Thèse (M.A.)--Université Laval, 2000. / Comprend des réf. bibliogr.

Narrative Intelligence is the ability to craft, tell, understand, and respond appropriately to narratives. It has been proposed as a vital component of machines aiming to understand human activities or to communicate effectively with humans. However, most existing systems purported to demonstrate Narrative Intelligence rely on manually authored knowledge structures that require extensive expert labor. These systems are constrained to operate in a few domains where knowledge has been provided. This dissertation investigates the learning of knowledge structures to support Narrative Intelligence in any domain. I propose and build a system that, from an corpus of simple exemplar stories, learns complex knowledge structures that subsequently enable the creation, telling, and understanding of narratives. The knowledge representation balances the complexity of learning and the richness of narrative applications, so that we can (1) learn the knowledge robustly in the presence of noise, (2) generate a large variety of highly coherent stories, (3) tell them in recognizably different narration styles and (4) understand stories efficiently. The accuracy and effectiveness of the system have been verified by a series of user studies and computational experiments. As a result, the system is able to demonstrate Narrative Intelligence in any domain where we can collect a small number of exemplar stories. This dissertation is the first step toward scaling computational narrative intelligence to meet the challenges of the real world.

Two phylogenies of Phalaenopsis (Orchidaceae) are presented, one from combined chloroplast DNA data and one from a nuclear actin gene. We used these phylogenies to assess and modify the classification of Phalaenopsis and to examine several morphological characters and geographical distribution patterns. Our results support Christenson’s (2001) treatment of Phalaenopsis as a broadly defined genus that includes the species previously placed in the genera Doritis and Kingidium. Some of Christenson’s subgeneric groups needed to be recircumscribed to reflect a natural classification. We recognized four subgenera and six sections, subgenera Aphyllae, Parishianae (with sections Conspicuum, Delisiosae, Esmeralda, and Parishianae), Phalaenopsis, and Polychilos (with sections Fuscatae and Polychilos). In order to find a set of universally amplifiable, phylogenetically informative, single-copy nuclear regions, we conducted a whole genome comparison of the rice (Oryza sativa) and Arabidopsis thaliana genomes. We constructed a database of both genomes and searched for pairs of sequences using criteria we felt would ensure primers that would reliably amplify using standard PCR protocols. We tested the most promising 142 primer pairs in the lab on eighteen taxa and found four potentially informative markers in Phalaenopsis and one in Helianthus. Our results indicated that it will be difficult to find universal nuclear markers, however our database provides an important tool for finding informative nuclear markers within specific groups. The full set of primer combinations is available online at, “The Conserved Primer Pair Project,” http://aug.csres.utexas.edu:8080/cpp/index.html. We used fourteen Phalaenopsis species and seven horticultural hybrids to create a real dataset with which to test phylogenetic network reconstruction methods. We tested the performance of Neighbor-Net, implemented in SplitsTree, under four different categories of complexity: one hybrid, two independent hybrids (hybrids with no parents in common), three independent hybrids, and two non-independent hybrids (one parent was shared between hybrids). Neighbor-Net was able to predict accurately the parents of hybrids in only about half of the datasets we tested, and there were so many false positives that it was impossible to distinguish the hybrids from the species. We plan to use this dataset to test methods, such as RIATA and RGNet, when they become available. / text

Over the last decade, a significant number of overseas Chinese including Hong Kong emigrants have returned to Hong Kong. Many returnees, especially those who learnt Chinese as a heritage language, often encounter various language difficulties upon their return mainly due to their incompletely acquired version of the Chinese language. However, there is little research on the Chinese language learning and teaching for this special community, which is inherently different from native Chinese learners or second-language learners. This work explores various pioneering ways to develop returnees’ greater fluency in the Chinese language and especially to improve their practical literacy skills. We intend to evaluate and further develop their awareness of the orthographic principles operating in Chinese characters. We believe that this is a key step to help Chinese returnees quickly integrate themselves to the local society. / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

研究者透過課堂學習研究(Learning study, Marton, 2001)，探討「部件識字」的成效，及其對學生識字量的影響，以調整現有的小一語文教學內容及教學法，鞏固學生學習語文的根基。研究分析「部件識字」對學生識字量的影響，以及學生的識字能力能否轉移到閱讀層面。 研究以部件識字法配合變易理論進行，研究團隊設計不同教學內容及活動，透過不同策略，強化學生對「部件識字法」的認識，掌握當中的認字技巧，以提高識字能力。過程中，研究團隊先透過學生於識字前測的表現，診斷出學習難點，再定出課堂學習內容及其關鍵特徵，透過共同備課，聚焦地為特定學習內容設計教學活動。進行教學後，再透過後測檢視學生表現，利用有關數據，就學生的識字能力和識字量作量化分析。 研究結果顯示，「部件識字」對提升學生識字量的成效顯著，學生在掌握字詞形、音、義，書寫及應用字詞的能力上均有進步，亦有利學生進行字詞解碼及提前閱讀，以致識字能力能轉移到閱讀層面，有助提升閱讀能力。 Researchers investigated the effectiveness of the “Component Word Acquisition” and its influence on students’ Repertoire of Word through the Learning Study (Marton, 2001), in order to enhance the existing language teaching content and teaching methods; and to consolidate the foundation of students' language learning. The study will analyze the effect of Component Word Acquisition on students’ Repertoire of Word, and whether their abilities of literacy can be transferred to the reading level. Assisted with the Theory of Variation in addition to Component Word Acquisition, the Research team designed different course contents and activities and a variety of strategies, in order to improve students’ Repertoire of Word and the ability of literacy. Throughout the process, the Research team based on the students’ performance in the literacy ability pre-test to diagnose their difficulties in learning, and then set the learning contents outlines and identified its critical features. Specific teaching activities to the learning content were then tailor-made through collaborative lesson planning. Afterward, the students’ performance was studied through the literacy ability post-test. Data was gathered to perform the quantitative analysis on students’ Repertoire of Word and their abilities of literacy. The study results show that the “Component Word Acquisition” is remarkable to enhance students' Repertoire of Word, and improve their abilities of understanding the words’ forms, pronunciations and meanings, as well as words writing and application. This is also beneficial to students on word decoding, so that their abilities of literacy can be transferred to the reading level and thus to enhance their reading abilities / published_or_final_version / Education / Master / Master of Education

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of using preferred characters with a constant time delay instructional procedure to teach community sign reading to three students with moderate intellectual disability with the definitions of the signs as non-targeted information. An adapted alternating treatments design was used to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of the preferred characters on acquisition of the community signs. Pre- and post- assessments were conducted on acquisition of the non-targeted definitions, as well as generalization of the signs and their meanings. The results indicated that all students learned the target signs and they learned all of the definitions of the signs when they were presented with a preferred character. Students did not generalize the meanings of the signs to community settings.

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published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Electrical Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Education