La produzione di testi semplificati di notiziari televisivi italiani destinati a persone con disturbi cognitivi acquisiti: un’integrazione tra metodi psicolinguistici e analisi automatiche
Authors: Maria De Martino, Annalisa Colella (Università di Salerno, RAI, 2021)
Topic: Text Simplification

Abstract
The goal of the study was to implement a linguistically and cognitively-oriented procedure aimed at improvising the quality of use and understanding of TV contents for an audience of people suffering from cognitive disorders after a brain damage. Tools for the automatic text analysis and psycholinguistic and neuropsychological methods have been explored in order to obtain simplified versions of original written texts from Italian TV news bulletins. An empirical pilot study on healthy people has been conducted where reading latitudes for original vs. simplified texts have been compared. The aim of the work is to develop a cognitively and linguistically oriented procedure to improve the use of television content by people with cognitive disorders resulting from brain injuries. Through the integration of automatic linguistic analysis techniques and methods from psycholinguistics and neuropsychology, simplified versions of the texts used in Italian television news have been obtained. A pilot empirical study was conducted with healthy speakers in which the speed of reading of the original and simplified texts was evaluated.

Introduction
In Italy and around the world an important part of the population survives for a long time traumatic and pathological events affecting the brain that affect cognitive abilities in a more or less serious way (Di Luca et al., 2011).
Progress in social care and policies gives people with brain injuries a good life expectancy and adequate general health conditions. However, the quality of life is not comparable to the period prior to the onset of the disorder. One of the reasons that affects the long-term negative effects of a brain injury has to do with reducing the ability of people to stay focused on the socio-cultural reality in which they live, for example, by updating themselves through the media (Cartwright & Elliott, 2009; Denicolai, 2016). Currently, RAI national networks, within the scope of public utility services, provide support for the visually impaired and visually impaired public (audio-description), for the deaf public (translations into Italian sign language (LIS) and subtitling) and other generic Stretch TV tools to adapt audio-video speed to the user's needs. However, there are no support services for the editions of the news (TG) specifically intended for people with cognitive damage. In addition, unlike the simplification of administrative, institutional and educational texts for multilingual people, or children with and without disabilities (see among others, De Mauro, 2021; Cortelazzo, 2015; Fortis, 2003), the data and guidelines on the adaptation of Italian-language information texts for adults with cognitive damage are less widespread (Piemontese, 1996; Dell'Orletta et al., 2014). On the other hand, many studies indicate that the procedures of linguistic simplification, both manual and automatic, are a valuable aid for the use of textual content for different categories of linguistic and cognitive disorders (see Siddharthan, 2014 for a review). In this scenario, this work proposes the integration of linguistic and psycholinguistic analysis tools as a possible strategy to implement procedures for simplifying the content of TGs in order to improve the experience of use by people with acquired brain damage.

Conclusion
This work has described the development and preliminary application of a method based on the integration of automatic linguistic analysis tools available in Italian with psycholinguistic tools and neuropsychological knowledge for the production of simplified versions of television news texts for people with cognitive-linguistic disorders.The method used made it possible to respond to precise empirical needs. The texts of the news have the purpose of spreading with completeness of information the most disparate themes in a short and little redundant format. This places constraints on linguistic simplification: not all words can be replaced, nor can certain details of detail be omitted. In addition, the conceptual complexity of certain themes covered by the news may be independent of linguistic formulation. The proposed method has made it possible to work on multiple levels: the manipulation of linguistic parameters (S1) and the organization of content (S2, subjective assessments of the complexity of the content in E2); the analysis of the language of the issuer (manual psycholinguistic evaluations and automatic linguistic evaluations) and of the recipient (subjective evaluations of the speakers in E2).The comparison between the measurements resulting from manual psycholinguistic analysis, subjective evaluations of speakers and the indices derived from automatic linguistic analysis were not consistent with each other. The automatic analysis tools proved to be more sensitive to the manipulation of the complexity of the texts than to the psycholinguistic analyses and subjective evaluations of the speakers. This results in emphasising the importance of integrating analytical methods into the design of simplification interventions.The preliminary behavioral data (reading times and accuracy to the verification request) of the pilot-test with healthy participants showed a significant lack of impact of the automatic analysis indices related to readability and complexity of the reading performance texts.Methodological reasons explain these results. Firstly, it should be borne in mind that the linguistic competence of the participants enrolled (young, healthy and well-schooled) has neutralised the effect of the level of complexity of the material presented. The data is, in fact, consistent with a study by Crossley et al. (2014) in which it has been verified that statistically significant differences in the reading speed of texts of different complexity are cancelled by the insertion of the level of competence of the reader as a covariate in the statistical analyses. On the other hand, it is not to be excluded that a replica of the study using an eye-tracker can reveal more detailed qualitative and quantitative aspects on the fluidity of the reading process in the three versions of the texts considered: for example, duration of fixations on certain portions of text, multiple fixations of specific portions of text, words skipped. Moreover, the brevity of the texts used has not allowed to investigate in depth fine aspects related to the understanding and retention of the material in which it is most likely to observe effects of textual simplification. The understanding was, in fact, marginally considered through a single question of verification. In this sense, it is important to stress that, at the same level of understanding of a text, the parameter that significantly distinguishes the performance of healthy readers compared to readers with cognitive disorders is the reading speed (Webster et al., 2018). This aspect will be evaluated at a later stage of the study in which the experimental procedure described here will be extended to people with cognitive damage resulting from brain lesions. To obtain more accurate measurements and to create a more suitable administration context for participants will be made a change to the experimental paradigm used as a reading task. A reading task will be implemented with the moving window technique (moving windows, Witzel et al., 2012). This paradigm allows the presentation of text word by word, or syntagma by syntagma. The progress from one text unit to the next is managed by the reader and allows the recording of the reading times for the individual units considered.