Gondy Leroy|David Kauchak|Obay Mouradi
A user-study measuring the effects of lexical simplification and coherence enhancement on perceived and actual text difficulty
Claremont Graduate University|Middlebury College|Claremont Graduate University
low patient health literacy associated cost increases medicine contributes inadequate care providing explanatory text convenient approach distribute medical information increase health literacy unfortunately writing text easily understood challenging work tests two text features impact understanding lexical simplification coherence enhancement user study conducted test features effect perceived actual text difficulty individual sentences used test perceived difficulty using 5point likert scale participants compared eight pairs original simplified sentences abstracts used test actual difficulty abstract four versions created original lexically simplified coherence enhanced lexically simplified coherence enhanced using mixed design one group participants worked original lexically simplified documents coherence enhancement second group worked coherence enhanced versions actual difficulty measured using cloze measure multiplechoice questions using amazons mechanical turk 200 people participated 187 qualified based data qualification tests pairedsamples ttest sentence ratings showed significant reduction difficulty lexical simplification p 001 results actual difficulty based abstracts associated tasks twoway anova cloze test showed effect coherence enhancement main effect lexical simplification simplification leading worse scores p 004 followup anova showed effect exists function words coherence enhanced p 008 contrast twoway anova answering multiplechoice questions showed significant beneficial effect coherence enhancement p 003 effect lexical simplification lexical simplification reduced perceived difficulty texts coherence enhancement reduced actual difficulty text measured using multiplechoice questions however cloze measure results showed lexical simplification negatively impact flow text