Reader expertise and the literary significance of small-scale textual features in prose fiction

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio Parente ◽  
Kathy Conklin ◽  
Josephine Guy ◽  
Gareth Carrol ◽  
Rebekah Scott

Abstract We use eye tracking to investigate the attention readers pay to different textual features to determine their significance in the appreciation of prose fiction. Previous research examined attention allocation to lexical and punctuation variants, and the impact on reading dynamics for the remainder of the text, demonstrating that readers notice both kinds of variants but assign less value to the latter (Carrol, Conklin, Guy, & Scott, 2016). Here, in two experiments, we examine two conditions that may affect attention allocation: We investigate the influence of reader expertise (Experiment 1) and whether performance is influenced by a task-specific “spot-the-difference” effect (Experiment 2). We found that expertise plays little role in readers’ greater sensitivity to lexical rather than punctuation changes, and that the advantage for lexical changes persisted when the time interval between exposures is increased. These results confirm earlier findings: that small-scale features may not possess the creative significance predicated of them by critics and text-editors.

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Carrol ◽  
Kathy Conklin ◽  
Josephine Guy ◽  
Rebekah Scott

The digital era has brought with it a shift in the field of literary editing in terms of the amount and kind of textual variation that can reasonably be annotated by editors. However, questions remain about how far readers engage with textual variants, especially minor ones such as small-scale changes to punctuation. In this study we present an eye-tracking experiment investigating reader sensitivity to variations in surface textual features of prose fiction. We monitored eye movements while participants read textual variants from Dickens and James, hypothesising that readers may pay more attention to lexical rather than punctuation changes. We found longer reading times for both types, but only lexical changes also increased reading times for the rest of the sentence. In addition, eye-movement behaviour and conscious ability to report changes were highly correlated. We discuss the implications for how such methods might be applied to questions of “literary” significance and textual processing.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 2103
Author(s):  
Yuchen Liu ◽  
Jia Liu ◽  
Chuanzhe Li ◽  
Fuliang Yu ◽  
Wei Wang

An attempt was made to evaluate the impact of assimilating Doppler Weather Radar (DWR) reflectivity together with Global Telecommunication System (GTS) data in the three-dimensional variational data assimilation (3DVAR) system of the Weather Research Forecast (WRF) model on rain storm prediction in Daqinghe basin of northern China. The aim of this study was to explore the potential effects of data assimilation frequency and to evaluate the outputs from different domain resolutions in improving the meso-scale NWP rainfall products. In this study, four numerical experiments (no assimilation, 1 and 6 h assimilation time interval with DWR and GTS at 1 km horizontal resolution, 6 h assimilation time interval with radar reflectivity, and GTS data at 3 km horizontal resolution) are carried out to evaluate the impact of data assimilation on prediction of convective rain storms. The results show that the assimilation of radar reflectivity and GTS data collectively enhanced the performance of the WRF-3DVAR system over the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region of northern China. It is indicated by the experimental results that the rapid update assimilation has a positive impact on the prediction of the location, tendency, and development of rain storms associated with the study area. In order to explore the influence of data assimilation in the outer domain on the output of the inner domain, the rainfall outputs of 3 and 1 km resolution are compared. The results show that the data assimilation in the outer domain has a positive effect on the output of the inner domain. Since the 3DVAR system is able to analyze certain small-scale and convective-scale features through the incorporation of radar observations, hourly assimilation time interval does not always significantly improve precipitation forecasts because of the inaccurate radar reflectivity observations. Therefore, before data assimilation, the validity of assimilation data should be judged as far as possible in advance, which can not only improve the prediction accuracy, but also improve the assimilation efficiency.


Author(s):  
Jerry Jen-Hung Tsai ◽  
Jeff WT Kan ◽  
Xiangyu Wang ◽  
Yingsiu Huang

This chapter presents a study on the impact of design scales on collaborations in 3D virtual environments. Different domains require designers to work on different scales; for instance, urban design and electronic circuit design operate at very different scales. However, the understanding of the effects of scales upon collaboration in virtual environment is limited. In this chapter, the authors propose to use protocol analysis method to examine the differences between two design collaboration projects in virtual environments: one large scale, and another small scale within a similar domain. It shows that the difference in scale impacted more on communication control and social communication.


2021 ◽  
Vol 906 (1) ◽  
pp. 012020
Author(s):  
Alexandr Zubov ◽  
Tatyana Shumilova

Abstract The Kara astrobleme is one of the largest astroblemes known on land. Its diameter is ~65 km, the age is about 70 million years. The astrobleme is located at the northeastern part of the Pay-Khoy anticlinorium at the Kara River mouth region (Kara Sea coast, Russia). It is a unique object of impact genesis due to the presence of a variety of suevites and melt impactites. Melt rocks are products of the highest degree of impact transformation of target rocks. The diversity of melt rock impactites of the Kara astrobleme and obtaining their complex comparative mineralogical and petrochemical characteristics are important for solving the fundamental problem for studying of the typomorphism of the impactitogenesis products of melt rocks both – the impactites of the Kara astrobleme and other astroblemes in general. In the Kara astrobleme region there are at list two different types of massive melt rocks bodies – a cover melt rock at the Anaroga River (I) studied by previous researchers and an unexplored body of melt rock impactite at the Kara River (II) spatially connected with ultrahigh-pressure high-temperature (UHPHT) glasses just recently discovered. Our preliminary data indicate that the melt rock varieties of the Kara astrobleme have significant differences in texture and structure. The considered melt rocks are mostly composed of a matrix represented by a “mixture” of amorphous and cryptocrystalline masses of predominantly feldspar composition with a subordinate SiO2 content. According to the data of energy dispersive analysis the compositions of the studied melt rocks are similar and have minor deviations within the first percent. The difference in the shape of silicate segregations in melt rocks may indicate that the impact melt could have a high temperature with a shorter time interval for the solidification of melt rock II on the Kara River, in contrast to the massive melt rock I on the Anaroga River, where the impact melt had large volume and, accordingly, was cooled longer at lower temperatures. The data obtained complement the specificity of the Kara melt impactites, which may play a role in complementing the geological model of the Kara astrobleme. The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number 20-35-90065; the analytical equipment has been used at the Center for Collective Use “Geonauka” (IG Komi FRC SC UB RAS, Syktyvkar, Russia); the author expresses his gratitude to Isaenko S.I. for analytical work using Raman spectroscopy; Tropnikov E.M. for help in performing microprobe studies.


