字典的使用能改善閱讀理解及伴隨字彙(incidental vocabulary)的學習，然而在字典中找到一個單字適合解釋的過程，卻增加了外部的認知負荷(extraneous cognitive load)，這個認知負荷可能會減少學習的改善。資訊技術的輔助，讓電子字典的使用者能夠容易且快速地獲得一個字彙的所有解釋的列表，然而一個字彙可能有很多解釋，使用者仍然需要花費很大的認知負荷在列表中找尋在目前文章中這個字彙最適合的解釋，這樣的認知負荷也會阻礙閱讀及減少字典的正面影響。更進一步，字典的使用者也有困難，從不同的文章去學習這些困難確認適合解釋的字彙。本論文的目標是去設計和評量一個新的電子書介面RoLo (Remind on Lookup)，這個介面主要針對以上的議題，提供閱讀過程伴隨字彙學習的支援。使用者在遭遇一個不熟悉的字彙時，RoLo會以一個適合的互動方式，提醒使用者關於這個字彙在之前的閱讀有遭遇時的上下文本及單字相關的知識。幾個評量是被實施，從這些評量的結果顯示RoLo幫忙使用者加強字彙的學習、文字的理解、和較快及容易地找到不熟悉單字的解釋。Dictionary use can improve reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary learning. Nevertheless, great extraneous cognitive load imposed by the search process may reduce or even prevent the improvement. With the help of technology, dictionary users can now instantly access the meaning list of a searched word using a mouse click. However, they must spend great cognitive effort identifying the most appropriate meaning for a given context, contributing to the disruption of the flow of reading and decreasing the positive effect of dictionary use. Furthermore, dictionary users face difficulty in exploiting accumulative illustrations from multiple contexts to understand obscure words whose appropriate meanings are not in the dictionary or are difficult to identify. My goal in the dissertation is to design and evaluate a new dictionary interface that addresses above issues and supports incremental and incidental learning of vocabulary through reading. The proposed solution is a dictionary interface named RoLo (Remind on Lookup). Each time an unfamiliar word is re-looked up, RoLo reminds users about contextual information and word knowledge learned in previous encounters of the word in an appropriate manner. Several studies have been conducted to evaluate RoLo. The results from the studies show that RoLo helps dictionary users enhance vocabulary learning and text comprehension and search for unfamiliar words more easily and faster.
