Much has been written about the potential and pitfalls of macroscopic web-based link analysis, yet there have been no studies that have provided clear statistical evidence that any of the proposed calculations can produce results over large areas of the web that correlate with phenomena external to the Internet. This article attempts to provide such evidence through an evaluation of Ingwersen’s (1998) proposed external Web Impact Factor (WIF) for the original use of the web: the interlinking of academic research. In particular, it studies the case of the relationship between academic hyperlinks and research activity for universities in Britain, a country chosen for its variety of institutions and the existence of an official government rating exercise for research. After reviewing the numerous reasons why link counts may be unreliable, it demonstrates that four different WIFs do, in fact, correlate with the conventional academic research measures. The WIF delivering the greatest correlation with research rankings was the ratio of web pages with links pointing at research-based pages to faculty numbers. The scarcity of links to electronic academic papers in the data set suggests that, in contrast to citation analysis, this WIF is measuring the reputations of universities and their scholars, rather than the quality of their publications.

Heavy-NP shift is the tendency for speakers to place long or "heavy" noun phrase direct objects at the end of a sentence rather than in the canonical post-verbal position. Three experiments using several task variations confirmed that length of the noun phrase influenced the ordering of the noun phrase and prepositional phrase during production. We also found that heavy-NP shift was strongly constrained by the "shifting disposition" of individual verbs. Verbs that do not require their complements (e.g., sentential complements) to appear in an adjacent position yielded more shifting during production than verbs that more frequently appear adjacent to their complements. Analyses of decision/preparation times suggested that shifted and unshifted structures competed for selection. These findings point to the simultaneous activation of lexically derived syntactic representations and ordering options in sentence planning. A multiple constraints framework provides a means of reconciling the e...

Spanish diphthongization is a well-known example of an exceptionful phonological alternation. Although many forms do exhibit an alternation (e.g. [sentámos] ~ [sjénto] ‘we/I sit’, [kontámos] ~ [kwénto] ‘we/I count’), many others do not (e.g. [rentámos] ~ [rénto] ‘we/I rent’, [montámos] ~ [mónto] ‘we/I mount’). Previous accounts of the alternation have largely accepted this unpredictability at face value, focusing on setting up appropriate lexical representations to distinguish alternating from non-alternating roots. Our interest is in whether Spanish speakers go beyond this, internalizing detailed knowledge of the ways in which diphthongization is conditioned by segmental environments. We employed a machine-implemented algorithm to search a database of 1698 mid-vowel verbs. The algorithm yielded a large stochastic grammar, specifying the degree to which diphthongization is favored or disfavored in particular segmental contexts. We used this grammar to make predictions about the well-formedness of diphthongization in novel roots. The predictions were then checked in a nonce probe experiment with 96 native speaker consultants. We found that the consultants’ intuitions (both in volunteered forms and in acceptability ratings) were significantly correlated with the predictions of the algorithmically learned grammar. Our conclusion is that Spanish speakers can indeed use detailed segmental environments to help predict diphthongization. We discuss this conclusion in light of various models of linguistic irregularity. Segmental Environments of Spanish Diphthongization p. 2 Segmental Environments of Spanish Diphthongization 1

This investigation sought to determine the role of cognitive word knowledge in metacognitive development. Subjects were fifth graders, seventh graders, tenth graders, and college undergraduates. Each sub- ject completed a Likert scale self-report that measured the frequency of their metacognitive strategy use and a multiple-choice test that measured their cognitive word knowledge. Achievement percentiles were then collected from the subjects records. Metacognitive strategies representing the production of external strategies were found to decrease with age (e.g., metacognitive strategies representing internal processing increased with age (e.g., Only the metacognitive strategies assessing more internal processing were significantly related to standard&d verbal and quantitative achievement percentiles. Finally, cognitive word knowledge, ex- plained a significant amount of variance in metacognition total for seventh and tenth graders, and undergraduates, but in tenth graders only when metacognition was par- tialled for verbal achievement percentiles. Cognitive words such as think and know are a subdivisionof the internal state lexicon (Hall & Nagy, 1986) and may be central to accessing, monitoring, and transforming our internal states (Scholmck & Hall, 1991). Cognitive words may enable people to understand and interrelate various aspects of their mental functioning (Scholnick & Hall, 1991). Cognitive words may provide a medium that makes it possible to engage in metacognition, that is, to generate goals for reading, communicate the intended meaning of a text, or evaluate one's level of understanding. Similarly, cognitive words may equip the reader with a vehicle by which to evaluate comprehension strategies critically or to consciously reflect...

In this article, the authors investigate whether the fit between consumers ’ image and the image of an innovation, commonly referred to as image congruence, has an impact on customers’attitudes toward innovative services as well as the intention to use these new services. Moreover, situational influences (i.e., private vs. public, and friends vs. colleagues) are examined. The results of the two experiments show that not only does image congruence have a significant impact on consumer attitudes and the adoption decision, but there is also an interaction between image congruence and the consumption situation. Contrary to the authors’expectations, consumers with low image congruence are influenced more by their surroundings than consumers with high image congruence. It seems that as long as the fit between the consumer’s self-image and the service image is high, signals from the consumer’s environment are overruled.

anonymous reviewers and editors for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. SAFEGUARDING INTERORGANIZATIONAL

We examined changes in performance as people learned to use an angled laparoscope, a challenging spatial skill that must be mastered by surgeons who perform minimally invasive techniques. In Experiment 1, novices took tests of spatial and general reasoning ability, and then learned to operate an angled laparoscope, simulated in a virtual environment, over 12 learning sessions. Initial performance showed considerable variability among learners, with performance related to general and spatial abilities. As learning progressed, interindividual variability diminished and all learners attained proficiency; the correlation with general ability diminished but the correlation with spatial ability remained significant. In Experiment 2, performance by highly experienced surgeons on the simulation was excellent from the first session, confirming its ecological validity. The findings contribute to theories of skill acquisition. They also have practical implications for the selection of surgeons and for the potential use of virtual environments in surgical training.

The purpose of the study reported here was to examine whether age and spatial ability are factors that influence a driver's ability to navigate and to use navigational displays. These factors were examined because previous research suggests that spatial ability may underlie navigational performance, including route-following and mapreading, and that these skills may diminish with age.Thus, older drivers and drivers with weak navigational skills, may have a heightened need for, and be particularly served by, in-vehicle route guidance displays found in Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS). A total of 56 drivers were tested on spatial ability. The drivers then performed a navigational task in a part-task driving simulator using different navigational aids, including: (1) text directions, (2) an enlarged, mounted paper map, (3) a standard-scale paper map, and (4) a turn-by-turn route guidance ATIS display. The major findings were that: (1) older drivers showed worse navigational pe...

The query-performance prediction task is estimating the effectiveness of a search performed in response to a query when no relevance judgments are available. Although there exist many effective prediction methods, these differ substantially in their basic principles, and rely on diverse hypotheses about the characteristics of effective retrieval. We present a novel fundamental probabilistic prediction framework. Using the framework, we derive and explain various previously proposed prediction methods that might seem completely different, but turn out to share the same formal basis. The derivations provide new perspectives on several predictors (e.g., Clarity). The framework is also used to devise new prediction approaches that outperform the state-of-the-art.

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