HIT Featured Talks: Inmaculada Fajardo

Department of Developmental Psychology - Padua

12.01.2017

The design of complex sociotechnical systems. 
Automatic text simplification: confluence of challenges for Psychology and Computer Science

Time: 14.30-16.00
Venue: Room DPSS 2 (main entrance of the Department of Developmental Psychology, via Venezia 8, first room on the left)
Speaker: Inmaculada Fajardo
Affiliation: ERI-Lectura, University of Valencia, Spain
Organization: Barbara Arfè

Abstract
International standards organization like the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have manifested interest in bringing closer digital texts to people with reading difficulties since they constitute a core source of information for citizenship. A way to do it is "automatic text simplification" which can be addressed from different points of
view, not always converging, such as computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociology or design. The goal of this seminar is twofold: 1) To analyze, from the point of view of the psycholinguistics and developmental psychology, the nature of reading comprehension difficulties in several disabilities and developmental disorders (e.g. Autism Spectrum Disorder and Intellectual Disability) based on behavioral and eye tracking measures (Fajardo et al., 2013, 2014) and 2) To identify, from the point of view of computer science, existing solutions and challenges of automatic assessment of text complexity and text simplification (TAACO [Crossley et al., 2016]; FIRST [González-Navarro y col., 2014], TERENCE [Arfé, Oakhill & Pianta, 2014]).

Recommended readings
Fajardo, I., Tavares, G., Ávila, V., & Ferrer, A. (2013). Towards text simplification for poor readers with intellectual disability: When do connectives enhance text cohesion?. Research in developmental disabilities, 34(4), 1267-1279.
Crossley, S. A., Kyle, K., & McNamara, D. S. (2015). The tool for the automatic analysis of text cohesion (TAACO): Automatic assessment of local, global, and text cohesion. Behavior research methods, 1-11.