Ewa Tomczak | Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (original) (raw)

Papers by Ewa Tomczak

Translation & Interpreting, Jul 29, 2022

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The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 2021

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3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2019

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Perceptual and motor skills, 2018

This study sought to determine differences in fencers' visual perceptions during duels (prepa... more This study sought to determine differences in fencers' visual perceptions during duels (preparatory actions) with right- versus left-handed opponents. Participants were 12 top-ranking right-handed female foil fencers (aged 16-30 years, M = 20.86, SD = 4.76) taking part in a training camp. Testing employed SensoMotoric Instruments Eye Tracking Glasses (SMI ETG 2.0) with eye-tracking analyses covering the visual attention time devoted to various areas of the opposing fencer's body (areas of interest), average fixation, number of glances, and number of fixations during preparatory actions in duels. Each test was conducted during preparatory actions in 20-second staged duels, first against a right-handed, and then against a left-handed opponent. Against left-handed (vs. right-handed) opponents, fencers spent significantly more time looking at and significantly more often fixated on the armed hand. When fighting against right-handed (vs. left-handed) opponents, fencers devoted mo...

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Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 2017

Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is relate... more Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is related to processing of emotional input, both linguistic and nonlinguistic; the other is centred on mechanisms underlying bilingual language comprehension and production. The current volume comprises substantial contributions by researchers working within various fields of linguistics and psychology. The Authors elaborate upon cognitively sophisticated frameworks for conceptualising the complexities of attitudes towards and beliefs about language, i.e.

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International Journal Of Lexicography, 2017

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3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies

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Journal of Human Kinetics, 2021

An effective visual perception strategy helps a fencer quickly react to an opponent’s actions. Th... more An effective visual perception strategy helps a fencer quickly react to an opponent’s actions. This study aimed to examine and compare visual perception strategies used by high-performance foil fencers (experts) and beginners. In an eye tracking experiment, we analysed to which areas beginning and expert fencers paid attention during duels. Novices paid attention to all examined areas of interest comprising the guard, foil (blade and tip), armed hand, lower torso, and upper torso of their opponents. Experts, however, paid significantly less attention to the foil, picking up information from other areas, mainly the upper torso and the armed hand. These results indicate that expert fencers indeed engage different visual perception strategies than beginners. The present findings highlight the fact that beginner fencers should be taught already in the early stages of their careers how to pick up information from various body areas of their opponents.

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BioMed Research International

Left handers have long held the edge over right handers in one-on-one interactive combat sports. ... more Left handers have long held the edge over right handers in one-on-one interactive combat sports. Particularly in fencing, top rankings show a relatively strong overrepresentation of left handers over right handers. Whether this can be attributed to perceptual strategies used by fencers in their bouts remains to be established. This study aims to verify whether right-handed fencers assess their opponents’ behaviour based on different perceptual strategies when fencing a left vs. right hander. Twelve top-level (i.e., Olympic fencers, Junior World Team Fencing Champions, and top Polish senior foil fencers) right-handed female foil fencers (aged 16–30 years) took part in the study. They performed a total of 40 actions: 10 repetitions of offensive actions (attack) and 10 repetitions of defensive actions (defence), each type of action performed under 2 conditions (right- vs. left-handed opponent). While the participants were fencing, their eye movements were being recorded with a remote e...

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article, 2021

Effective information behaviour is crucial in all translation competence models but our understan... more Effective information behaviour is crucial in all translation competence models but our understanding of how information skills develop and how translators interact with information found in online resources is still limited. In this article we focus on information behaviour (needs and use) of bidirectional translators who frequently translate into their native (L1) and their non-native language (L2). The theoretical underpinnings come from information studies: (1) information is needed when cognitive uncertainty arises and – when found – it allows the translator to make an informed decision; (2) translators are driven by economy of effort and will minimise the cost of searching for information. The empirical evidence comes from a study of 30 professional bidirectional translators who translated two texts into their native language of low diffusion (Polish) and into their non-native major language (English). A close analysis of their information behaviour included data obtained by keylogging, eye-tracking and screen recording, and showed that using online resources adds more cognitive effort when translators work into their L2. We use the results to draft a model of information behaviour which shows how the use of online resources is affected by the translation direction.

