An Introduction to Multilevel Analyses of Text Readability in Accounting and Finance

The present study introduces an assessment that includes multiple measures of language and discourse within the theoretical frameworks of comprehension in education and cognitive science. We utilize an automated textual assessment tool, Coh-Metrix, to analyze the Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) sections of annual reports to determine if significant differences in text readability are present between bankrupt and nonbankrupt companies. When applying Coh-Metrix indices, the MD&A sections of nonbankrupt companies appear to be easier to understand in terms of word concreteness, referential and deep (or causal) cohesion, and syntactic simplicity. More specifically, the MD&A sections of nonbankrupt companies contain more concrete wording, simpler syntactic structures, more word co-references to tie words and ideas, and more causal and intentional connectives to establish causal and logical relationships within the text.

Prediction English word concreteness ratios by their multidimensional Perceptual and action strength norms

Many dataset resulted by participant rating for word norms also concreteness ratio areavailable. However infrequent word and none words concreteness rank is rare. Here we usedLancaster sensory motor words’ norms , to predict word concreteness ratios of Brysbaerdataset. After removing missing values and collinear variables, we employed a SW-MLR forchoosing optimum number of norms to make a prediction MLR model. Finally we validate ourmodel using 10-fold cross-validation. The final model could predict concreteness by RMSE0.5123 and R-square 0.7262.

BALANCE OF MEANING PROBABILITIES IN PROCESSING OF SERBIAN HOMONYMY

The research deals with the set of Serbian homonymous nouns (nouns with multiple unrelated meanings) presented in the norming study and in the visual lexical decision task experiment. Native speakers listed the meanings of homonymous words and provided word familiarity and word concreteness ratings. Accordingly, the first database of Serbian homonyms was constructed containing subjective meanings of homonymous nouns along with the estimated meaning probabilities, as well as a number of meanings, redundancy and entropy of the distribution of meaning probabilities, word familiarity and word concreteness. The processing disadvantage of homonymous nouns over unambiguous nouns was replicated in the visual lexical decision task. Additionally, the processing of homonymous nouns was linked with redundancy: the information theory measure of the balance of meaning probabilities. The results revealed that homonyms with higher redundancy of the meaning probability distribution (i.e., unbalanced meaning probabilities) were processed faster. This finding was in accordance with the hypothesis derived from the Semantic Settling Dynamics account of the processing of ambiguous words, according to which the competition among the unrelated meanings derived the processing disadvantage in homonymy. However, the same pattern was not observed for the number of meanings and entropy, inviting for further research of the processing of ambiguous words.

Affective and concreteness norms for 3,022 Croatian words

This study presents subjective ratings for 3,022 Croatian words, which were evaluated on two affective dimensions (valence and arousal) and one lexico-semantic variable (concreteness). A sample of 933 Croatian native speakers rated the words online. Ratings showed high reliabilities for all three variables, as well as significant correlations with ratings from databases available in Spanish and English. A quadratic relation between valence and arousal was observed, with a tendency for arousal to increase for negative and positive words, and neutral words having the lowest arousal ratings. In addition, significant correlations were found between affective dimensions and word concreteness, suggesting that abstract words have a tendency to be more arousing and emotional than concrete words. The present database will allow experimental research in Croatian, a language with a considerable lack of psycholinguistic norms, by providing researchers with a useful tool in the investigation of the relationship between language and emotion for the South-Slavic group of languages.