Pragmatics and the processing of metaphors

1996 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Katz
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Information ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Specific Knowledge ◽  
Intended Meaning ◽  
Vehicle Choice ◽  
Categorical Knowledge ◽  
Feature Listing ◽  
Metaphor Processing

A model of metaphor processing is suggested based on the application of pragmatic principles to the type of semantic information easy to access. It is argued that, with metaphor, higher-order categorical knowledge is given processing preference over instance-specific knowledge in an attempt to recover likely intended meaning. Instance-specific information is used more often when the higher-order knowledge is taken to violate conversational postulates. One such violation occurs when the categories implicated by metaphor topic and vehicle are similar, and thus unlikely to provide new or relevant information. It is argued further that these differences could, in part, explain at least one condition that produces the asymmetry observed in metaphor when topic and vehicle are reversed. Predictions supportive of the model were obtained in three studies, employing different methodologies: feature listing, recognition memory and a vehicle choice task.

The experiences and needs of children living with a parent with young onset dementia: results from the NeedYD study

2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (12) ◽  
pp. 2001-2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joany K. Millenaar ◽  
Deliane van Vliet ◽  
Christian Bakker ◽  
Myrra J. F. J. Vernooij-Dassen ◽  
Raymond T. C. M. Koopmans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Coping Styles ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Specific Knowledge ◽  
Young Onset ◽  
Care And Support ◽  
Young Parent ◽  
Young Onset Dementia ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Family Centered

ABSTRACTBackground:Children of patients with young onset dementia (YOD) who are confronted with a parent who has a progressive disease, often assist in caregiving tasks, which may have a great impact on their lives. The objective of the present study is to explore the experiences of children living with a young parent with dementia with a specific focus on the children's needs.Methods:Semi-structured interviews with 14 adolescent children between the ages of 15 and 27 years of patients with YOD were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Themes were identified based on the established codes.Results:The emerging categories were divided into three themes that demonstrated the impact of dementia on daily life, different ways of coping with the disease, and children's need for care and support. The children had difficulties managing all of the responsibilities and showed concerns about their future. To deal with these problems, they demonstrated various coping styles, such as avoidant or adaptive coping. Although most children were initially reluctant to seek professional care, several of them expressed the need for practical guidance to address the changing behavior of their parent. The children felt more comfortable talking to someone who was familiar with their situation and who had specific knowledge of YOD and the available services.Conclusion:In addition to practical information, more accessible and specific information about the diagnosis and the course of YOD is needed to provide a better understanding of the disease for the children. These findings underline the need for a personal, family-centered approach.

scholarly journals Campaign-Specific Information and Media Effects

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Francois Daoust ◽  
Katherine V.R. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Selection Bias ◽  
Political Information ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Bias Effect ◽  
Specific Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Electoral Democracy ◽  
Nous Utilisons

Background  This article aims to revisit the role of digital media in acquiring campaign-specific information.Analysis  We use datasets from the Making Electoral Democracy Work project that include campaign-specific questions to analyze six regions in three democracies (Canada, Spain, and France).Conclusion and implications  Results demonstrate that voters have a moderate level of campaign-specific knowledge and that traditional media are, at first glance, more useful to acquire political information. Nevertheless, when in interaction with partisanship, traditional media display a surprisingly greater selection bias effect and appear less useful to acquire information. We thus argue that digital media are in fact not more vulnerable to potential echo chambers that would lead to a homogenous information environment.Contexte  Cet article cherche revoir le rôle numériques des medias dans l’acquisition d’information de campagne.Analyse  Nous utilisons les données du projet Making Electoral Democracy Work qui inclut des question d’information politique spécifiques de campagnes électorales pour analyser six regions dans trois démocraties (Canada, Espagne et France).Conclusion et implications  Les résultats démontrent que les électeurs ont un niveau modéré d’information politique de campagnes électorales et que les medias traditionnels sont, à première vue, plus utiles pour en faire l’acquisition. Néanmoins, en interaction avec les individus partisans, ces médias traditionnels sont l’objet d’un biais de sélection plus important et apparaissent donc moins utiles. Nous soutenons donc que les médias numériques ne sont pas plus vulnérable aux de chambre d’écho qui mènerait à un environnement d’information homogène.

scholarly journals Higher-Order Cumulants Drive Neuronal Activity Patterns, Inducing UP-DOWN States in Neural Populations

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 477 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Baravalle ◽  
Fernando Montani
Keyword(s):  
Probability Distributions ◽  
Activity Patterns ◽  
Gaussian Model ◽  
Random Variable ◽  
Neural System ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Neuronal Populations ◽  
Binder Cumulant

