Curriculum Vitae

 

Erin J. Lightman

Institute for Intelligent Systems

4th Floor FedEx Institute of Technology, RM 410

365 Innovation Drive

Memphis, TN 38152

(901) 678-5102

elightman@mail.psyc.memphis.edu

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Education

The University of Memphis

College of Arts & Sciences

Bachelor of Arts (3.82 GPA)

Major: Psychology (honors program)

Status: Senior

Expected Graduation: May, 2007

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_________________________________________________________________________herence Scores to Predict Text Readability and Facili

 

Research Experience

 

May 2005 – present           Research Assistant, Cognitive Science and Educational Practice Lab, University of Memphis –Institute for Intelligent Systems.

 

Research focusing on cognitive-based learning strategies and its integration with computational interfaces

 

Supervisors:         Dr. Danielle McNamara

Dr. Philip McCarthy

 

Duties:                 Collaborating with graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and faculty in the development of  

·        studies to test and validate the computational tool, Coh-Metrix: Automated Cohesion and Coherence Scores to Predict Text Readability and Facilitate Comprehension

·        coding systems with which to analyze data from studies testing the web-based computer program, iSTART: Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking

 

Running experiments with high-school and undergraduate participants

 

January-May 2005             Research Assistant: Behavioral Neuroscience Lab,

University of Memphis

 

Supervisor:          Dr. Charles Long

 

Duties:                 Gathering background research on traumatic brain injuries

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Honors and Awards

 

2004-2007                         Dean’s List, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Memphis

2002-2003                         Dean’s List, College of Communication and Fine Arts,    University of Memphis

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Organizations

 

2005-present                      Psychology Honors Program (PHP), University of Memphis

2005-present                      Psi Chi National Psychology Honor Society

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Relevant Work Experience

 

Jan. - March, 2004             Safety and Education Intern, Lakeside Memorial Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee

 

My responsibilities included counseling and supervising children and adolescents in an outpatient unit in a psychiatric hospital.

 

December, 2003 -              Intern, Jewish Family Service, Memphis, Tennessee

March, 2004

My responsibilities included clerical work and observing therapy sessions (with client consent).

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Skills

 

General skills in statistics and computing. Proficiency in:

·        Computing platforms: Windows 98/2000/XP, Mac OS X

·        Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint

·        SPSS

Developing skills in Visual Basic

Proficiency in APA format

Intermediate German

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Publications

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., & McNamara, D.S. (in press). Using computational text analysis tools to compare the lyrics of suicidal and non-suicidal songwriters. Proceedings of the 29th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., Dufty, D.F., & McNamara, D.S. (in press). Cohesion and structural organization in high school texts. Proceedings of the 20th International FLAIRS Conference.

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Presentations

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., & McNamara, D.S. (2007, August). Using computational text analysis tools to compare the lyrics of suicidal and non-suicidal songwriters. Poster to be presented at the 29th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Nashville, TN.

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., Dufty, D.F., & McNamara, D.S. (2007, May). Cohesion and structural organization in high school texts. To be presented at the 20th International FLAIRS Conference, Key West, FL.

 

McCarthy, P.M., Renner, A.M., Duncan, M., Duran, N, Lightman, E.J., & McNamara, D.S. (2006, November). Identifying topic sentences: A comparison of two models. Presentation at Society for Computers in Psychology, Houston, TX.

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., Dufty, D.F., & McNamara, D.S. (2006, November). Using Coh-Metrix to analyze the lyrics of suicidal and non-suicidal songwriters. Poster presentation at the 52nd Anniversary Convention of the Tennessee Psychological Association, Nashville, TN.

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., Dufty, D.F., & McNamara, D.S. (2006, October). Analyzing the lyrics of suicidal and non-suicidal songwriters. Presentation at the Works in Progress Symposium, Memphis, TN.

 

McCarthy, P.M., Lightman, E.J., Dufty, D.F., & McNamara, D.S. (2006, July). Using Coh-Metrix to assess distributions of cohesion and difficulty: An investigation of the structure of high-school textbooks. Poster presentation at the 28th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society, Vancouver, BC.

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., Dufty, D.F., & McNamara, D.S. (2006, July). Using Coh-Metrix to assess the structural organization of narratives. Presentation at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse, Minneapolis, MN.

 

Dufty, D.F., Graesser, A.C., Lightman, E.J., Crossley, S., & McNamara, D.S. (2006, July). An algorithm for detecting spatial cohesion in text. Poster presentation at the 16th Annual Meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse, Minneapolis, MN.

 

Duran, N.D., & Lightman, E.J. (2006, April). An empirical study of cohesion as a predictor of gender differences between Venusians and Martians. Presentation at the Southeastern Conference on Linguistics (SECOL LXXIII), Auburn, AL.

 

Lightman, E.J., & Duran, N.D. (2006, April). Are women and men that different?: A computational approach for assessing linguistic style. Poster presentation at Careers in Psychology Conference, Memphis, TN.

 

McNamara, D.S., McCarthy, P.M., Best, R., Cai, Z., Lightman, E.J., & Briner, S.W. (2005, November). Coh-Metrix Fall 2006. Presentation at Language and Technology Seminar, Memphis, TN.

 

Lightman, E.J., McCarthy, P.M., Dufty, D.F., McNamara, D.S. (2005, November). Tracking optimal distributions of cohesion for optimal levels of learning. Presentation at Cognitive Brownbag, Memphis, TN.

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Published Abstracts

 

McCarthy, P.M., Lightman, E.J., Dufty, D.F., & McNamara, D.S. (2006). Using Coh-Metrix to assess distributions of cohesion and difficulty: An investigation of the structure of high-school textbooks. In R. Sun & N. Miyake (Eds), Proceedings of the 28th annual conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 190). Mahwah, NJ: Eribaum.

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In Review

 

McCarthy, P.M., Renner, A.M., Duncan, M.G., Duran, N., Lightman, E.J., & McNamara, D.S. (in review). A comparison of two models to computationally identify topic sentencehood. Behavioral Research Methods.

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In Preparation                       

 

  • Using Coh-Metrix and Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count to compare the lyrics of suicidal and non-suicidal songwriters: First author study with Philip M. McCarthy, David F. Dufty, and Danielle S. McNamara. This research is an attempt to identify differences in textual characteristics of song lyrics as a function of suicidal behavior. The study, which will be my undergraduate honors thesis, seeks to extend the field of computational text analysis to the register of lyrics.

 

  • Using Coh-Metrix to detect structural differences between narrative and expository high school educational texts. First author study with Philip M. McCarthy, David F. Dufty, and Danielle S. McNamara. This study investigates how cohesion and difficulty are distributed within the chapters of high school educational texts, and how these distributions differ between genres.

 

  • A comparison of two models for the computational identification of the topic sentencehood. With Philip M. McCarthy, Adam M. Renner, Michael Duncan, Nick Duran, and Danielle S. McNamara. This research investigates whether topic sentences can be computationally identified. It also poses the question, are topic sentences better identified by a Free Model incorporating independent sentential features or are they better identified by a Derived Model incorporating co-referential measures such as LSA and work-overlap. Submitted to Behavioral Research Methods.

 

  • Elaboration, Implicatation, and Entailment: Introducing ELIMENT as a tool for the identification and assessment of degrees of implicature. With Philip M. McCarthy, Vasile Rus, Stephen W. Briner, Scott Crossley, Adam M. Renner, and Danielle S. McNamara. This study addresses the challenges of interpreting and assessing user responses from intelligent tutoring systems by concentrating on an analysis of computational identification of degrees of implicature. A developing tool, the Entailer, has already shown success in identifying degrees of entailment.

 

  • Conceptual units study. With Stephen W. Briner, Philip M. McCarthy, Adam M. Renner, and Danielle S. McNamara. This research attempts to further the development of the interpretation and assessment of user responses in regards to intelligent tutoring systems by creating a procedure for dividing sentences into conceptual units in order to prepare them for computational analysis.

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References

 

Danielle McNamara, professor

University of Memphis

Institute for Intelligent Systems

4th Floor FedEx Institute of Technology, 365 Innovation Drive

Memphis, TN 38152

(901) 678-5102

dsmcnamr@memphis.edu

http://iismemphis.org/people/profiles/mcnamara.htm

 

Art Graesser, professor

University of Memphis

Institute for Intelligent Systems

4th Floor FedEx Institute of Technology, 365 Innovation Drive

Memphis, TN 38152

(901) 678-5102

a-graesser@memphis.edu

http://mnemosyne.csl.psyc.memphis.edu/home/graesser/

 

Philip McCarthy, senior research scientist

University of Memphis

Institute for Intelligent Systems

FedEx Institute of Technology

4th Floor FedEx Institute of Technology, RM 410, 365 Innovation Drive

Memphis, TN 38152

(901) 678-5102

pmmccrth@memphis.edu

http://home.autotutor.org/pmccarthy/index.htm