WA Friday Lunch Talks are monthly meetings with presentations of current research results or research in progress by WA faculty, staff, or PhD students. Each talk is of 30 minutes (+ 10 minutes for discussion).
Małgorzata Fabiszak
Department of Cognitive Linguistics
Memory and ideology in a linguistic landscape: Commemorative renaming in East Germany and Poland 1916-20(16)18
Abstract:
Both memory studies and research in linguistic landscape (LL) have documented street (re)naming in Eastern Europe as a result of multiple waves of ideological reorientations. Yet, most of this research rarely transgresses disciplinary and geopolitical boundaries. To date, systematic comparative research is scarce and cross-fertilisation between Western and Eastern European countries is almost non-existent. The MILL project aims to take a comprehensive approach to commemorative (re)naming by investigating ideologically-driven changes in the urban landscape of two countries throughout the past century. The project will focus on three pairs of cities in Poland and Eastern Germany:
(1) two large regional centres: Leipzig and Poznań;
(2) two towns of local importance: Annaberg-Buchholz and Zbąszyń;
(3) Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice, which since WWII have been separated by the state border.
The choice of the cities contrasts the processes underpinning street-naming along three dimensions (1) nation/state (across country), (2) size (within country) and (3) time: 1916-2016. The MILL project capitalizes on the research strength of an interdisciplinary team, which includes LL research, social geography, collective memory and urban ethnology. By integrating the insights from linguistic landscape research and collective memory studies we propose the concept of the commemorative cityscape, understood as a constantly negotiated and re-negotiated spatial expression of the collective memory of the city inhabitants that is influenced by the socio-political and ideological factors at the national level.
In this talk I will present two pilot studies:
(1) Spatiotemporal Analysis and Interactive Visualization of street name changes in Annaberg-Bucholz 1916-1918;
(2) Critical Discourse Analysis of the debate over the renaming of 23rd of February Street in Poznań, following the so-called decommunisation bill.
Research team: Małgorzata Fabiszak, Isabelle Buchstaller, Anna Weronika Brzezińska, Seraphim Alvanides, Frauke Griese, Patryk Dobkiewicz, Carolin Schneider.
Ewa Tomczak
Department of Psycholinguistic Studies
Visual perception in elite fencers: On the effects of an opponent's handedness
Abstract:
The question of how experts differ from novices in their perceptual-cognitive skills has been addressed across multiple research contexts. Robust evidence pointing to systematic differences in visual search behaviours between expert (elite) and novice performers comes from studies in interactive sports, primarily those where early recognition of the action intentions of one's opponent is crucial for successful performance. One of such sports is fencing, with each of its disciplines requiring rapid motor performance. Due to its fast-paced nature, the time interval for preparing one's own motor response in fencing is extremely short. Fencers need to anticipate their opponent's action intentions by observing their preparatory phase. Since top rankings of fencers show a relatively high percentage of left-handers, the question arises whether elite fencers use different visual search strategies depending on their opponent's handedness.
In this talk I am going to report on our study (Witkowski et al. 2018)* that addressed the question of the effects of an opponent's handedness on visual search strategies of elite fencers. Visual search behaviour of elite foil fencers duelling a right- and left-handed opponent was recorded using mobile eye-tracking glasses suitable for research in real-world environments. The following seven areas of interest were identified: guard, foil (blade and tip), mask, armed hand, lower torso, upper torso, and front thigh. The analyses of fencers' eye movement metrics (number of fixations, percentage dwell time) calculated for each area of interest revealed that their visual search strategies in the preparatory phase changed as a function of their opponent's handedness. When fencing a left-handed opponent, the fencers shifted their gaze from central to more peripheral body regions, directing more fixations towards, and spending more time looking at the armed hand (peripheral) than the upper torso (central).
* part of the research project financed by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (Project No. N RSA3 04253) – Project Manager: dr Mateusz Witkowski.