Authenticity of language learning tasks, authenticity of learning experiences and the use of authentic language are important characteristics of communicative language teaching and learning. In this article, ways of achieving productive use of authentic language in a computer-assisted language learning environment are discussed. This discussion concentrates on a particular area of CALL—parser-b...

The overall goal of our research is a system which can recognize the intended message of a grouped bar chart by reasoning about the communicative signals contained in the graphic. One such communicative signal is the relative effort required to perform different perceptual tasks on the graphic. This paper presents our methodology for estimating relative task effort. Based on graph comprehension...

The recent rise of Instant Messaging systems as a centerpiece of online communication has brought with it many questions about the role this new medium will play in the communicative sphere. As the medium has evolved, it has grown to subsume many traditional communication technologies, merging their individual capabilities. In this chapter, a cross-section of popular and established technologie...

Delegation is one of the main determinants of coordination, joint activity and collaboration within the context of organizations. In particular, delegation is the fundamental aspect for the redistribution and for the transfer of tasks within the context of an organization, and it is responsible for making organizations dynamic. We present in this paper a conceptual and formal analysis of delega...

We address the puzzle about early belief ascription: young children fail elicited-response false-belief tasks, but they demonstrate spontaneous false-belief understanding. Based on recent converging evidence, we articulate a pragmatic framework to solve this puzzle. Young children do understand the contents of others' false belief, but they are overwhelmed when they must simultaneously make sen...

We report on a pilot experiment conducted in order to investigate whether computer-based conversational focused tasks promote acquisition of forms. The structure we targeted was the German dative case in prepositional phrases. The goal of the task we designed was two-fold: First, learners should improve their overall communicative skills in the scenario and, second, expand their mastery of the ...

The current paper examines spatial descriptions provided by older adults in the context of a fetch task in a virtual house environment that mimics an eldercare setting. Sixty-four older adults provided directions for how to find a target or where to find a target to a robot or human (named Brian) avatar. There were systematic differences in the form and structure of the descriptions based on th...

BACKGROUND Integration of information from multiple sensory sources is an important prerequisite for successful social behavior, especially during face-to-face conversation. It has been suggested that communicative impairments among individuals with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) might be caused by an inability to integrate synchronously presented visual and auditory cues. METHOD We ...