Analyzing learner-hypermedia interaction: An overview of online methods

In this paper we examine the potential of online methods for hypermedia research. Online methods allow the recording, analysis and interpretation of learner-hypermedia interaction. Online methods have been extensively used in cognitive research, and especially in the area of discourse processing. In the first part of the paper we examine several online methods used in discourse comprehension research. We discuss the benefits and limits of each method, and its applicability to hypermedia research. In the second part we focus on the analysis of learner-hypermedia interaction protocols. We introduce several possible approaches, as a function of the observation grain, or the precision of the events that the researcher needs to examine. We present qualitative and quantitative examples at the coarse, intermediate and fine grain and we discuss the research context in which each approach seems most appropriate. We conclude that the empirical study of learner-hypermedia interaction should comply with the general standards of empirical research, e.g., explicit hypotheses and controlled study conditions.     

Infant attention scaffolding at home

The purpose of the study was to identify the mechanisms underlying the links between maternal attention directing strategies and infants’ focused attention. In the first year of life temporal organisation of dyadic behaviour was examined in the home. A sample of 50 dyads was videorecorded for one hour during usual activities, twice at 5- and 8-months of age. Onset and offset of maternal behaviours toward objects, and infants’ attention were noted. Sequential analyses demonstrated dependencies between partner’s behaviours: infants and mothers adjusted to each other’s activity. Maternal behaviours were classified as introducing, maintaining and redirecting attention: over both ages, the most frequent maternal behaviour was introducing, which did not systematically attract the infant’s attention; maintaining was the second most frequent maternal behaviour. Infants focused their attention longer when the mother used introducing or maintaining strategies. Older infants initiated a greater proportion of attention focusing episodes. At both ages inter-dyads variability is very large, with a significant inter-ages stability. The present data bring further support to the interpretation of parental activity as a genuine scaffolding of attention.     

Book reviews

Bazzana, André; Cressier, Patrice; and Guichard, Pierre. Les châteaux ruraux d'al‐Andalus. Histoire et archéologie des husūn du sud‐est de l'Espagne. Preface by Pierre Toubert (Série Archéologie, XI). Madrid: Publications de la Casa de Velázquez, 1988. 326pp; illustrations (plates, maps, tables); bibliography, index.

Tāha, CAbdulwāhid Dhanūn. The Muslim Conquest and Settlement of North Africa and Spain (Exeter Arabic and Islamic Series, 3). London: Routledge, 1989. xiv + 280pp; £49.50.

Leaman, Oliver. Averroes and his Philosophy Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988. 204pp.; £25.

Mas^cūdî. The Meadows of Cold: the Abbasids. Ed. & tr. P. Lunde & C. Stone. London: Kegan Paul International, 1989. 469 pp., 2 maps; £30.

Sirat, Colette. La philosophie juive médiévale en terre d'Islam. Paris: Presses du CNRS, 1988. 278 pp.

Epalza, Míkel de and others. Baños Arabes en el país Valenciano. [Valencia], Generalitat Valenciana: Consellería de Cultura, Educado i Ciència, 1989.157 pp., plates, figures., maps (unnumbered).

Waines, David In a Caliph's Kitchen.Medieval Arabic Cooking for the Modern Gourmet. London: Riad el‐Rayyes Books, 1989. 112pp., many illustrations; £14.

Abed, Shukri B. Aristotelian Logic and the Arabic Language in Alfārābi. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991. xxv+201pp., two appendices, bibliography, index.

Meyerson, Mark D. The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. xi + 372 pp.

Zacour, Norman. Jews and Saracens in the Consilia of Oldradus de Ponte. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990. x+144pp., index; paperback.