Epistemic reasoning in pragmatic inferencing by non-native speakers: The case of scalar implicatures

Scalar implicatures involve inferring the use of a less informative term (e.g. some) to mean the negation of a more informative term (e.g. not all). A growing body of recent research on the derivation of scalar implicatures by adult second language (L2) learners shows that while they are successful in acquiring the knowledge of scalar implicatures, a property at the semantics–pragmatics interface, it remains controversial as to which mechanism, default or non-default, could account for L2 learners’ derivation of scalar implicatures. The present study used an online self-paced reading task to address this issue by examining the role of the speaker’s knowledge state in the interpretation of the existential quantifier some by Chinese-speaking learners of English in incremental sentence processing. Results showed that both L2 and native participants demonstrated comparable online sensitivity to the speaker’s knowledge state. Critically, when the scalar implicature was computed in situations where the speaker was more likely to know whether the statement with the stronger alternative was true, it gave rise to measurable reading latency, indicative of increased processing costs. We conclude by arguing that our findings are compatible with the context-driven models within the Gricean tradition.

Dress Nicer = Know More? Young Children’s Knowledge Attribution and Selective Learning Based on How Others Dress

This research explored whether children judge the knowledge state of others and selectively learn novel information from them based on how they dress. The results indicated that 4- and 6-year-olds identified a formally dressed individual as more knowledgeable about new things in general than a casually dressed one (Study 1). Moreover, children displayed an overall preference to seek help from a formally dressed individual rather than a casually dressed one when learning about novel objects and animals (Study 2). These findings are discussed in relation to the halo effect, and may have important implications for child educators regarding how instructor dress might influence young students’ knowledge attribution and learning preferences.

Dress Nicer = Know More? Young Children’s Knowledge Attribution and Selective Learning Based on How Others Dress

This research explored whether children judge the knowledge state of others and selectively learn novel information from them based on how they dress. The results indicated that 4- and 6-year-olds identified a formally dressed individual as more knowledgeable about new things in general than a casually dressed one (Study 1). Moreover, children displayed an overall preference to seek help from a formally dressed individual rather than a casually dressed one when learning about novel objects and animals (Study 2). These findings are discussed in relation to the halo effect, and may have important implications for child educators regarding how instructor dress might influence young students’ knowledge attribution and learning preferences.

Children consider the probability of random success when evaluating knowledge

To infer what others know, we must consider under what epistemic states their actions were both rational and probable. We test whether preschoolers can compare the probability of different actions (and outcomes) under different epistemic states—and use this to evaluate what others know. Specifically, four- to six-year-olds (n=90) were asked to help evaluate an agent’s knowledge state by asking the agent to complete either an “undiagnostic” task (where success was assured), or a “diagnostic task” (where the probability of random success was low). By age six, children understood that the “diagnostic” task would more likely reveal the agent’s knowledge state; four- and five-year-olds had no reliable preference, although children in all age groups understood that the “diagnostic” task was harder. These results suggest that, by the end of preschool, children understand how agents’ epistemic states and environment jointly determine success—considering whether agents’ actions imply knowledge, or just luck.

Topic-independent modeling of user knowledge in informational search sessions

Web search is among the most frequent online activities. In this context, widespread informational queries entail user intentions to obtain knowledge with respect to a particular topic or domain. To serve learning needs better, recent research in the field of interactive information retrieval has advocated the importance of moving beyond relevance ranking of search results and considering a user’s knowledge state within learning oriented search sessions. Prior work has investigated the use of supervised models to predict a user’s knowledge gain and knowledge state from user interactions during a search session. However, the characteristics of the resources that a user interacts with have neither been sufficiently explored, nor exploited in this task. In this work, we introduce a novel set of resource-centric features and demonstrate their capacity to significantly improve supervised models for the task of predicting knowledge gain and knowledge state of users in Web search sessions. We make important contributions, given that reliable training data for such tasks is sparse and costly to obtain. We introduce various feature selection strategies geared towards selecting a limited subset of effective and generalizable features.

Tracking who knows what: epistemic gaps and the prosodic realization of corrective focus

Corrective information is produced with higher prosodic prominence than non-corrective information. However, it remains unclear how corrective prosody is realized in different communicative settings. We conducted two production experiments to investigate whether interlocutors’ prosodic realization of corrective focus depends on each other’s knowledge state. Participants carried out a statement-response task in pairs (e.g., Speaker B: Tina had shrimp at a restaurant. Speaker A: No, she had beef at a restaurant.). Our focus is on the prosody of Speaker A’s utterance. We manipulated whether Speaker B’s statement was implausible in the context (e.g., a context where it is known that Tina actually hates seafood). Furthermore, the two experiments differed in whether Speaker B knew that their statement (e.g., about Tina eating shrimp at a restaurant) was (im)plausible. In Experiment 1, both speakers had access to the crucial context concerning the probability of Speaker A’s statement (Tina’s preferences about food). In Experiment 2, only Speaker A had access to this background information. We found that Speaker A’s prosody when responding to Speaker B was influenced by both (i) the contextual probability of Speaker B’s statements and (ii) Speaker B’s knowledge (or lack thereof) about the contextual probability. We present an analysis where the prosodic prominence associated with corrective information reflects the gap between expectation and reality – in this case, what Speaker A had expected Speaker B to say and what Speaker B actually says.

Leopolis collection, Museum of Independence – wellspring of knowledge, state of research and recommendations

The Leopolis Collection (at the Museum of Independence) constitutes a valuable source of knowledge on the past of Lviv and its surroundings as well as the fate of the Polish people living there. Created in 1992 as a result of the efforts of Borderland circles, its contribution is used for research by museum specialists, professional historians and researchers of the Borderlands past. The artefacts, archival materials and publications collected there are made use of for preparing exhibitions, scholarly articles and monographs. These valuable collections in relation to exhibitions are still awaiting a systematic study. Research undertaken so far has borne fruit in the form of valuable monographs and studies, but there are many valuable materials still waiting to be unearthed. For the purposes of accessing the museum materials the creation of a Leopolis Collection catalogue is necessary so that its contents can be more broadly made use of – both in historical research and that pertaining to museum-based studies.