Instructions for the sense selection task

Introduction

During the course of this experiment, you will be presented with a series of sentences near the top of your screen. Each sentence (in black) comes with one sentence of preceding and one sentence of succeeding context, in gray. It will also have one word underlined.

Below this sentence, you will see several descriptions of meanings that may or may not apply to the underlined word. Each description usually consist of one or more words that are close in meaning, shown in blue, and a short definition, shown in black. If there are no words close in meaning, all you will see is the definition in black. Your task is to decide which description best reflects the meaning of the underlined word in the sentence. You can select more than one description provided that they all equally fit the meaning of the underlined word as it is used in the sentence.

Note that there are no right or wrong answers in this task, so please respond based upon your opinions alone. However, please try to be consistent in your judgments.

For each sentence that you are presented with, please select the most appropriate description (or more than one if they are equally applicable). Language is often ambiguous. Before reading the meaning descriptions, decide upon the most plausible meaning of the underlined word in the sentence.

If you wish to leave a comment at any point during the task, just type it into the comment field that appears on the annotation screen. Once you have selected the most applicable description, click the "Submit" button near the bottom of the page.

As you proceed through the task, if you change your mind about a rating that you have previously supplied, you can navigate through the task using the Navigation panel located on the left side of your screen. You will see two options for navigating through the task: Current Sentence and Completed Sentences. If you click on "Completed Sentences", you will be taken to a listing of all the words for which you have provided annotations thus far. By clicking on a word you will be taken to a listing of all the sentences for that word for which you have provided annotations thus far, allowing you to go back and make the changes you wish.

Once have made your change, don't forget to click the "Submit" button again on that page to make sure your changes are recorded.

Once you are finished, clicking "Current Sentence" will take you back to the point where your forward progress in the task stopped, and you can continue annotating.

The sentences included in this task were gathered from various sources, including the World Wide Web. They may be very long or short and some may be badly formed in some way. You may find that there are things that make a certain sentence hard to understand. Try to ignore these issues; focus only on the meaning of the underlined word in the context in which it occurs. If you find that a sentence is so flawed as to impair your ability to understand what the underlined word means, or that the meaning of the underlined word is ambiguous in the sentence, please be sure to leave a comment to this effect.

If you wish to stop working on the task and return to it later, simply click the link near the bottom of your page that says "logout". Your progress through the task will be saved, along with all your ratings and comments. When you return, simply log back in and you will be taken directly to where you left off.

Thank you again for your participation in this task. These instructions will be available during the course of the task; just click the link that says "Click for Task Instructions".

In total, there are 260 sentences.