Learning about the Meanings of Ambiguous Words: Evidence from a Word-Meaning Priming Paradigm with Short Narratives

Fluent language comprehension requires readers and listeners to rapidly select an appropriate meaning for each word that they encounter. This meaning selection process is particularly challenging when low-frequency (subordinate) word meanings are used (e.g. the “river bank” meaning of “bank”). Recent word-meaning priming experiments show that recent experience can help to make subordinate word meanings more readily available, and thereby reduce the difficulty in accessing these meanings. One limitation of previous word-meaning priming experiments is that participants encounter the ambiguous words within a list of unconnected single sentences in which each ambiguous word is strongly disambiguated by words within the prime sentence. The current web-based study (N=51) extends this work to replicate word-meaning priming using short 3-sentence narratives as primes in which relatively weak contextual cues in sentence 1 serve to disambiguate a target ambiguous word that occurs in sentence 3. The results from the subsequent word-association test task confirmed that following a short delay (digit span) task the primed (subordinate) meanings were more readily available compared with an unprimed control. This work represents an important first step in moving the word-meaning priming paradigm towards materials that more reflect the varied ways in which ambiguous words are used within natural language.

L1 mediation in Chinese English learners’ mental lexicon: Evidence from word association tests

The study aimed to explore the evidence of first language (L1) mediation in second language (L2) word associations and the L2 learner-related factors affecting the extent of L1 mediation with the following approaches. First, different from previous research, word association tests (WATs) embraced both receptive and productive word associations in the study. Second, different from word-related variables such as cognates vs. non-cognates in previous research, the study examined learner-related factors. Third, it examined whether the methodological difference (receptive vs. productive test formats) may affect the extent of L1 mediation in L2 access. A total of 108 Chinese English learners varying in proficiency, learning experiences, input and motivation participated in WATs using 24 stimulus words. The results suggested, (1) from the findings of descriptive statistics and ANOVAs, the evidence of L1 mediation was found in all three L2 proficiency groups with different extent of higher L1 mediation in lower proficiency groups. (2) From the findings of Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients, significant correlations were found with L1-promoting learning environments, L2 input, integrative motivation and the learners’ awareness of L1 activation. (3) The findings of the paired-samples t-tests confirmed a significant difference between the two test formats. Based on the findings, the study suggested the promotion of L2-rich learning environments, integrative motivation, and receptive and productive word associations in the L2 network.

Exploring Big Data Analytic Approaches to Cancer Blog Text Analysis

In this article, the authors explore the potential of a big data analytics approach to unstructured text analytics of cancer blogs. The application is developed using Cloudera platform's Hadoop MapReduce framework. It uses several text analytics algorithms, including word count, word association, clustering, and classification, to identify and analyze the patterns and keywords in cancer blog postings. This article establishes an exploratory approach to involving big data analytics methods in developing text analytics applications for the analysis of cancer blogs. Additional insights are extracted through various means, including the development of categories or keywords contained in the blogs, the development of a taxonomy, and the examination of relationships among the categories. The application has the potential for generalizability and implementation with health content in other blogs and social media. It can provide insight and decision support for cancer management and facilitate efficient and relevant searches for information related to cancer.

Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Text Mining Techniques for Understanding Medical Literature

Over the past few years, numerous studies and research articles have been published in the medical literature review domain. The topics covered by these researches included medical information retrieval, disease statistics, drug analysis, and many other fields and application domains. In this paper, we employ various text mining and data analysis techniques in an attempt to discover trending topics and topic concordance in the healthcare literature and data mining field. This analysis focuses on healthcare literature and bibliometric data and word association rules applied to 1945 research articles that had been published between the years 2006 and 2019. Our aim in this context is to assist saving time and effort required for manually summarizing large-scale amounts of information in such a broad and multi-disciplinary domain. To carry out this task, we employ topic modeling techniques through the utilization of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), in addition to various document and word embedding and clustering approaches. Findings reveal that since 2010 the interest in the healthcare big data analysis has increased significantly, as demonstrated by the five most commonly used topics in this domain.

Investigation of Infographic Design and Summarizing Processes from the Biology Texts of Primary School Students in Terms of Different Variables

Technological developments have increased the importance of presenting and the processing of information as effective and memorable in the field of education. The aim of the study is to examine the effect of performing biology subjects in the elementary school science lessons with infographic design tasks in terms of the effects on students’ cognitive structures and knowledge levels in the learning - teaching process. As the research method was used the pretest-posttest control group design from the experimental research models. The sample of the research consists of 4th grade students of a primary school. The total of 48 students were studied from two different classes, each of 24 students including in the study. Word Association Test (WAT) and achievement Test were used as data collection tools. Mann Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test from non-parametric tests were used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the analyzes, it was seen that the students who carried out the infographic design activities were positively affected in terms of their cognitive structures.

