Pragmatic modeling: toward a robust natural language interface

One of the most important ways in which an information-provider can assimilate an information-seeking dialogue is by inferring the underlying task-related plan motivating the information-seeker's queries. This paper presents a strategy for hypothesizing and tracking the changing task-level goals of an information-seeker and building a model of his task-related plan as the dialogue progresses.
Naturally occurring utterances are often imperfect. The information-provider often appears to use acquired knowledge about the information-seeker's underlying task-related plan to remedy many of the information-seeker's faulty utterances and enable the dialogue to continue without interruption. This paper presents a strategy for understanding one kind of defective utterance. Our approach relies on the information-seeker's inferred task-related plan as the primary mechanism for suggesting how an utterance should be understood, thereby considering only interpretations that are relevant to what the information-seeker is trying to accomplish. If multiple interpretations are suggested, relevance to the current focus of attention in the dialogue and similarity to the information-seeker's actual utterance are used to select the interpretation that is most likely to represent his intended meaning or satisfy his needs.     

Education and the "woman question."

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 39(1-2) of Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne (see record 2009-19704-001). The name of Kirstin Maxwell was inadvertently omitted from the list of students acknowledged at the end of die article. The corrected list is provided in the erratum.] Explores the "woman question," the 19th century debate about whether the rights and freedoms available to men should be extended to women, within the context of the post-secondary education system. Examples of the historical arguments in support of the exclusion of women are outlined followed by a more contemporary analysis of gender differences in graduate education with a particular focus on access, graduation rates and time to completion of graduate degrees. The "chilly climate" construct is presented as a possible explanation for the alleged gender differential on these latter 2 variables. According to this model, the structures and operation of academic institutions embody significant elements of systemic discrimination and micro-inequities which disadvantage women. A series of 6 studies are described by which various aspects of the chilly climate (i.e., mentoring and supervision, sexual harassment) are explored in terms of the effects on attrition and time to completion. Paradoxically, although the research reveals a failure of educational institutions to fully resolve the woman question, women continue to operate effectively under conditions of inequity. The paper concludes with speculations about the future constructions and deconstructions of this debate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fifteen-month follow-up of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder and psychological trauma.

The present study is a 15-month follow-up of the effects of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy on the functioning of 66 participants, 32 of whom were diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) prior to treatment. PTSD participants improved as much as those without the diagnosis, with both groups maintaining their gains at 15 months. At 15-month follow-up, the three 90-min sessions of EMDR previously administered (S. A. Wilson, L. A. Becker, & R. H. Tinker, 1995) produced an 84% reduction in PTSD diagnosis and a 68% reduction in PTSD symptoms. The average treatment effect size was 1.59; the average reliable change index was 3.37. Implications of the maintenance of EMDR treatment effects are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

High-Resolution cosmid mapping of the left arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome XII; A first step towards an ordered sequencing approach

For the sequencing of the left arm of chromosome XII of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we fine-mapped the entire 450 kb fragment between the ribosomal DNA (rDNA) and the left telomere. Total yeast DNA in agarose blocks was digested with I-PpoI, which exclusively cuts once in each repeat unit of the rDNA. The resulting fragment was isolated from pulsed-field gels, together with the equally sized chromosome IX. A cosmid library of some 30-fold chromosome coverage was generated from this material, with the cloning efficiency being around 20 000 clones per microgram genomic DNA. The chromosome XII and IX specific clones were identified by complementary hybridizations with the respective chromosomes. For the left arm of chromosome XII, a contiguous cosmid array (contig) with an average map resolution better than 9 kb was generated by clone hybridization procedures. The ordered library serves as a tool for the physical mapping of genetic markers. Also, a minimal set of 15 clones was selected that covers the entire fragment. This subset forms the basis for the generation of a template map of much higher resolution for a directed sequencing of the left arm of chromosome XII.     

Perspective taking promotes action understanding and learning.