Author(s):  
T. Berdimbetov ◽  
S. Nietullaeva ◽  
A. Yegizbayeva

Since 1960, water level began to decline considerably due to anthropogenic impact of the Aral Sea (AS), and it is continued to this day, which has led to dramatic changes in the climate around the AS, including ambient temperatures and sharp increases in evapotranspiration. Although, it isn't possible to see normal trend in this precipitation. Time series analysis of the FTI (First Time Interval 1901-1960) and STI (Second Time Interval, 1960-2015), highlighting climate change around the AS, based on Global Climate Data, suggests that there is a significant negative difference between precipitation and evapotranspiration during the drying of the AS. It is possible to see the logical compatibility of the air temperature and difference between precipitation and evapotranspiration observed around the AS, i.e. the temperature fluctuation trend is positive and contrary to the difference between precipitation and evapotranspiration negative trend, which means that the annual hydrological budget was reduced according to the time scale. In this article, determining the AS as the central point, we analyze the changes in the thermal and hydrological processes observed on the AS, as well as the impact to the environment of anomalous climate change observed on and around the sea like the drying out of the AS.


2013 ◽  
Vol 569-570 ◽  
pp. 246-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaminda S. Bandara ◽  
Ranjith Dissanayake

Recent studies have proved that there is no fatigue limit for metallic materials; the stress life curve continuously drops even after 107cycles. However, existing design codes assume that there is a fatigue limit. Therefore, it is important to use appropriate safety factors if existing codes are used for life evaluations. This paper first describes a method to extend high cycle fatigue stress life curves which are developed using tests on small scale specimens, to the gigacycle regime. Then the difference between the stress life curves of small scale specimens and full scale tests related to steel bridges are explained. Finally, the paper presents a case study on a fatigue critical element of a steel railway bridge to show the significance of the gigacycle regime for fatigue life evaluation.


Author(s):  
Olga Čermáková ◽  
Miloslav Janeček ◽  
Andrea Jindrová ◽  
Jan Kořínek

The aim of this paper was to compare two methods of farming, especially their effect on water soil erosion. The examined methods were (1) large-scale farming, where more than 50% of the land was leased, and (2) small-scale farming, where the land was almost exclusively privately owned. The research area was 8 cadastres in the district of Hodonín, South Moravia, Czech Republic. In these cadastres 48 land blocks representing both large-scale and small-scale farming (i.e. owners and tenants) were chosen. The long-term average annual soil loss caused by water erosion (G) was calculated using the erosion model USLE 2D and ArcGIS 10.1. The nonparametric Mann-Whitney test was used for the statistical evaluation of the data. The difference between the soil loss (G) on land blocks farmed by small producers (owners) and large producers (tenants) was significant (p < 0.05). Differences between the values of the cropping-management factor (C) were not statistically significant (p = 0.054). Based on the analysis of other variables in the USLE equation it can be stated that a continuous slope length, conditioned by the size of land blocks, played an important role in the amount of soil loss caused by water erosion. Above all, to protect the soil from erosion and maintain soil quality it is necessary to reduce the size of land blocks farmed by tenants and improve the crop rotation systems.


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-109
Author(s):  
Samuel Kai Wah Chu ◽  
Runbin Xie ◽  
Yanshu Wang

AbstractWith increasing globalization, news from different countries, and even in different languages, has become readily available and has become a way for many people to learn about other cultures. As people around the world become more reliant on social media, the impact of fake news on public society also increases. However, most of the fake news detection research focuses only on English. In this work, we compared the difference between textual features of different languages (Chinese and English) and their effect on detecting fake news. We also explored the cross-language transmissibility of fake news detection models. We found that Chinese textual features in fake news are more complex compared with English textual features. Our results also illustrated that the bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model outperformed other algorithms for within-language data sets. As for detection in cross-language data sets, our findings demonstrated that fake news monitoring across languages is potentially feasible, while models trained with data from a more inclusive language would perform better in cross-language detection.


2019 ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
I. E. Limonov ◽  
M. V. Nesena

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of public investment programs on the socio-economic development of territories. As a case, the federal target programs for the development of regions and investment programs of the financial development institution — Vnesheconombank, designed to solve the problems of regional development are considered. The impact of the public interventions were evaluated by the “difference in differences” method using Bayesian modeling. The results of the evaluation suggest the positive impact of federal target programs on the total factor productivity of regions and on innovation; and that regional investment programs of Vnesheconombank are improving the export activity. All of the investments considered are likely to have contributed to the reduction of unemployment, but their implementation has been accompanied by an increase in social inequality.


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