A major challenge in neuroscience is to understand the role of the higher-order correlations structure of neuronal populations. The dichotomized Gaussian model (DG) generates spike trains by means of thresholding a multivariate Gaussian random variable. The DG inputs are Gaussian distributed, and thus have no interactions beyond the second order in their inputs; however, they can induce higher-order correlations in the outputs. We propose a combination of analytical and numerical techniques to estimate higher-order, above the second, cumulants of the firing probability distributions. Our findings show that a large amount of pairwise interactions in the inputs can induce the system into two possible regimes, one with low activity (“DOWN state”) and another one with high activity (“UP state”), and the appearance of these states is due to a combination between the third- and fourth-order cumulant. This could be part of a mechanism that would help the neural code to upgrade specific information about the stimuli, motivating us to examine the behavior of the critical fluctuations through the Binder cumulant close to the critical point. We show, using the Binder cumulant, that higher-order correlations in the outputs generate a critical neural system that portrays a second-order phase transition.

Artists and art libraries

1995 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deirdre C. Stam
Keyword(s):  
Wide Spectrum ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Electronic Networks ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Essential Service ◽  
Convenient Access

Asked about how artists use libraries, art librarians confirm that artists gather ideas from a wide spectrum of subjects and sources, beyond the scope of the art library; they also need images and other, specific, information which art libraries often can supply. Their approach is typically exploratory and intuitive; they are compulsive browsers, but are likely to be impatient of catalogs and only occasional users of standard references tools. They expect a lot of help from specialist librarians. Art libraries serving artists generally provide access to a wide range of images, and invariably house their collections on open stacks. Photocopying, including color copying, is an essential service, and other visual and ‘studio’ facilities may also be provided. As more and more visual and other relevant information is made available through electronic networks, art libraries can provide artists with assisted, convenient access to it.

scholarly journals Human Chemosignals and Brain Activity: A Preliminary Meta-analysis of the Processing of Human Body Odors

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (9) ◽  
pp. 855-864
Author(s):  
Elisa Dal Bò ◽  
Claudio Gentili ◽  
Cinzia Cecchetto
Keyword(s):  
Brain Activity ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Body Odor ◽  
The Right ◽  
Body Odors

Abstract Across phyla, chemosignals are a widely used form of social communication and increasing evidence suggests that chemosensory communication is present also in humans. Chemosignals can transfer, via body odors, socially relevant information, such as specific information about identity or emotional states. However, findings on neural correlates of processing of body odors are divergent. The aims of this meta-analysis were to assess the brain areas involved in the perception of body odors (both neutral and emotional) and the specific activation patterns for the perception of neutral body odor (NBO) and emotional body odor (EBO). We conducted an activation likelihood estimation (ALE) meta-analysis on 16 experiments (13 studies) examining brain activity during body odors processing. We found that the contrast EBO versus NBO resulted in significant convergence in the right middle frontal gyrus and the left cerebellum, whereas the pooled meta-analysis combining all the studies of human odors showed significant convergence in the right inferior frontal gyrus. No significant cluster was found for NBOs. However, our findings also highlight methodological heterogeneity across the existing literature. Further neuroimaging studies are needed to clarify and support the existing findings on neural correlates of processing of body odors.

The Influence of Analysts, Institutional Investors, and Insiders on the Incorporation of Market, Industry, and Firm-Specific Information into Stock Prices

2004 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 1119-1151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Piotroski ◽  
Darren T. Roulstone
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Investors ◽  
Stock Prices ◽  
Stock Return ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Specific Component ◽  
Future Earnings ◽  
Industry Level ◽  
Level Information ◽  
Information Advantage

We investigate the extent to which the trading and trade-generating activities of three informed market participants—financial analysts, institutional investors, and insiders—influence the relative amount of firm-specific, industry-level, and market-level information impounded into stock prices, as measured by stock return synchronicity. We find that stock return synchronicity is positively associated with analyst forecasting activities, consistent with analysts increasing the amount of industry-level information in prices through intra-industry information transfers. In contrast, stock return synchronicity is inversely related to insider trades, consistent with these transactions conveying firm-specific information. Supplemental tests show that insider and institutional trading accelerate the incorporation of the firm-specific component of future earnings news into prices alone, while analyst forecasting activity accelerates both the industry and firm-specific component of future earnings news. Our results suggest that all three parties influence the firm's information environment, but the type of price-relevant information conveyed by their activities depends on each party's relative information advantage.

