6,384 research outputs found
A PC parallel port button box provides millisecond response time accuracy under Linux
No full textFor psychologists, it is sometimes necessary to measure people's reaction times to the nearest millisecond. This article describes how to use the PC parallel port to receive signals from a button box to achieve millisecond response time accuracy. The workings of the parallel port, the corresponding port addresses, and a simple Linux program for controlling the port are described. A test of the speed and reliability of button box signal detection is reported. If the reader is moderately familiar with Linux, this article should provide sufficient instruction for him or her to build and test his or her own parallel port button box. This article also describes how the parallel port could be used to control an external apparatus
Millisecond accuracy video display using OpenGL under Linux
No full textTo measure people’s reaction times to the nearest millisecond, it is necessary to know exactly when
a stimulus is displayed. This article describes how to display stimuli with millisecond accuracy on a
normal CRT monitor, using a PC running Linux. A simple C program is presented to illustrate how this
may be done within X Windows using the OpenGL rendering system. A test of this system is reported
that demonstrates that stimuli may be consistently displayed with millisecond accuracy. An algorithm
is presented that allows the exact time of stimulus presentation to be deduced, even if there are relatively
large errors in measuring the display time
Segmental and suprasegmental phonological skills in Chinese-English bilingual children with reading comprehension difficulties
No full textThe current study set out to evaluate the phonological skills profiles of Chinese-English bilingual children who are poor in reading comprehension. A total of 282 Chinese-English bilingual children were tested on measures of segmental phonological awareness (PA), suprasegmental phonological processing, vocabulary, word reading, and reading comprehension, in both Chinese and English, as well as working memory and nonverbal intelligence. Based on the reading comprehension scores, we identified 81 children who were average readers, 16 children who were poor in Chinese reading comprehension (PC), 11 children who were poor in English reading comprehension (PE), and 20 children who were poor in both Chinese and English reading comprehension (PB). With regard to relavent non-verbal intelligence, vocabulary, word reading, and working memory controlled, MANCOVAs and post-hoc analyses showed that the average and PC groups performed better than the PE and PB groups in Chinese segmental PA tasks. Additionally, the average readers outperformed the three groups of poor readers on Chinese tone awareness task. Also, the average readers performed better than the PE and PC groups in the English stress sensitivity task. To sum up, these results highlight the importance of Chinese tone awareness in reading processing. Also, poor L2 English stress sensitivity is also associated with reading comprehension difficulties in L1 Chinese
The virtual image : Brazilian literature in English translation
No full textThe
aim of this thesis is to
examine
how the virtual
image
of Brazil
and
its literature is
constructed
in the Anglo-American world. To this
end, a survey of
Brazilian literary
works
in English translation was
carried out.
Having
gathered this data, it became
possible to establish
correlations
between the historical
moments when such translations
were made, when their number
increased,
and the events occurring at
those times in the international
panorama, as well as to look into the
role of sponsors, publishers and translators in the
selection and
production of such translations.
The data
also allowed a profile of
Brazilian literary
works
in
English translation to be drawn. It became
possible to suggest that
such works
fall into four
main categories:
`authorial
works',
'topical
works',
`ambassadorial
works'
and `consumer-oriented
works'.
In
order
to look
more closely
into how the translation process
has helped to
shape
the
virtual
image
of Brazilian literary
works
in
the Anglo-American world, an analysis of a sample of
translations
of
such works was made. Included in this
sample were
the translations
of works
by Machado de Asis, by Indianist
and
Regionalist
wirters,
culminating
in
an examination of translations of
GuimarAes Rosa's
works.
Having looked
at these aspects of
the translation
process, what
remained
to be done
was to investigate
to what extent
Brazilian
literary
works
in English translation
are read
by the English-
speaking public.
To this
end, a survey of availability and
library
readership was undertaken. Finally,
a reading experiment was carried
out
in
which native speakers of
English
were asked to read the short
story
'A terceira
margem
do
rio',
by GuimarAes Rosa.
