Roger J. Kreuz

AutoTutor: A simulation of a human tutor

AutoTutor is a computer tutor that simulates the discourse patterns and pedagogical strategies of a typical human tutor. AutoTutor is designed to assist college students in learning the fundamentals of hardware, operating systems, and the Internet in an introductory computer literacy course. Most tutors in school systems are not highly trained in tutoring techniques and have only a modest expertise on the tutoring topic, but they are surprisingly effective in producing learning gains in students. We have dissected the discourse and pedagogical strategies these unskilled tutors exhibit by analyzing approximately 100 hours of naturalistic tutoring sessions. These mechanisms are implemented in AutoTutor. AutoTutor presents questions and problems from a curriculum script, attempts to comprehend learner contributions that are entered by keyboard, formulates dialog moves that are sensitive to the learners contributions (such as short feedback, pumps, prompts, elaborations, corrections, and hints), and delivers the dialog moves with a talking head. AutoTutor has seven modules: a curriculum script, language extraction, speech act classification, latent semantic analysis, topic selection, dialog move generation, and a talking head.

Why Do People Use Figurative Language

In this article, we examine the discourse goals that are accomplished by the use of eight forms of figurative language: hyperbole, idiom, indirect request, irony, understatement, metaphor, rhetorical question, and simile. Subjects were asked to provide reasons why they would use a particular figure of speech. Based on their responses, a discourse goal taxonomy that includes each of the eight figures was developed. The goal taxonomy indicates that each figure of speech is used to accomplish a unique constellation of communicative goals. The degree of goal overlap between the eight forms was also calculated, and the results provide support for theoretical claims about the relatedness of certain figures. Taken together, the goal taxonomy and overlap scores broaden our understanding of functional and theoretical differences between the various kinds of figurative language.

A theory of inference generation during text comprehension

An adequate theory of inference generation should accurately predict whether particular classes of knowledge‐based inferences are generated “on‐line” during text comprehension. This article proposes a theory which can account for available empirical findings in cognitive psychology and discourse processing, including those reported in this issue of Discourse Processes. The proposed “constructionist” theory incorporates: (a) the goals of the reader, (b) explanations of why actions and events in the text occur, (c) coherence at local and global levels, and (d) the activation of inferences from multiple information sources.

The subjective familiarity of English homophones

College students rated 828 homophonic words (words with the same pronunciation but different spellings) in terms of subjective familiarity. High interrater reliability was obtained, and the ratings correlated well with other published familiarity measures (r=.85). The familiarity ratings also correlated highly with log transforms of Kučera and Francis’s (1967) printed frequency measures (r= 75). However, many words of equal log frequency varied widely in rated familiarity, and vice versa. To determine which of these two factors was the better predictor of verbal performance, we orthogonally varied the two in a lexical decision task and found that, for words of moderate frequency, rated familiarity was by far the better predictor. We conclude that even though printed frequency and rated familiarity generally covary, printed frequency is a less reliable index of the underlying psychological construct, word familiarity.

Cues in computer-mediated communication: A corpus analysis

An analysis of five contemporary corpora examines the use of several different cues in four channels of computer-mediated communication. With an in-depth corpus analysis, we show that a wealth of cues is available in online communication, and that these cues are often matched with words that have particular functions and/or semantic meanings. Using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count text analysis software (Pennebaker et al., 2007), we found the two largest categories represented by cue-laden words involved affect and cognitive mechanisms, suggesting that cues are largely used to indicate emotion or to disambiguate a message. We argue that learning the meaning of these cues is central to learning how people communicate nonverbally while online.