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Recent years have witnessed a growing number of published reports that point out the need for rep... more Recent years have witnessed a growing number of published reports that point out the need for reporting various effect size estimates in the context of null hypothesis testing (H0) as a response to a tendency for reporting tests of statistical significance only, with less attention on other important aspects of statistical analysis. In the face of considerable changes over the past several years, neglect to report effect size estimates may be noted in such fields as medical science, psychology, applied linguistics, or pedagogy. Nor have sport sciences managed to totally escape the grips of this suboptimal practice: here statistical analyses in even some of the current research reports do not go much further than computing p-values. The p-value, however, is not meant to provide information on the actual strength of the relationship between variables, and does not allow the researcher to determine the effect of one variable on another. Effect size measures serve this purpose well. While the number of reports containing statistical estimates of effect sizes calculated after applying parametric tests is steadily increasing, reporting effect sizes with non-parametric tests is still very rare. Hence, the main objectives of this contribution are to promote various effect size measures in sport sciences through, once again, bringing to the readers’ attention the benefits of reporting them, and to present examples of such estimates with a greater focus on those that can be calculated for non-parametric tests.

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The main aim of this paper is to provide some practical guidance to researchers on how statistica... more The main aim of this paper is to provide some practical guidance to researchers on how statistical power analysis can be used to estimate sample size in empirical design. The paper describes the key assumptions underlying statistical power analysis and illustrates through several examples how to determine the appropriate sample size. The examples use hypotheses often tested in sport sciences and verified with popular statistical tests including the independent-samples t-test, one-way and twoway analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation analysis, and regression analysis. Commonly used statistical packages allow researchers to determine appropriate sample size for hypothesis testing situations listed above.

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We examine cross-linguistic influence in the processing of motion sentences by L2 users from an e... more We examine cross-linguistic influence in the processing of motion sentences by L2 users from an embodied cognition perspective. The experiment employs a priming paradigm to test two hypotheses based on previous action and motion research in cognitive psychology. The first hypothesis maintains that conceptual representations of motion are embodied by sensory and motor systems (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Zwaan & Taylor, 2006) and predicts that linguistic descriptions of motion will be susceptible to conceptual priming effects. The second hypothesis assumes that the processing of fictive motion sentences, such as The road runs through the forest (cf. Talmy, 2000a), involves additional mental simulation of motion (Matlock, 2004b; Richardson & Matlock, 2007) and predicts that fictive motion will be processed more slowly than real motion. The participants were groups of Polish and English monolinguals and Polish L2 users of English, who were students in an English-medium university program. Sentence meaningfulness judgment and response time data were collected from the monolinguals and the L2 users tested in both languages. Sentence meaningfulness judgments were examined to see how the participants represent motion in language and response time data were analyzed for evidence of conceptual processing. The results showed expected differences in response times to various sentence types in all groups, but the priming effect was not observed in Polish monolinguals and only selectively present in the L2 users responding in both languages. The results of our experiment indicate that fictive motion processing is both embodied in physical experience of motion and modified by language.
(To view the article click on the link below:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2015.12178.x/pdf)

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Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is relate... more Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is related to processing of emotional input, both linguistic and nonlinguistic; the other is centred on mechanisms underlying bilingual language comprehension and production. The current volume comprises substantial contributions by researchers working within various fields of linguistics and psychology. The Authors elaborate upon cognitively sophisticated frameworks for conceptualising the complexities of attitudes towards and beliefs about language, i.e. language regard (Preston 2010), and for explaining how affective processing interacts with linguistic performance (Sharwood Smith and Truscott 2014). Affective processing is further explored by Kissler and Strehlow (this volume), who offer a neurophysiological account of the interplay of emotionally charged language and non-linguistic behaviour. Further experimental evidence on language processing is provided by Cieślicka et al. (this volume), who investigate the effects of factors determining patterns in figurative language processing in bilinguals. Vital factors playing a role in bilingual language processing are also discussed at length in the final contribution to the volume (Jankowiak and Rataj, this volume), which, once again, takes a neurophysiological perspective. Together, the presented accounts offer complementary views on the intricacies of linguistic and affective processing and their interactions in monolingual and bilingual populations.