The
conclusion attempts to pull all these threads together and
to indicate directions for further
research
Assisting reading and analysis of text documents by visualization
No full textThe research reported here examined the use of computer generated graphics as a means to assist humans to analyse text documents which have not been subject to markup. The approach taken was to survey available visualization techniques in a broad selection of disciplines including applications to text documents, group those techniques using a taxonomy proposed in this research, then develop a selection of techniques that assist the text analysis objective. Development of the selected techniques from their fundamental basis, through their visualization, to their demonstration in application, comprises most of the body of this research. A scientific orientation employing measurements, combined with visual depiction and explanation of the technique with limited mathematics, is used as opposed to fully utilising any one of those resulting techniques for performing complete text document analysis.
Visualization techniques which apply directly to the text and those which exploit measurements produced by associated techniques are considered. Both approaches employ visualization to assist the human viewer to discover patterns which are then used in the analysis of the document. In the measurement case, this requires consideration of data with dimensions greater than three, which imposes a visualization difficulty. Several techniques for overcoming this problem are proposed. Word frequencies, Zipf considerations, parallel coordinates, colour maps, Cusum plots, and fractal dimensions are some of the techniques considered.
One direct application of visualization to text documents is to assist reading of that document by de-emphasising selected words by fading them on the display from which they are read. Three word selection techniques are proposed for the automatic selection of which words to use.
An experiment is reported which used such word fading techniques. It indicated that some readers do have improved reading speed under such conditions, but others do not. The experimental design enabled the separation of that group which did decrease reading times from the remaining readers who did not. Measurement of comprehension errors made under different types of word fading were shown not to increase beyond that obtained under normal reading conditions.
A visualization based on categorising the words in a text document is proposed which contrasts to visualization of measurements based on counts. The result is a visual impression of the word composition, and the evolution of that composition within that document.
The text documents used to demonstrates these techniques include English novels and short stories, emails, and a series of eighteenth century newspaper articles known as the Federalist Papers. This range of documents was needed because all analysis techniques are not applicable to all types of documents. This research proposes that an interactive use of the techniques on hand in a non-prescribed order can yield useful results in a document analysis. An example of this is in author attribution, i.e. assigning authorship of documents via patterns characteristic of an individual's writing style. Different visual techniques can be used to explore the patterns of writing in given text documents.
A software toolkit as a platform for implementing the proposed interactive analysis of text documents is described. How the techniques could be integrated into such a toolkit is outlined. A prototype of software to implement such a toolkit is included in this research. Issues relating to implementation of each technique used are also outlined
Exploring Predictors of Reading Comprehension for Struggling Adult Readers: A Quantile Regression Approach
No full textThere is a paucity of research examining the skills that contribute to reading comprehension for adults who struggle with reading, which includes one in six adults in the United States (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2013). The current studies addressed some of the gaps in this literature.
Study 1 explored the Simple View of Reading (SVR), which postulates that reading comprehension is predicted by two component skills: decoding and linguistic comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986). Participants included 392 struggling adult readers who were native speakers of English. The dimensionality of the SVR components was examined using confirmatory factor analysis. For the decoding component, a parsimonious latent representation inclusive of phonic decoding and word recognition provided good fit to the data. With respect to linguistic comprehension, the subcomponents of oral vocabulary and listening comprehension emerged as separable yet highly related constructs. A structural equation model showed that decoding and listening comprehension made significant unique contributions to reading comprehension, whereas oral vocabulary did not emerge as a significant unique predictor. Additionally, quantile regression analyses indicated that decoding, listening comprehension, and oral vocabulary exhibited significant unique effects on reading comprehension at low, average, and high levels of reading comprehension performance (.10, .50, and .90 quantiles), with decoding making the largest unique contributions.
