtained from computer analyses of the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé's text, “Le Cygne,” with those obtained from two Peircian analyses (by Riffaterre and Champigny) of the same text demonstrates that our current methods of computer textual analysis are based on a Saussurian semiology, which is unidimensional and limited, and that these methods are still quite unable to produce a semiotic interpretation based on a totalizing hierarchy of the text's various discursive components.
This research examined how training and experience, family roles, and gender of observed family leadership affect ratings of family and individual parent functioning. Observer perceptions of video-taped family interviews were compared to determine the relative influence of male and female leadership. The influence of training was determined by comparing the perceptions of trained and naive observers. One hundred forty (70 naive, 70 experienced) adults from a large university and midwestern city participated in the experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two family interview conditions: (a) matriarchical, and (b) patriarchical. After viewing the video-taped family interviews, participants completed forms assessing the parents and families. The assessments included ratings of family communication, family conflict negotiation, family support and nurturance, parent helpfulness to family functioning, and parent individual adjustment. For the three family measures, a multivariate analysis of variance was conducted. Results indicate experienced observers are vulnerable to bias against female family leadership whereas naive observers show no comparable tendency. For the two measures of parent functioning, a mixed model multivariate analysis of variance was conducted. Results indicate that although experienced observers offer more critical ratings than their naive counterparts, vulnerability to bias against women as family leaders is not significantly influenced by training and experience. Evaluations of parent and family functioning appear the result of the combined influence of several factors. As a consequence, vulnerability to bias in family evaluations likely occurs in a complicated and potentially discrete fashion. This complexity promotes serious concern with respect to the ability of training to reduce the propensity for gender discriminating practice.
Commercial database programs such as dBase and Paradox, although developed originally for business applications, are versatile and powerful tools that can be used for an academic purpose such as evaluating student performance. They can be used to write and store test questions, assemble and print classroom or on-line laboratory tests, and calculate grades, test statistics, and so forth. Databases are flexible, unlike textbook “ancillary” test bank programs that are inextricably bound to the strictly linear format and brief shelf life of specific textbook editions. A prototypical relational database program is described, with which an instructor can produce tests based on generic terms adapted from Boneau’s (1990) study of psychological literacy, as well as on behavioral learning objectives adapted from Bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives. As a relational database, the program integrates terms, objectives, questions, tests, and test scores, and avoids unnecessary data duplication and waste of computer storage space.