Optimizing the reading of electronic text using rapid serial visual presentation

The focus on communications technology in recent years has led to the question of how to best display electronic text onto small-screened devices. Past studies have shown that the compact method of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) is efficient but not well liked. Two experiments were conducted to explore ways of improving the preference for and feasibility of RSVP. In experiment 1, the effects of a completion meter, punctuation pauses, and variable word duration were studied. Although the sentence-by-sentence and normal page formats were still superior, post-experiment ratings indicated that punctuation pauses improved user preference for RSVP, and its preference increased in general with practice. In experiment 2, a modified RSVP condition included a completion meter, punctuation pauses, interruption pauses and pauses at clause boundaries. This condition was significantly preferred to a normal RSVP condition. The present enhancements may increase the feasibility of using RSVP with small displays.     

Towards an improved readability on mobile devices: evaluating adaptive rapid serial visual presentation

Can readability on small screens be improved by using adaptive Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) that adapts the presentation speed to the characteristics of the text instead of keeping it fixed? In this paper we introduce Adaptive RSVP, describe the design of a prototype on a mobile device, and report findings from a usability evaluation where the ability to read long and short texts was assessed. In a latin-square balanced repeated-measurement experiment, employing 16 subjects, two variants of Adaptive RSVP were benchmarked against Fixed RSVP and traditional text presentation. For short texts, all RSVP formats increased reading speed by 33% with no significant differences in comprehension or task load. For long texts, no differences were found in reading speed or comprehension, but all RSVP formats increased task load significantly. Nevertheless, Adaptive RSVP decreased task load ratings for most factors compared to Fixed RSVP. Causes, implications, and effects of these findings are discussed.     

Robust text detection in natural scenes using text geometry and visual appearance

This paper proposes a new two-phase approach to robust text detection by integrating the visual appearance and the geometric reasoning rules. In the first phase, geometric rules are used to achieve a higher recall rate. Specifically, a robust stroke width transform (RSWT) feature is proposed to better recover the stroke width by additionally considering the cross of two strokes and the continuousness of the letter border. In the second phase, a classification scheme based on visual appearance features is used to reject the false alarms while keeping the recall rate. To learn a better classifier from multiple visual appearance features, a novel classification method called double soft multiple kernel learning (DS-MKL) is proposed. DS-MKL is motivated by a novel kernel margin perspective for multiple kernel learning and can effectively suppress the influence of noisy base kernels. Comprehensive experiments on the benchmark ICDAR2005 competition dataset demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed two-phase text detection approach over the state-of-the-art approaches by a performance gain up to 4.4% in terms of F-measure.     

Material text, immaterial text, and the electronic environment

Digital modes of editing ask us to re-examine the past centuryof editorial theory and to situate emerging editorial approacheswithin this history. Using the computer as a new textual mediumhas brought about a renewed interest in the conditions for representation.This article concerns itself with how books and computers, respectively,represent texts, and how critical editing mediates or organizesthose representations. It was written in 1997 as a criticalresponse to J.J. McGann's essay ‘The Rationale of Hypertext’.     

Toward neuroadaptive support technologies for improving digital reading: a passive BCI-based assessment of mental workload imposed by text difficulty and presentation speed during reading

User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction - We investigated whether a passive brain–computer interface that was trained to distinguish low and high mental workload in the...     

Understanding and facilitating the browsing of electronic text

Browsing tends to be used in two distinctive ways, alternatively associated with the goal of the activity and with the method by which the goal is achieved. In this study, the definition of browsing combines aspects of both concepts to define browsing as an activity in which one gathers information while scanning an information space without an explicit purpose. The objective of this research was to examine how browsers interact with their browsing environment while manipulating two types of interface tools constructed from the content.Forty-seven adults (24 males) performed the two types of tasks (one with no purpose and the second, a control, purposeful) in four sessions over a period of four weeks. Participants scanned and/or searched the textual content of current issue plus three months of back issues of the Halifax Chronicle Herald/Mail Star using a system designed specifically for this research. At any one time only one of each type of tool was available.Those with no assigned goal examined significantly more articles and explored more menu options. They made quick decisions about which articles to examine, spending twice as much time reading the content. They tended not to explore the newspaper to a great extent, examining only 24% of the articles in a single issue. About three-quarters of what they examined was new information on topics that they had not known about before being exposed to the paper. The type of menu had no impact on performance, but differences were discovered between the two items-to-browse tools. Those with no goal selected more articles from the Suggestions and found more interesting articles when the Suggestions were available.     