scholarly journals Integrating Common Ground and Informativeness in Pragmatic Word Learning

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Bohn ◽  
Michael Henry Tessler ◽  
Michael C. Frank
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Intended Meaning ◽  
Pragmatic Reasoning ◽  
Extended Experiment ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Generate Model ◽  
Different Sources

Pragmatic inferences are an integral part of language learn- ing and comprehension. To recover the intended meaning of an utterance, listeners need to balance and integrate different sources of contextual information. In a series of experiments, we studied how listeners integrate general expectations about speakers with expectations specific to their interactional his- tory with a particular speaker. We used a Bayesian pragmatics model to formalize the integration process. In Experiments 1 and 2, we replicated previous findings showing that listeners make inferences based on speaker-general and speaker-specific expectations. We then used the empirical measurements from these experiments to generate model predictions about how the two kinds of expectations should be integrated, which we tested in Experiment 3. Experiment 4 replicated and extended Experiment 3 to a broader set of conditions. In both experiments, listeners based their inferences on both types of expectations. We found that model performance was also consistent with this finding; with better fit for a model which incorporated both general and specific information compared to baselines incorporating only one type. Listeners flexibly integrate different forms of social expectations across a range of contexts, a process which can be described using Bayesian models of pragmatic reasoning.

Learning a Lightweight Ontology for Semantic Retrieval in Patient-Centered Information Systems

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 11-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrich Reimer ◽  
Edith Maier ◽  
Stephan Streit ◽  
Thomas Diggelmann ◽  
Manfred Hoffleisch
Keyword(s):  
Information Needs ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Semantic Retrieval ◽  
Patient Centered ◽  
Text Documents ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Information Portal ◽  
Traditional Approaches

The paper introduces a web-based eHealth platform currently being developed that will assist patients with certain chronic diseases. The ultimate aim is behavioral change. This is supported by online assessment and feedback which visualizes actual behavior in relation to target behavior. Disease-specific information is provided through an information portal that utilizes lightweight ontologies (associative networks) in combination with text mining. The paper argues that classical word-based information retrieval is often not sufficient for providing patients with relevant information, but that their information needs are better addressed by concept-based retrieval. The focus of the paper is on the semantic retrieval component and the learning of a lightweight ontology from text documents, which is achieved by using a biologically inspired neural network. The paper concludes with preliminary results of the evaluation of the proposed approach in comparison with traditional approaches.

scholarly journals Antonym-Synonym Classification Based on New Sub-Space Embeddings

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 6204-6211
Author(s):  
Muhammad Asif Ali ◽  
Yifang Sun ◽  
Xiaoling Zhou ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Xiang Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Semantic Information ◽  
Relation Extraction ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Low Performance ◽  
And Performance

Distinguishing antonyms from synonyms is a key challenge for many NLP applications focused on the lexical-semantic relation extraction. Existing solutions relying on large-scale corpora yield low performance because of huge contextual overlap of antonym and synonym pairs. We propose a novel approach entirely based on pre-trained embeddings. We hypothesize that the pre-trained embeddings comprehend a blend of lexical-semantic information and we may distill the task-specific information using Distiller, a model proposed in this paper. Later, a classifier is trained based on features constructed from the distilled sub-spaces along with some word level features to distinguish antonyms from synonyms. Experimental results show that the proposed model outperforms existing research on antonym synonym distinction in both speed and performance.

Dominant Meanings Approach Towards Individualized Web Search for Learning Environments

2008 ◽  
pp. 2376-2393
Author(s):  
M. A. Razek ◽  
C. Frasson
Keyword(s):  
Search Engines ◽  
Web Search ◽  
Individual Performance ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Intended Meaning ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Dominant Meaning ◽  
Web Based Learning ◽  
Adaptive Hypermedia Systems

This chapter describes how we can use dominant meaning to improve a Web-based learning environment. For sound adaptive hypermedia systems, we need updated knowledge bases from many kinds of resource (alternative explanations, examples, exercises, images, applets, etc.). The large amount of information available on the Web can play a prominent role in building these knowledge bases. Using the Internet without search engines to find specific information is like wandering aimlessly in the ocean and trying to catch a specific fish. It is obvious, however, that search engines are not intended to adapt to individual performance. Our new technique, based on dominant meaning, is used to individualize a query and search result. By dominant meaning, we refer to a set of keywords that best fits an intended meaning of the target word. Our experiments show that the dominant meanings approach greatly improves retrieval effectiveness.

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