[Retraction Notice: A retraction for this article was reported in Vol 34(5) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance (see record 2008-13337-018). All authors retract this article. Co-author Tversky and co-author Hard believe that the research results cannot be relied upon; Sandra C. Lozano takes full responsibility for the need to retract this article.] People often learn actions by watching others. The authors propose and test the hypothesis that perspective taking promotes encoding a hierarchical representation of an actor's goals and subgoals-a key process for observational learning. Observers segmented videos of an object assembly task into coarse and fine action units. They described what happened in each unit from either the actor's, their own, or another observer's perspective and later performed the assembly task themselves. Participants who described the task from the actor's perspective encoded actions more hierarchically during observation and learned the task better. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Developmental therapy and depressive disorders: Measuring cognitive levels through patient natural language.

The Developmental therapy (DT) model suggests that therapeutic interventions should be adapted to the patient's mode of cognition. 20 short- and long-term inpatient depressives (18 women and 2 men) were examined, and it was found that their cognitive-developmental levels could be assessed in the initial phases of treatment with a high interrater agreement (90%; kappa?=?.83). Interview techniques based on this model assisted patients to discuss their issues at 8 specific epistemological levels (early and late sensorimotor, concrete operational, formal operational, and dialectic–systemic). The classification system described here received a high interrater reliability (.98; kappa?=?.87) and both short- and long-term patients responded with a high degree of consistency with the theory (99%). Treatment plans derived from these findings are outlined and implications for future use of this model are presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A knowledge based system for flow shop scheduling

A technique is designed to integrate several solution methods to the problem of job sequencing in a flow shop. The solution methods integrated are linear programming, heuristics, and an expert system approach. The advantages to this integrated approach include reducing computation time and improving the solution as compared to the use of heuristic alone.     

Reflections on the development of speech perception.

The literature on the role of infant–adult comparisons in developmental accounts of speech perception is reviewed, and methodological problems associated with such comparisons are delineated. It is argued that the data that are appropriate for the evaluation of categorical perception in infancy are unavailable. Moreover, the view that language experience operates to eliminate discriminative abilities once present rather than to add abilities once absent is without clear-cut support. The serious confounding of age and method of testing casts doubt on current developmental accounts of speech perception based on comparisons of infant and adult. (French abstract) (87 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Polymerization of olefins and polar monomers catalyzed by bis(imino)Ni(II)/dibutylmagnesium/alkylaluminium halide systems

[Bis(N,N′‐dimesitylimino)acenaphthene]dibromonickel ( 1 ) when activated with diethylaluminium chloride (DEAC) is a very active catalyst for ethylene homopolymerization. The activity (A_E) of 1 /100 DEAC is twenty times greater than that of 1 /100 MAO and of the same order of magnitude as 1 /2000 MAO. In the case of homopolymerization of propylene the highest activity (A_P) was obtained at a ratio of 25/15 for Al_DEAC/Ni. Trialkylaluminium compounds were also found to act as cocatalysts for 1 . The PE synthesized with four different cocatalysts was found by ¹³C NMR to have dissimilar branching distributions. 1 /DEAC shows no activity for the polymerization of proximately substituted polar monomers. The introduction of dibutylmagnesium, (DBM) activates the 1 /DEAC system to copolymerize ethylene and a number of proximately substituted polar monomers. Compared with the 1 /MAO/monomer.AlR₃ catalyst system the former is three times more active for copolymerization of 5‐hexene‐1‐ol or 10‐undecen‐1‐oic acid with ethylene. The activity of copolymerization is 1 /24, 1 /5 and 1 /2 as active as homopolymerization, respectively, in the case of methyl vinyl ketone, vinyl acetate and ?‐caprolactam. In the case of tetrahydrofuran/ethylene, the 1 /MAO catalyst produced copolymers using AlR₃ pretreated THF whereas the 1 /DEAC/DBM catalyst produces homopolyethylene only. No polymerization occurred with an acrylonitrile/ethylene mixture in the presence of 1 /DBM/DEAC catalyst. © 2002 Society of Chemical Industry