Objectives for a Query Language for User-activity Data

Abstract

One of the aims of the Eye-to-IT project (FP6 IST 517590) is to integrate keyboard logging and eye-tracking data to study and anticipate the behaviour of human translators. This so-called User-Activity Data (UAD) would make it possible to empirically ground cognitive models and to validate hypotheses of human processing concepts in the data. In order to thoroughly ground a cognitive model of the user in empirical observation, two conditions must be met as a minimum. All UAD data must be fully synchronised so that data relate to a common construct. Secondly, data must be represented in a queryable form so that large volumes of data can be analysed electronically. Two programs have evolved in the Eye-to-IT project: TRANSLOG is designed to register and replay keyboard logging data, while GWM is a tool to record and replay eye-movement data. This paper reports on an attempt to synchronise and integrate the representations of both software components so that sequences of keyboard and eye-movement data can be retrieved and their interaction studied. The outcome of this effort would be the possibility to correlate eyeand keyboard activities of translators (the user model) with properties of the source and target texts and thus to uncover dependencies in the UAD.