Effects of the presentation characteristics of dual dynamic information text on comprehension using an LCD monitor

Abstract— This study investigated the effects of the presentation method, presentation rate, type of flickering character presented in a dynamic headline, and spacing between the headline and the display window on reading moving Chinese text in a single‐line display. Eighty‐three subjects aged 14–18 years of age completed 27 experimental treatments consisting of three presentation methods (i.e., leading format, rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), with full display window, and RSVP with clause), three presentation rates (80, 155, and 230 cpm), and three types of flickering characters (twinkling, rotating, and shrinking) presented in a headline. The spacing between the headline and the display window (0.4 vs. 0.7 vs. 1.0 cm) served as the between‐subjects factor. Results showed that comprehension accuracy was lower for dynamic text presented in the leading format than for that presented in the RSVP format with a full display window or with clause. Comprehension accuracy was also lower in response to a presentation rate of 230 cpm than to a presentation rate of 80 cpm. Analyses indicated that the spacing between the headline and the display window significantly affected comprehension accuracy; the rate of accurate responses was greater with a spacing of 1.0 cm than with a spacing of 0.4 cm. However, the type of flickering characters did not significantly affect comprehension accuracy. Implications of these results for designing dynamically presented Chinese text on a Web site are discussed.     

Comprehension aids for on-line reading of expository text

A chapter of expository text was presented on a CRT with optional "windowing" of definitions of selected words varying in relevance to each screen's main ideas. A test treatment was interposed to influence reading strategies. Dependent variables included text reading time, frequency of definition "calls," definition reading rates, and scores on a final comprehension test. Results indicate that a technical chapter can be read from a CRT with appreciable content retention. Subjects accessed 80% of available definitions, but those able to "call" content-relevant definitions increased their frequency of definition "calls." Definition reading rate diminished; comprehension and processing time increased only for subjects accessing the theoretically relevant definitions. The results suggest how the use of definitions enhances the comprehension of on-line training manuals, texts, and help screens. "Callable" definitions need not include all low-frequency technical concepts but only those relevant to reductive main ideas.     

The effects of display size and text splitting on reading lengthy text from screen

The present paper reports on an experimental investigation of reader performance and preferences with a screen-presented journal article. The effects of display size (20 lines and 60 lines) and sentence splitting on readers' manipulation, comprehension and subjective impressions are assessed. The results indicate that neither variable significantly affects comprehension but adjusted manipulation levels are significantly higher in the small window condition. Splitting sentences across screens also caused readers to return to the previous page to reread text significantly more. Subjective data reveal a preference for larger screens and high awareness of text format. Implications for future work are discussed.     

电子病历文本挖掘研究综述

跨语言词向量表示旨在利用语言资源丰富的词向量提高语言资源缺乏的词向量表示. 已有方法学习2个词向量空间的映射关系进行单词对齐,其中生成对抗网络方法能在不使用对齐字典的条件下获得良好性能. 然而,在远语言对上,由于缺乏种子字典的引导,映射关系的学习仅依赖向量空间的全局距离,导致求解的词对存在多种可能,难以准确对齐. 为此,提出了基于双判别器对抗的半监督跨语言词向量表示方法. 在已有对抗模型基础上,增加一个双向映射共享的、细粒度判别器,形成具有双判别器的对抗模型. 此外,引入负样本字典补充预对齐字典,利用细粒度判别器进行半监督对抗学习,消减生成多种词对的可能,提高对齐精度. 在2个跨语言数据集上的实验效果表明,提出的方法能有效提升跨语言词向量表示性能.

     

Effects of ambient illuminance on users' visual performance using various electronic displays

Abstract— This study investigated the effect of ambient illuminance (50, 500, 1500, 3000, 6000, and 9000 lx) on participants' visual performance using four electronic displays (conventional LCD under transmissive mode, conventional LCD under reflective mode, Ch‐LC display, and E‐ink display). Analysis results indicate that participants' visual performance shows significant difference under various ambient illuminance and electronic displays. The interaction between ambient illuminance and electronic display also has significant effect on participants' visual performance. When participants use the conventional LCD under transmissive mode, ambient luminance has no significant effect on participants' visual performance. However, participants' visual performance is significantly different under various ambient illuminances using the conventional LCD under reflective mode, Ch‐LC display, and E‐ink display. The conventional LCD under transmissive mode is the only choice at a lower illuminance of 50 lx. Higher illuminance (500 lx) for E‐ink displays may result in as good a performance as the conventional LCD under transmissive mode; nevertheless, much higher illuminance (1500 lx) for the conventional LCD under reflectance mode and Ch‐LC display may achieve better performance.     

