centroid_analysis: Centroid Analysis

In LSAfun: Applied Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) Functions

Centroid Analysis

Description

Performs a centroid analysis for a set of words

Usage

centroid_analysis(responses,targets = NULL,split=" ",unique.responses = FALSE,
reference.list = NULL,verbose = FALSE,rank.responses = FALSE,
tvectors=tvectors)

Arguments

responses	a character vector specifying multiple single words
targets	(optional:) a character vector specifying one or multiple single words
split	a character vector defining the character used to split the input strings into individual words (white space by default)
unique.responses	If TRUE, duplicated words in responses are discarded when computing the the centroid. FALSE by default, so multiple instances of the same word will be included.
reference.list	(optional:) A list of words in reference to which the neighborhood ranks are computed: Only entries in reference.list will be considered as possible neighbors. Only relevant when target words are provided in target. if reference.list = NULL (default), then rownames(tvectors) (all words in the semantic space) will be considered when computing ranks.
verbose	If TRUE (default: FALSE), a message will appear that specifies for which target the neighborhood ranks are currently being computed
rank.responses	If FALSE (default), responses themselves will not be considered for computing the neighborhood rank.
tvectors	the semantic space in which the computation is to be done (a numeric matrix where every row is a word vector)

Details

The centroid analysis computes the average vector for a set of words. The intended use case is that these words are responses towards a given concept; the centroid then serves as the estimated vector representation for that concept.

Value

An object of class centroid_analysis. This object is a list consisting of:

$centroid	The centroid of the response vectors
$cosines	The cosine similarity between the response centroid and each target vector
$ranks.target	The rank of the response centroid in the neighborhood of each target vector, with reference to reference.list
$ranks.centroid	The rank of each target in the neighborhood of the response centroid, with reference to reference.list

Author(s)

Fritz Guenther, Aliona Petrenco

References

Pugacheva, V., & Günther, F. (2024). Lexical choice and word formation in a taboo game paradigm. Journal of Memory and Language, 135, 104477.

See Also

cosine, Cosine, neighbors

Examples

data(wonderland)
centroid_analysis(responses=c("mouse","rabbit","cat","king","queen"),targets=c("alice","hare"),
          tvectors=wonderland)

LSAfun documentation built on April 4, 2025, 1:44 a.m.