Study 2 examined the influence of decoding, oral vocabulary, fluency, listening comprehension, background knowledge, and inferencing across different reading comprehension tests. Participants included 168 struggling adult readers who were native speakers of English. The explanatory effects of the predictors were estimated for three reading comprehension tests: WJ Passage Comprehension (WJ-PC), RISE Reading Comprehension (RISE-RC), and RAPID Reading Comprehension (RAPID-RC). Ordinary least squares regression analyses indicated that all predictors except for listening comprehension uniquely explained variance in WJ-PC scores, whereas significant unique predictors were limited to decoding and listening comprehension for RAPID-RC and only decoding for RISE-RC. Quantile regression analyses indicated that the effects of oral vocabulary and background knowledge differed across levels of WJ-PC performance, the effects of decoding and listening comprehension differed across levels of RAPID-RC performance, and the effect of decoding was stable across levels of RISE-RC performance.Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)Educational Psychology and Special Educatio
PC-based braille reading system
No full textThis study aims to aid the visually-impaired people by creating a system that is an alternative to braille translated books. The system is capable of translating text from a captured image to braille. The image, which is captured by a self-triggering camera but can also be operated manually, will be sent to the PC through a USB cable. An open-source Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is obtained to extract text from the image. The OCR is integrated in a GUI. The translated text will be sent to a PIC microcontroller through USB to UART. The PIC microcontroller will drive the braille reading device by converting the text to braille equivalent characters. This braille reading system is a reliable alternative to braille translated books for it has an option where the reader can choose between word-per-word mode or continuous mode of reading. Also, the system achieved an overall accuracy around 90%. With this technology, the visually impaired people will be given a chance to widen their knowledge and explore further on what the world has to offer
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The effects of a multicomponent reading intervention and a no treatment comparison on the reading comprehension of adolescent students who are adequate word readers and low in reading comprehension
No full texttextThis experimental study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of multicomponent reading intervention and a no treatment comparison condition on the reading comprehension of adolescent students with adequate word reading and low reading comprehension. The sample consisted of 44 students in 9th grade who were randomly assigned to an intervention treatment offered as an elective course (N=25) or a no treatment comparison (N=19). Reading intervention teachers, trained by experienced research staff provided instruction for 90-min sessions two to three times per week during for approximately 80 sessions.
Treatment effects for each outcome measure were estimated using analysis of covariance (ANCOVA). Results indicate no statistically significant differences between conditions. Effects, which were calculated with partial eta squared (η2), ranged from -.26 to .23 with two of the three measures favoring the treatment condition. Three separate repeated measure of analysis of variance (RM-ANCOVAs) were conducted using the Kaufmann Brief Intelligence Test (KBIT) as a covariate for the following measures: (1) Woodcock Johnson Passage Comprehension subtest (WJIII-PC); (2) Test of Sentence Reading Efficiency (TOSRE); (3) Gates MacGinitie Reading test (GM-RT). An additional ANCOVA was conducted for the GM-RT using the pretest scores from the GM-RT as a covariate. Results indicate that the treatment condition was not favorable to a no treatment comparison for students with adequate word reading and low comprehension. More research into ways to make reading comprehension instruction more effective for Adolescent students with low reading comprehension is warranted.Special Educatio
Developing key concepts for the design of hypertext for printed books
No full textIn the modern world, computers and interactivity are becoming an ever-increasing phenomenon, but this means that the tactile appeal of the printed book is giving way to the increasing popularity of digital interactivity. This research explores how one of the integral concepts of computer interaction, hypertext, can be applied to the medium of print and the advantages that this can bring to the reading environment. The interaction used to read a printed book is different to that of reading material in an electronic form. Books are linear, moving forward, whereas electronic material is laterally associative. However, reading material in an electronic form, such as hypertext, allows the readers to customise and reorder knowledge for their own needs. In comparison, navigation of paper documents is aided by the information being fixed, and readers can easily refer to several documents simultaneously. The considerations that need to be made when combining the benefits of two such contrasting media needs careful attention. Six key design concepts applying hypertext methods to books are discussed to assist the production of effective reading media
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