Extracting curved text lines using local linearity of the text line

In order to enhance the ability of document analysis systems, we need a text line extraction method which can handle not only straight text lines but also text lines in various shapes. This paper proposes a new method called Extended Linear Segment Linking (ELSL for short), which is able to extract text lines in arbitrary orientations and curved text lines. We also consider the existence of both horizontally and vertically printed text lines on the same page. The new method can produce text line candidates for multiple orientations. We verify the ability of the method by some experiments as well. Received December 21, 1998 / Revised version September 2, 1999     

A framework for rapid visual image search using single-trial brain evoked responses

We report the design and performance of a brain computer interface for single-trial detection of viewed images based on human dynamic brain response signatures in 32-channel electroencephalography (EEG) acquired during a rapid serial visual presentation. The system explores the feasibility of speeding up image analysis by tapping into split-second perceptual judgments of humans. We present an incremental learning system with less memory storage and computational cost for single-trial event-related potential (ERP) detection, which is trained using cross-session data. We demonstrate the efficacy of the method on the task of target image detection. We apply linear and nonlinear support vector machines (SVMs) and a linear logistic classifier (LLC) for single-trial ERP detection using data collected from image analysts and naive subjects. For our data the detection performance of the nonlinear SVM is better than the linear SVM and the LLC. We also show that our ERP-based target detection system is five-fold faster than the traditional image viewing paradigm.     

Reading a dynamic presentation of Chinese text on a single-line display

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of presentation method and presentation rate on reading a dynamic presentation of Chinese text on a single-line display. A novel presentation concept that Chinese word as a presentation unit was examined. Twenty-four subjects completed 12 experimental treatments composed of four presentation methods (i.e., leading format with conventional layout or LC, rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) format with conventional layout or RC, leading format with inter-word spacing or LW, and RSVP format with word or RW) and three presentation rates (120-, 240- and 500-character-per-minute). The results revealed that recall accuracy and satisfaction score for the leading format were better than the RSVP format. Furthermore, the layouts that used words as presentation units were better than the conventional layout in which characters were the presentation units. Subjects’ performance deteriorated when presentation rate was at a high speed of 500 characters per minute, particularly for the RSVP method with conventional layout. The implications of the results on reading a dynamic presentation of Chinese text are discussed.     

Social summarization of text feedback for online auctions and interactive presentation of the summary

Buyers in online auctions write feedback comments to the sellers from whom they have bought the items. Other bidders read them to determine which item to bid for. In this research, we aim at helping bidders by summarizing the feedback comments. First, we examine feedback comments in online auctions. From the results of the examination, we propose a method called social summarization method. It uses social relationships in online auctions for summarizing feedback comments. This method extracts feedback comments which the buyers seemed to have written from their heart. We implement a system based on our method and evaluate its effectiveness. The results are that our method deleted 80.8% of courteous comments (comments with almost no information). We also found that there are two types of comments in the summaries: comments that are generally infrequent and seem to have been written with real feeling and comments that are generally frequent and seem to have been written with real feeling. Finally, we propose an interactive presentation method of the summaries which identifies the types of the comments. The user experiment indicates that this presentation helps users judge which seller to bid for.     

Visual perception of multi-column-layout text: insight from repeated and non-repeated reading

Information processing speed affects reading performance and interaction with text. Understanding how column type in an online context influences reading effectiveness can help us to identify less effective layouts. This study explored the visual perception of 23 participants while they read text arranged in a multi-column layout. Two tasks (repeated reading and non-repeated reading) were designed and assessed to have the same level of difficulty. Information was organised according to three types of column layout (one, two, or three columns). Eye movement analysis showed that participants performed best in a three-column layout for repeated reading, and with one column for normal reading. We also found that the repeated reading technique reduced readers’ distraction and therefore increased their visual performance, which in turn increased information processing, regardless of column layout. These findings with regard to single- and multi-column layouts can help suggest effective reading configurations for online readers and provide insights for human–computer interaction theories on human interaction with different typographic elements.     

Architecture for rapid prototyping of visual controllers

In this paper, we present an architecture for rapid prototyping of visual controllers based on standard off-the-shelf hardware and software. The proposed scheme allows control of a wide class of systems including robot manipulators and underactuated systems using a digital camera. The graphical programming environment is based on MatLab/Simulink^© which allows us to take advantage of Simulink graphic programming facilities. Experiments are presented to evaluate the proposed architecture.