Reusing code from software libraries can reduce the time and effort to construct software systems and also enable the development of larger systems. However, the benefits that come from the use of software libraries may not be realized due to limitations in the way that traditional software libraries are constructed. Libraries come equipped with application programming interfaces (API) that help enforce the correct use of the abstractions in those libraries. Writing new components and adapting existing ones to conform to library APIs may require substantial amounts of "glue" code that potentially affects software's efficiency, robustness, and ease-of-maintenance. If, as a result, the idea of reusing functionality from a software library is rejected, no benefits of reuse will be realized. This dissertation explores and develops techniques that support the construction of software libraries with abstraction layers that do not impede efficiency. In many situations, glue code can be expected to have very low (or zero) performance overhead. In particular, we describe advances in the design and development of active libraries - software libraries that take an active role in the compilation of the user's code. Common to the presented techniques is that they may "break" a library API (in a controlled manner) to adapt the functionality of the library for a particular use case. The concrete contributions of this dissertation are: a library API that supports iterator selection in the Standard Template Library, allowing generic algorithms to find the most suitable traversal through a container, allowing (in one case) a 30-fold improvement in performance; the development of techniques, idioms, and best practices for concepts and concept maps in C++, allowing the construction of algorithms for one domain entirely in terms of formalisms from a second domain; the construction of generic algorithms for algorithmic differentiation, implemented as an active library in Spad, language of the Open Axiom computer algebra system, allowing algorithmic differentiation to be applied to the appropriate mathematical object and not just concrete data-types; and the description of a static analysis framework to describe the generic programming notion of local specialization within Spad, allowing more sophisticated (value-based) control over algorithm selection and specialization in categories and domains. We will find that active libraries simultaneously increase the expressivity of the underlying language and the performance of software using those libraries.

Labels are one source of our judgments. By assigning labels to objects, we not only create references but we also group prior and current experiences together. The goal of this research is to investigate how labels influence our judgments. Previous research on inductive generalization shows that labels can be more important than physical characteristics (the labeling effect), but the mechanism for this effect remains unclear. There are two differing views regarding the role of labels. One view proposes that labels are not essentially different from physical features: shared labels increase overall similarity between two items in the same way as shared physical features. The other view suggests that people have a naïve theory that shared labels are more special than shared physical features. The goal of this dissertation is to provide evidence that complements these conflicting views. I suggest that the role of labels varies depending on the background knowledge: types of categories (living things vs. man-made objects), amount of knowledge (number of exemplars people could list for the category), and types of labels (categorical vs. indexical). The results from four experiments showed that, for living things, the labeling effect is strong and depends less on the amount of knowledge; for man-made objects, the labeling effect is weak and depends on the amount of knowledge.

The emergence of the Internet has made the global information communications much easier than before. Users can navigate the desired information over the Internet by means of search engines. Even though search engine can help users search specified topic in a primary way, users usually cannot gain the overall idea of what the entire navigated results mean. In addition, information over the Internet keeps changing. Users cannot even keep track of the changes, let alone to comprehend the meanings of such changes. Consequently, this research proposes a two-stage incremental approach to figuring out the concept structure that represents the main concepts of the search results in the first stage, and keeping track of the concept changes with time based on spreading activation theory to assist users in the second stage. Experiments are conducted to examine the feasibility of our proposed approach. The first experiment is to evaluate the results from the first stage. It shows that the performance on recall and precision is quite satisfactory based on human experts¡¦ results. The second experiment is to examine the changing results from the entire proposed approach. It shows that high degree of agreement with our results is achieved from domain experts. Both experiments justify the feasibility of our proposed approach in real applications. That is, applying our proposed approach, users can easily focus on the topic they are interested in and learn its trend with great support. Keywords: Internet, Concepts Extraction, Concept Change Detection, Spreading Activation Theory.

