A principled approach to feature selection in models of sentence processing

Among theories of human language comprehension, cue-based memory retrieval has proven to be a useful framework for understanding when and how processing difficulty arises in the resolution of long-distance dependencies. Most previous work in this area has assumed that very general retrieval cues like [+subject] or [+singular] do the work of identifying (and sometimes misidentifying) a retrieval target in order to establish a dependency between words. However, recent work suggests that general, hand-picked retrieval cues like these may not be enough to explain illusions of plausibility (Cunnings & Sturt, 2018), which can arise in sentences like The letter next to the porcelain plate shattered. Capturing such retrieval interference effects requires lexically specific features and retrieval cues, but hand-picking the features is hard to do in a principled way and greatly increases modeler degrees of freedom. To remedy this, we use word embeddings, a well-established method for creating distributed feature representations, for lexical features and retrieval cues. We show that the similarity between the features and the cues (a measure of plausibility) predicts total reading times in Cunnings and Sturt’s eye-tracking data. The features can easily be plugged into existing parsing models (including cue-based retrieval and self-organized parsing), putting very different models on more equal footing and facilitating future quantitative comparisons. In addition to this methodological contribution, our results suggest that, contrary to Cunnings and Sturts’ original conclusions, focused words might be more prominent in memory, making them less susceptible to interference, as predicted by a recent extension to ACT-R (Engelmann, Jäger, & Vasishth, 2019).

The Study of the Large-Sized High-Quartz Translucent Porcelain Plate

A large-sized high-quartz translucent porcelain plate was developed, which has good decorative effect and market prospects. The light transmittance of the high-quartz translucent porcelain plate (Its thickness: 3.6mm) reaches 0.72%. Compared to other large-sized translucent plates, large-sized high-quartz translucent porcelain plates have obvious advantages about mechanical properties, glossness and the price.

II. On a fluorescent substance, resembling quinine, in animals; and on the rate of passage of quinine into the vascular and non- vascular textures of the body

The term fluorescence in the last few years has found a place in physio­logical works because different substances that occur in the body have been said to possess the property of fluorescence. Of these the solution of bile-acids in concentrated sulphuric acid, the white of egg when kept for a short time, and the urine sometimes, are the best-known fluorescing substances. But as long since as 1845, Professor Brücke, in Müller’s ‘Archiv,’ stated that he had found in many and very frequently repeated experiments, that the lens absorbed the blue rays of light to a very great extent, and that the cornea and the aqueous humour did so to a less extent, but that the lens together with these other media absorbed these rays to the greatest de­gree. He used the eyes of oxen and of rabbits, and the lens of a pike’s eye, which last, when dried with care, preserved its transparency, and allowed the light to fall on a porcelain plate covered with tincture of guaiacum and bleach a portion of the green surface.