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This study sought to determine differences in fencers’ visual perceptions during duels (preparato... more This study sought to determine differences in fencers’ visual perceptions during duels (preparatory actions) with right- versus left-handed opponents. Participants were 12 top-ranking right-handed female foil fencers (aged 16–30 years, M = 20.86, SD = 4.76) taking part in a training camp. Testing employed SensoMotoric Instruments Eye Tracking Glasses (SMI ETG 2.0) with eye-tracking analyses covering the visual attention time devoted to various areas of the opposing fencer’s body (areas of interest), average fixation, number of glances, and number of fixations during preparatory actions in duels. Each test was conducted during preparatory actions in 20-second staged duels, first against a right-handed, and then against a left-handed opponent. Against left-handed (vs. right-handed) opponents, fencers spent significantly more time looking at and significantly more often fixated on the armed hand. When fighting against right-handed (vs. left-handed) opponents, fencers devoted more time and fixated more often on the opponent’s upper torso. These results may point to an interesting phenomenon in which left-handed fencers benefit from weaker strategies adopted by their right-handed opponents who may fixate on the forearm and arm of the weapon hand.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The need to integrate songs into English Language Teaching (ELT) has been recognized on numerous ... more The need to integrate songs into English Language Teaching (ELT) has been recognized on numerous occasions. Song lyrics host multi-word units which learners can reuse as building blocks in their English, thereby reducing language processing time and effort, and improving their fluency as well as idiomaticity, thus bringing them closer to the native speaker norm. We report on two studies into the effectiveness of using songs for teaching multi-word units to high-school Polish learners of English. The same items were taught to two groups of EFL learners, but only one of the groups heard them in a song. Learners’ vocabulary recall was measured at three points in time relative to the teaching: before, immediately after, and a week after. The group taught with songs showed a significant recall advantage over the other group, especially when tested a week from teaching. The results suggest that songs can be an effective vehicle for teaching English multi-word units.

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Dictionaries sometimes include pictorial illustrations to complement verbal explanation. The pres... more Dictionaries sometimes include pictorial illustrations to complement verbal explanation. The present study examines the question of how verbal and pictorial elements within an entry compete for dictionary users’ attention, and how this competition affects meaning extraction and retention. The study employs eye-tracking technology to analyse the gaze patterns of Polish learners of English consulting illustrated monolingual English learner dictionary entries. In addition, success in identifying and remembering meaning based on illustrated items is assessed and related to eye-tracking data.

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Translation & Interpreting, Jul 29, 2022

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 2021

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies, 2019

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Perceptual and motor skills, 2018

This study sought to determine differences in fencers' visual perceptions during duels (prepa... more This study sought to determine differences in fencers' visual perceptions during duels (preparatory actions) with right- versus left-handed opponents. Participants were 12 top-ranking right-handed female foil fencers (aged 16-30 years, M = 20.86, SD = 4.76) taking part in a training camp. Testing employed SensoMotoric Instruments Eye Tracking Glasses (SMI ETG 2.0) with eye-tracking analyses covering the visual attention time devoted to various areas of the opposing fencer's body (areas of interest), average fixation, number of glances, and number of fixations during preparatory actions in duels. Each test was conducted during preparatory actions in 20-second staged duels, first against a right-handed, and then against a left-handed opponent. Against left-handed (vs. right-handed) opponents, fencers spent significantly more time looking at and significantly more often fixated on the armed hand. When fighting against right-handed (vs. left-handed) opponents, fencers devoted mo...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 2017

Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is relate... more Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is related to processing of emotional input, both linguistic and nonlinguistic; the other is centred on mechanisms underlying bilingual language comprehension and production. The current volume comprises substantial contributions by researchers working within various fields of linguistics and psychology. The Authors elaborate upon cognitively sophisticated frameworks for conceptualising the complexities of attitudes towards and beliefs about language, i.e.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

International Journal Of Lexicography, 2017

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

3L The Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Journal of Human Kinetics, 2021

An effective visual perception strategy helps a fencer quickly react to an opponent’s actions. Th... more An effective visual perception strategy helps a fencer quickly react to an opponent’s actions. This study aimed to examine and compare visual perception strategies used by high-performance foil fencers (experts) and beginners. In an eye tracking experiment, we analysed to which areas beginning and expert fencers paid attention during duels. Novices paid attention to all examined areas of interest comprising the guard, foil (blade and tip), armed hand, lower torso, and upper torso of their opponents. Experts, however, paid significantly less attention to the foil, picking up information from other areas, mainly the upper torso and the armed hand. These results indicate that expert fencers indeed engage different visual perception strategies than beginners. The present findings highlight the fact that beginner fencers should be taught already in the early stages of their careers how to pick up information from various body areas of their opponents.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

