Spring 2011 CS Div III Fair

The CS Div III Fair will take place on Wednesday, May 11th in the ASH Auditorium. This event begins at 11AM.

Presenters to Include:

Brittany Alperin  Title: The Longitudinal Effects of Mindfulness Meditation: A Case-Control Studyl Abstract: Mindfulness meditation (MM) practice has been found to reduce anxiety, depression, pain perception, stress, and negative affect. It has also been found to increase mindfulness and overall well-being. Though it is clear that MM shows these effects, it is unclear how these changes occur. In this longitudinal case-control study, measurements were taken weekly and/or daily from a single college female who practiced MM for an hour a day for 16 weeks. The rate at which the participant improved at sustaining a meditative state during meditation practice correlated with the pattern of change for each of the measures taken. This shows that as meditation practice improves, so improves psychological and physiological factors at the same rate. For most measures, changes began to occur immediately after the onset of the intervention and continued to increase rapidly until the 8th-10th week of practice. In some cases, measures continued to increase throughout all 16 weeks. Psychological measures seemed to increase at a faster rate than physiological measures suggesting that psychological changes may prompt physiological changes.

Marco Carmosino  Title: Pebble Games to Characterize Expressibility for Mod-Counting Logics Abstract: We define an EF-game variant and prove that it exactly characterizes expressibility for first order logic equipped with mod counting quantifiers. In the presence of plus and times relations our game provides a complete methodology for proving that a problem is not in the complexity class uniform-ACC. We derive sufficient conditions for the Duplicator to win our game in the presence of plus and ordering relations.

Daniel Chapsky  Title: Quantifying The Ego: A Machine Learning Exploration of Personality Prediction Abstract: People express their personalities through online social networks in a variety of ways, such as their relationships with their friends and their listed interests. In this work I present a method for automatically predicting an individual’s personality by combining his Facebook profile information with external data sources using a machine learning method known as a Bayesian Network. The developed models use representations of people’s connections to other people, places, cultures, and ideas, as expressed through Facebook. Due to the nature of Bayesian Networks, the semantics underlying the models are clear enough to not only predict personality, but also use knowledge of one’s personality to predict his behavioral attributes and actions. I will present some of the more interesting models of personality that my systems have produced thus far. These models demonstrate the potential of my methodology in two ways: First, they are able to explain up to 70% of all variation in a personality trait from a sample of 615 individuals. Second, they are able to clearly describe underlying relationships in the model through findings such as how to predict a man’s agreeableness based on his age, hometown, number of Facebook wall posts, and his willingness to disclose his preference for music made by Lady Gaga.

Becky Gates  Title: Facial Expressions and Nonverbal Communication

Cameron Kingsley Title: Building Videogames for Language Education

Jacob Kolpas  Title: Chanting Down Babylon: The Language(s) of Reggae Abstract: This project is an exploration of dialect variation in reggae music. Drawing from previous scholarship on dialect variation in British pop music and American rap music, this project is an attempt to see how the linguistic identities of reggae singers are represented in their music. Using the disciplines of sociolinguistics, pidgin and creole linguistics, ethnomusicology, and media studies, I examine songs by Jamaican singers Alton Ellis, Bob Marley, and Max Romeo, and analyze how the sociopolitical content of their music is reflected in the linguistic choices that they make. Lee Morgan  Title: The Nature of Metaphorical Interpretation Abstract: The Nature of Metaphorical Interpretation A metaphor's literal meaning can differ greatly from the inferences that hearers draw from it. For example, from the metaphor in (1), which literally means that John is an elephant, a hearer might draw the inference in (2). (1) John is an elephant. (2) John is large. (Hobbs 1990)

Searle (1979) and Grice (1989) treat the disparity between the literal meaning of a metaphor and the inferences drawn from that metaphor as a distinction between sentence meaning and speaker meaning. Davidson (1978), however, argues that in metaphors, inferences like (2) are neither literally nor speaker meant, a view that has been recently advanced by Lepore and Stone (2010). According to this view, the metaphor in (1) merely causes a hearer to reach (2). As Davidson writes, metaphor can, "like a picture or a bump on the head, make us appreciate some fact—but not by standing for, or expressing, the fact." He argues that metaphorical inferences are not produced through linguistic mechanisms, which would entail that the speaker means (2). He instead proposes that metaphorical interpretation is based on imagination; a hearer infers (2) from (1), for example, by having an experience of imagining John as an elephant.

In the first part of the talk, I present a new argument for the position that metaphorical inferences are not speaker-meant, based on Grice's (1957) definition of speaker meaning and a comparison of metaphors to hints. In particular, I argue that hints intended to produce a belief are not speaker-meant, while hints intended to produce an action are speaker-meant. Subsequently, I provide novel data illustrating that metaphors are akin to belief-oriented hints and not action-oriented hints, and thus are not speaker-meant.

In the second part of the talk, I argue against Davidson's position that metaphorical interpretation is based on imagination and adopt Hobbs’s (1990) idea that axioms of world knowledge play the crucial role. These axioms are granted by the hearer for the sake of interpretation, but need not be true or believed. I argue that there are three classes of axioms that are linguistically relevant for metaphorical interpretation: necessarily true axioms, contingently true axioms, and contingently false axioms. In (1), the axiom necessary to produce the inference in (2) is that elephants are (generally) large, which is contingently true. In (3) and (4), the relevant axiom, i.e., that giants are large, is necessarily true. Finally, in (5), the axiom necessary to produce the inference in (6) is contingently false; lemmings are not, in fact, particularly suicidal.

(3) Sean is a giant. (4) Sean is large. (5) Alan is a lemming. (6) Alan is suicidal.

I examine what these three classes of axioms have in common, and conclude that in each case the axiom is said to be true by a particular interpretive community.

In sum, I argue that metaphorical inferences are not speaker-meant, and then analyze the process of metaphorical interpretation, focusing on the nature of inference selection. The proposed theory has broad implications for a theory of metaphor, hinting, speaker meaning and speech act theory.

Bella Orden  Title: Effects of Conspecific Predator Awareness on Alarm Calling and Anti-Predator Behaviors in the Domestic Chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) Abstract: The study looks at how alarm calling and non-vocal anti-predator behaviors in the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) are affected by conspecific predator awareness. Twenty-seven chickens were presented with a model fox two at a time. Either both chickens were allowed to see the fox model or only one of the chickens was allowed to see the fox model. Results showed that chickens gave the most calls and exhibited the most anti-predator behaviors when both chickens in the trial could see the fox model. Chickens gave fewer calls and exhibited fewer anti-ground-predator behaviors when they could see the fox model but their conspecific could not. Chickens exhibited the fewest anti-predator behaviors when they were not able to see the fox model.

Evan Silberman  Title: Low-tech computing: Developing and teaching a programming-free introduction to computer science Abstract: The traditional introductory course in computer science makes extensive use of computer programming. Historical, philosophical, theoretical, and foundational aspects of computer science are deferred to upper-level courses for majors or discussed in passing as end-of-semester respites from "real work" in technical courses. I worked to develop a curriculum for a first course in compute science that inverts these biases, and guides students through the intellectual foundations of computer science from a low-tech perspective. I will give an overview of my syllabus, discuss some of the projects students worked on, and suggest future directions for innovative computer science curricula.

Arielle Soutar Title: Designing and Building An Online Academic Resource Abstract: The essential element of a Hampshire education is the relationship between a student and her advisor or committee. How does Hampshire support a student in finding faculty she can work with? This question is the basis of this Div III project, informing the research and design process, the product of which I call the Faculty Finder. I will present a prototype of the service as well as the surrounding research.