To manage the information flood in the Internet, we usually navigate specific information using the provided search engines. Search engines are convenient but with limited functions. For example, it is impractical and impossible to browse through the entire collected information for us to gain an overall picture about what the navigated information stands for. To do so, we need an appropriate approach to automatically extracting concepts from the navigated information to assist users to easily and quickly gain the primary understanding toward a topic that interests users. In this research, we propose an approach to extracting concepts from the navigated web information and detecting the concept changes over time. It basically includes two stages. In the first stage, information is decomposed into paragraphs and they are clustered with key terms identified through the aid of latent semantic indexing method. Concepts are represented in the form of paragraph summary and associated key terms, which allows the user to easily comprehend what they describe. The second stage is to adaptively modify the concept structure to detect concept changes. With new information added, the concepts could be merging, splitting, or even emerging with time. Three experiments are conducted in this research to verify the proposed approach. Results of the first and second experiments show both high recall and high precision that matches the predefined concept categories. The last one is an illustrated real case application on the tsunami event. It shows that we can easily grasp different concepts of the tsunami reports and realize their changes by using our approach. The feasibility of employing our approach is thus justified.

The aim of this study is on the development of young children's arithmetic and geometric concepts. To achieve this aim, teachers motivated young children's curiosity through the use of interesting illustrated books. In particular, the target is the advance in young children's knowing and understanding of geometric figures and numbers within 10. There were altogether three phases. In the first phase, the investigator designed a mathematical activity (a pre-test) for the teacher to capture young children's entry behavior. The second phase referred to the use of illustrated books in ordinary instruction. During the third phase, the mathematical activity (identical to that of phase 1) was carried out again, in order to find out if advancement in young children's mathematical ability was present. Data collection and administration included investigator's observation notes; video analyses; notes on teacher interviews; and investigator's self reflections record. Data analyses and results were two: geometric concepts and arithmetic concepts. Geometric concepts. Using illustrated books could advance in understanding and increase in curiosity of young children; also to promote young children's recognition in variation in polygon; and arouse young children's imagination and creativity in individual figures and combination of patterns. Arithmetic concepts. Using illustrated books could cause the interests in change of numbers; cultivate young children's sensitivity in the addition and subtraction of numbers; and promote the ability of combination and decomposition of numbers within 10. The findings of this study suggested that illustrated books are important and useful in assisting young children to explore mathematical concepts. Illustrated books encourage young children to think and allow room for oral presentation, clarifying and reflecting one self. Finally, teachers are suggested to integrate the use illustrated books in teaching mathematics, and follow up with related mathematics activities, to upgrade young children's development in various mathematics concepts.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the problem-solving strategies of children in fourth-grade, fifth-grade and sixth-grade. The investigators tried to guide children through a variety of problem-solving strategies that were in written, figural, or symbolic forms. Then the investigators examined the variation of children¡¦s spatial concepts by analyzing the problem-solving strategies used in calculating the volumes of various solids. In order to improve the teaching materials, the investigator identified the performance of spatial concepts by referring to QCAI (QUASAR Cognitive Assessment Instrument). For the purpose of designing future lessons, the investigator examined the relationship between children¡¦s problem-solving strategies level and the performance in the seven content areas in the curriculum. There are two results of this study: The first result is on the problem-solving strategies found within the same grade (4th; 5th; and 6th) and there are 3 findings. First, strategies of fourth-graders are focused on low-levels and middle-levels; strategies of fifth-graders focused on middle-level geometric space concept, and finally, strategies of sixth-grades students focused on middle-levels and high-levels. Second, there are no significant differences relating to gender. Third, the higher the grade of children is the higher the levels of their spatial concepts. In addition, the second result is the relationship between strategy levels and performance in seven content areas: revealing position corrections, and having mathematics as the most significant, and the rest in order: social studies, language arts, science and technology, arts and humanities, integrative activities, health and physical education.

The thesis examines the comprehension of English idioms with body part components by Turkish learners, i.e., the strategies they use when guessing the meaning of idioms. Fifteen English idioms are taken from the British National Corpus and are selected to meet the criteria of the width of range and the frequency of usage / also idioms with a bigger amount of representation, as well as idioms having and not having Turkish analogues and equivalents are included. The research is mainly based on the assumptions of the theory of Conceptual metaphors (Lakoff &amp / Johnson, 2003 / Lakoff, 1987) which emphasizes an extensive role of metaphors in humans&rsquo / life. The study is conducted among first-year students from different departments of Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara. Retrospective data collection method is applied / the validity and reliability of data in the present study is achieved by the application of three research methods: questionnaires, interviews, and think-aloud protocols. The obtained data are analyzed, and it is found out that Turkish learners prefer to comprehend English idioms through associations rather than concepts and universals.

Information acquisition over the Internet has become popular recently. Users, however, have difficulty in understanding the overall concept resulting from the searched information about a specific topic of their interests in the Internet. Moreover, such pieces of information keep changing over time. Therefore, in this thesis, an approach is proposed to help users further realize the searched results of their interested topic, and detect implications of the information changes over time. The first part of this approach is to gather information of a user-specified topic and analyze the overall meaning and the relations represented by those pieces of information. In this manner, users can gain the general concept of what the search results indicate. Here the keyword extraction approach, called RCBKE, is proposed to identify keywords with their relationships. Evaluations are performed and the results show that RCBKE can discover representative keywords. The second part is to track and investigate the information change of the topic in a certain time period. As a result, users can easily recognize the change patterns of the specified topic. An example to illustrate our approach is shown accordingly. The feasibility of our proposed approach is then justified.

The ability to recognize sameness among objects and events is a prerequisite for abstraction and forming concepts about what one has learned; thus, identity and nonidentity learning can be considered the backbone of higher-order human cognitive abilities. Discovering identity relations between the constituent properties of objects is an important ability that often characterizes the comparisons that humans make so it is important to devote attention to understanding how nonhuman primates process and conceptualize part-identity as well as whole-identity. Because the ability to generalize the results of learning is to what concepts ultimately reduce, the series of experiments herein first investigated responding to part-identity and -nonidentity and whole-identity and -nonidentity and then explored the generality of such learning to the formation of concepts about color, shape, and cardinal number. The data from Experiments 1, 2, and 3 indicated that the two orangutans learned to respond concurrently to color whole-identity and -nonidentity and they responded faster to color whole-identity. Additionally, both subjects learned to respond concurrently to color and shape part- and whole-identity and for the most part, it was easier for them to do so with color part- and whole-identity problems than shape part- and whole-identity problems. Further, their learned responses to color and shape part- and whole-identity fully transferred to novel color part-identity problems for both subjects and fully transferred to novel color and shape whole-identity problems for one orangutan. The data from Experiments 4, 5, and 6 showed that one subject learned to judge numerical identity when both irrelevant dimensions were cue-constant, but the subject did not do the same when one or more irrelevant dimensions were cue-ambiguous. Further, the subject's accuracy was affected by the numerical distance and the numerical total of comparisons during acquisition of the conditional discrimination. The subject subsequently formed a domain-specific concept about numerical identity as evinced by the transfer of learning to novel numerosities instantiated with novel, cue-constant element colors and shapes and novel numerosities instantiated with cue-constant, familiar element colors and shapes. Given the adaptive significance of using concepts, it is important to investigate if and how nonhuman primates form identity concepts for which they categorize or classify the stimuli around them. This dissertation provided evidence about the extent to which orangutans learned to respond to color, shape, and number identity and nonidentity and subsequent concept formation from such learning. The findings from this study will help in understanding the convergence and divergence in the expression abstraction in the primate phylogeny, thus, informing our understanding about the origins and mechanisms of cognition in human and nonhuman primates.

Texte remanié de : Mémoire : Philosophie : Université de Poitiers : 2001. / Bibliogr. p. [123]-[124]. Notes bibliogr.