BioMed Research International

Left handers have long held the edge over right handers in one-on-one interactive combat sports. ... more Left handers have long held the edge over right handers in one-on-one interactive combat sports. Particularly in fencing, top rankings show a relatively strong overrepresentation of left handers over right handers. Whether this can be attributed to perceptual strategies used by fencers in their bouts remains to be established. This study aims to verify whether right-handed fencers assess their opponents’ behaviour based on different perceptual strategies when fencing a left vs. right hander. Twelve top-level (i.e., Olympic fencers, Junior World Team Fencing Champions, and top Polish senior foil fencers) right-handed female foil fencers (aged 16–30 years) took part in the study. They performed a total of 40 actions: 10 repetitions of offensive actions (attack) and 10 repetitions of defensive actions (defence), each type of action performed under 2 conditions (right- vs. left-handed opponent). While the participants were fencing, their eye movements were being recorded with a remote e...

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

article, 2021

Effective information behaviour is crucial in all translation competence models but our understan... more Effective information behaviour is crucial in all translation competence models but our understanding of how information skills develop and how translators interact with information found in online resources is still limited. In this article we focus on information behaviour (needs and use) of bidirectional translators who frequently translate into their native (L1) and their non-native language (L2). The theoretical underpinnings come from information studies: (1) information is needed when cognitive uncertainty arises and – when found – it allows the translator to make an informed decision; (2) translators are driven by economy of effort and will minimise the cost of searching for information. The empirical evidence comes from a study of 30 professional bidirectional translators who translated two texts into their native language of low diffusion (Polish) and into their non-native major language (English). A close analysis of their information behaviour included data obtained by keylogging, eye-tracking and screen recording, and showed that using online resources adds more cognitive effort when translators work into their L2. We use the results to draft a model of information behaviour which shows how the use of online resources is affected by the translation direction.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Recent years have witnessed a growing number of published reports that point out the need for rep... more Recent years have witnessed a growing number of published reports that point out the need for reporting various effect size estimates in the context of null hypothesis testing (H0) as a response to a tendency for reporting tests of statistical significance only, with less attention on other important aspects of statistical analysis. In the face of considerable changes over the past several years, neglect to report effect size estimates may be noted in such fields as medical science, psychology, applied linguistics, or pedagogy. Nor have sport sciences managed to totally escape the grips of this suboptimal practice: here statistical analyses in even some of the current research reports do not go much further than computing p-values. The p-value, however, is not meant to provide information on the actual strength of the relationship between variables, and does not allow the researcher to determine the effect of one variable on another. Effect size measures serve this purpose well. While the number of reports containing statistical estimates of effect sizes calculated after applying parametric tests is steadily increasing, reporting effect sizes with non-parametric tests is still very rare. Hence, the main objectives of this contribution are to promote various effect size measures in sport sciences through, once again, bringing to the readers’ attention the benefits of reporting them, and to present examples of such estimates with a greater focus on those that can be calculated for non-parametric tests.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The main aim of this paper is to provide some practical guidance to researchers on how statistica... more The main aim of this paper is to provide some practical guidance to researchers on how statistical power analysis can be used to estimate sample size in empirical design. The paper describes the key assumptions underlying statistical power analysis and illustrates through several examples how to determine the appropriate sample size. The examples use hypotheses often tested in sport sciences and verified with popular statistical tests including the independent-samples t-test, one-way and twoway analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation analysis, and regression analysis. Commonly used statistical packages allow researchers to determine appropriate sample size for hypothesis testing situations listed above.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