Social Representations of the Coronavirus at the Beginning of the Pandemic in Russia

The coronavirus outbreak is a global event that has bypassed national borders and affected the entire world. Therefore, examining social representations of can reveal the problems that structure peoples experiences in a particular social context. To identify social representations of the coronavirus, the authors conducted a survey within the territory of the Sverdlovsk region. The survey covered the period from March 11 to May 11, 2020. The data were collected in two stages: at the first stage, there were 31 confirmed cases of COVID-19 infection in Russia, but no cases had yet been recorded in the Sverdlovsk region; at the second stage, the number of cases reached 1952 in the Sverdlovsk region and 221 344 throughout the country. The study used the word association tests, The Semantic Differential Scale (V.F. Petrenko), The Psychic Activation Assessment Methodology (L.A. Kurgan and T.A. Nemchin) and the questionnaire survey techniques. The findings showed that the significance of the coronavirus problem for the respondents varied in different periods of the pandemic. The core of the social representation is sustainable and coherent. It reflects the results of the media impact: death, panic. It also remains stable regardless of the time and involvement of the respondents in the pandemic. The potential alteration zone serves as a kind of taming of knowledge about the coronavirus, the operationalization of the coronavirus perception content into the language of changes in a persons everyday life - the coronavirus pandemic is understood as a flu epidemic and the need for self-isolation is a vacation, an opportunity to stay at home. Observation of the immediate affective reaction of the respondents to the trigger coronavirus uncovered the presence of emotional tension and the prevalence of negative experiences in them. The survey also showed that in the pandemic, being the main source of information and a means of communication, the media set trends for developing perceptions.

Representasi Sosial tentang Tragedi Semanggi pada Mahasiswa Unika Atma Jaya

Peristiwa Tragedi Semanggi terjadi pada tanggal 13 November 1998. Hampir setiap tahun terdapat kelompok mahasiswa Unika Atma Jaya melakukan aksi memperingati Tragedi Semanggi walaupun mereka tidak mengalami langsung peristiwa tersebut. Namun sebagian besar mahasiswa tidak ikut memperingati Tragedi Semanggi. Penelitian ini bertujuan memahami perbedaan keterlibatan dalam aksi peringatan Tragedi Semanggi melalui konsep representasi sosial, dengan pendekatan struktural. Pendekatan ini memandang bahwa isi representasi sosial suatu kelompok mencakup dua sistem, yaitu central core dan peripheral. Metode penelitian ini berjenis kuantitatif dan melalui dua tahap. Tahap pertama bertujuan mengidentifikasi atribut representasi sosial tentang Tragedi Semanggi, dan tahap kedua bertujuan mengidentifikasi atribut mana yang berada di central core dan peripheral. Penelitian ini melibatkan 230 partisipan pada tahap pertama dan 206 partisipan pada tahap kedua, yang diperoleh melalui accidental sampling. Data penelitian diperoleh dengan kuesioner online dengan teknik word association pada tahap pertama dan teknik calling-into-question pada tahap kedua. Analisis data tahap pertama menggunakan content analysis, sedangkan pada tahap kedua menggunakan chi-square goodness of fit dengan ⅔ expected frequency. Hasil penelitian menemukan 18 atribut representasi sosial tentang Tragedi Semanggi, yaitu: “korban”, “mahasiswa”, “situasi yang kacau”, “demonstrasi”, “aparat negara”, “perilaku kekerasan”, “perlawanan”, “pelanggaran hukum dan HAM”, “Atma Jaya”, “perasaan takut”, “masa lalu”, “pemerintah”, “reformasi”, “ketidakadilan”, “politik”, “belum selesai”, “orde baru”, “perasaan sedih”. Perbedaan antara kelompok partisipan aksi dan kelompok nonpartisipan aksi terletak pada atribut “belum selesai” dan “reformasi”.

ТАКСОНОМІЯ АСОЦІАЦІЙ ПРОВІДНИХ КОНЦЕПТІВ РЕЛІГІЙНОГО ДИСКУРСУ

The abstract reveal the problem of the prevailing ideas of young people about the leading religious concepts. The aim of the research is to analyze students" verbal representations of religious discourse concepts. To define the leading concepts, we used a structural approach, which the classic components are: behavioral (prayer, sermon, sacraments), emotional-motivational (faith, sin) and cognitive (religion, church, priest). We used free WAT (word association test) for psycholinguistic analysis. The results of the cluster analysis showed that in the minds of young people religious discourse is represented through two main semantic categories, namely faith and the church - the priest.