Verification of Statements about Story Worlds That Deviate from Normal Conceptions of Time: What Is True aboutEinstein's Dreams?☆☆☆

College students read chapters from a novel written by Alan Lightman (Einsteins Dreams) and later provided verification judgments on the truth/falsity of test statements. Each chapter described a different fictional village that incorporated assumptions about time that deviate from our normal TIME schema, e.g., citizens knowing exactly when the world will end, time flowing backward instead of forward. These novel assumptions about time provided interesting insights about life and reality. In two experiments, we examined whether readers could accurately incorporate these novel assumptions about time in the fictional story worlds, as manifested in the verification judgments for statements after story comprehension. The test statements included verbatim typical, verbatim atypical, inference typical, and inference atypical information from the perspective of mundane reality that meshes with a normal TIME schema. Verification ratings were collected on a 6-point scale in Experiment 1, whereas Experiment 2 used a signal-response technique in which binary true/false decisions were extracted at-.5, 1.5, 3.5, 5.5, and 10.0 s. The college students were measured on literary expertise, reading skill, working memory span, and reading time. Readers with comparatively high literary expertise showed truth discrimination scores that were compatible with a schema copy plus tag model, which assumes that readers are good at detecting and remembering atypical verbatim information; this model predicts better (and faster) truth discrimination for verbatim atypical statements than for verbatim typical statements. In contrast, fast readers with comparatively low literary expertise were compatible with a filtering model; this model predicts that readers gloss over (or suppress) atypical verbatim information and show advantages for verbatim typical information. All groups of readers had trouble inferentially propagating the novel assumptions about time in a fictional story world, but the slower readers were more accurate in their verification of the atypical inferences. A construction-integration model could explain the interactions among literary expertise, reading time, and the typicality of test statements.

Emotion encoding and interpretation in computer-mediated communication: Reasons for use

As computer-mediated communication (CMC) is increasingly used to build and maintain relationships, the examination of channel choice for the development of these social ties becomes important to study. Using free response data from Riordan and Kreuz (submitted for publication), we examine reasons for choosing among face-to-face, asynchronous email, or synchronous instant message channels to transmit negatively or positively valenced emotional information. The most common reason for choosing face-to-face over channels of CMC was the ability to use more nonverbal cues. The most common reason for choosing a CMC channel over face-to-face was to shield oneself from the message recipient. Face-to-face was deemed more effective, more personal, more comfortable, and less permanent than CMC channels. Reasons differed significantly by valence and channel. We suggest that better knowledge of why people choose certain channels for different types of socio-emotional communication can help develop more comprehensive theories of CMC that account for different attributes of each channel in information transmission.

ASYMMETRIES IN THE USE OF VERBAL IRONY

Three experiments assessed four variables that may affect verbal irony processing: people’s expectations of events, event outcome, evaluations of outcome, and shared common ground. Reading times and rating tasks were used to quantify the interaction of these factors. The failed expectation hypothesis predicts an interaction of expectation, outcome, and evaluation. In contrast, the expectation irrelevance hypothesis states that expectation does not matter—only interactions between outcome and evaluation should result. The results provide support for the expectation irrelevance hypothesis. There were also consistent common ground effects: Statements directed at high common ground targets were read more quickly and rated as more ironic than statements directed at low common ground targets. These studies also provide online evidence of the asymmetry of affect (positive evaluations of negative outcomes are more ironic than negative evaluations of positive outcomes). Together, these experiments further elucidate the complex pragmatic factors that govern verbal irony comprehension.

The empirical study of figurative language in literature

Abstract This article addresses the study of figurative language in literary texts. The psychological research on eight forms of figurative language is reviewed. The majority of this research has utilized short artificial texts which may not reflect the psychological processes involved in comprehending figurative language in longer, more literary texts. Other limitations of figurative language research include: (1) a bias towards metaphor research at the expense of other common forms of figurative language; (2) insufficient examination of how authorial intent, genre, and reader knowledge can affect figurative language comprehension; (3) a bias towards research on comprehension at the expense of production; and (4) insufficient understanding of how discourse goals can be fulfilled by figurative language. It is suggested that attention to these four issues could greatly improve our understanding of figurative language in ecologically valid contexts.

The Production and Processing of Verbal Irony

The articles in this issue of Metaphor and Symbol address the topic of verbal irony from 3 perspectives: adult comprehension and production, child comprehension, and neuropsychological underpinnings. These approaches are complementary and hold the promise of providing converging evidence for testing theories of verbal irony. A discourse goals and heuristics approach to irony production and processing has the potential to explain why ironic statements are used, how they are interpreted, and why they are sometimes misunderstood.