We examine cross-linguistic influence in the processing of motion sentences by L2 users from an e... more We examine cross-linguistic influence in the processing of motion sentences by L2 users from an embodied cognition perspective. The experiment employs a priming paradigm to test two hypotheses based on previous action and motion research in cognitive psychology. The first hypothesis maintains that conceptual representations of motion are embodied by sensory and motor systems (Glenberg & Kaschak, 2002; Zwaan & Taylor, 2006) and predicts that linguistic descriptions of motion will be susceptible to conceptual priming effects. The second hypothesis assumes that the processing of fictive motion sentences, such as The road runs through the forest (cf. Talmy, 2000a), involves additional mental simulation of motion (Matlock, 2004b; Richardson & Matlock, 2007) and predicts that fictive motion will be processed more slowly than real motion. The participants were groups of Polish and English monolinguals and Polish L2 users of English, who were students in an English-medium university program. Sentence meaningfulness judgment and response time data were collected from the monolinguals and the L2 users tested in both languages. Sentence meaningfulness judgments were examined to see how the participants represent motion in language and response time data were analyzed for evidence of conceptual processing. The results showed expected differences in response times to various sentence types in all groups, but the priming effect was not observed in Polish monolinguals and only selectively present in the L2 users responding in both languages. The results of our experiment indicate that fictive motion processing is both embodied in physical experience of motion and modified by language.
(To view the article click on the link below:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2015.12178.x/pdf)

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is relate... more Recent years have witnessed revival of academic interest in the study of two areas. One is related to processing of emotional input, both linguistic and nonlinguistic; the other is centred on mechanisms underlying bilingual language comprehension and production. The current volume comprises substantial contributions by researchers working within various fields of linguistics and psychology. The Authors elaborate upon cognitively sophisticated frameworks for conceptualising the complexities of attitudes towards and beliefs about language, i.e. language regard (Preston 2010), and for explaining how affective processing interacts with linguistic performance (Sharwood Smith and Truscott 2014). Affective processing is further explored by Kissler and Strehlow (this volume), who offer a neurophysiological account of the interplay of emotionally charged language and non-linguistic behaviour. Further experimental evidence on language processing is provided by Cieślicka et al. (this volume), who investigate the effects of factors determining patterns in figurative language processing in bilinguals. Vital factors playing a role in bilingual language processing are also discussed at length in the final contribution to the volume (Jankowiak and Rataj, this volume), which, once again, takes a neurophysiological perspective. Together, the presented accounts offer complementary views on the intricacies of linguistic and affective processing and their interactions in monolingual and bilingual populations.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

This study sought to determine differences in fencers’ visual perceptions during duels (preparato... more This study sought to determine differences in fencers’ visual perceptions during duels (preparatory actions) with right- versus left-handed opponents. Participants were 12 top-ranking right-handed female foil fencers (aged 16–30 years, M = 20.86, SD = 4.76) taking part in a training camp. Testing employed SensoMotoric Instruments Eye Tracking Glasses (SMI ETG 2.0) with eye-tracking analyses covering the visual attention time devoted to various areas of the opposing fencer’s body (areas of interest), average fixation, number of glances, and number of fixations during preparatory actions in duels. Each test was conducted during preparatory actions in 20-second staged duels, first against a right-handed, and then against a left-handed opponent. Against left-handed (vs. right-handed) opponents, fencers spent significantly more time looking at and significantly more often fixated on the armed hand. When fighting against right-handed (vs. left-handed) opponents, fencers devoted more time and fixated more often on the opponent’s upper torso. These results may point to an interesting phenomenon in which left-handed fencers benefit from weaker strategies adopted by their right-handed opponents who may fixate on the forearm and arm of the weapon hand.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

The need to integrate songs into English Language Teaching (ELT) has been recognized on numerous ... more The need to integrate songs into English Language Teaching (ELT) has been recognized on numerous occasions. Song lyrics host multi-word units which learners can reuse as building blocks in their English, thereby reducing language processing time and effort, and improving their fluency as well as idiomaticity, thus bringing them closer to the native speaker norm. We report on two studies into the effectiveness of using songs for teaching multi-word units to high-school Polish learners of English. The same items were taught to two groups of EFL learners, but only one of the groups heard them in a song. Learners’ vocabulary recall was measured at three points in time relative to the teaching: before, immediately after, and a week after. The group taught with songs showed a significant recall advantage over the other group, especially when tested a week from teaching. The results suggest that songs can be an effective vehicle for teaching English multi-word units.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact

Dictionaries sometimes include pictorial illustrations to complement verbal explanation. The pres... more Dictionaries sometimes include pictorial illustrations to complement verbal explanation. The present study examines the question of how verbal and pictorial elements within an entry compete for dictionary users’ attention, and how this competition affects meaning extraction and retention. The study employs eye-tracking technology to analyse the gaze patterns of Polish learners of English consulting illustrated monolingual English learner dictionary entries. In addition, success in identifying and remembering meaning based on illustrated items is assessed and related to eye-tracking data.

Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact