6,835 research outputs found

    An Interaction Centred Approach to the teaching of Non-technical Skills in a Virtual Environment

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    In most domains involving expert knowledge, there is a number of cognitive and social factors influencing how efficient one human being is at correctly assessing and responding to certain situations. These factors, which contribute to the efficient and safe realization of a technical activity, are known as non-technical skills, and correspond to a wide range of cognitive proficiencies such as situation awareness, decision making, stress or fatigue management, but also social skills such as communication, leadership and team working. Different studies have shown the impact such skills can have in the successful resolving of a number of critical situations, even more so in our domains of interest which are medical surgery or driving. In this paper, we take a look at the difficulties raised by the teaching of the technical and non-technical skills mobilized during a critical situation, in the context of TEL within virtual environments. We present the advantages of using a combined enactive and situated learning approach to this problematic, and then take an ill-defined perspective to raise some important designing issues in this respect. We show that some aspects of this problem have not been encompassed yet in the ill-defined domains literature, and should be further studied in any attempt at teaching behaviours inducing technical and non-technical skills in a virtual world

    Virtual acoustics displays

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    The real time acoustic display capabilities are described which were developed for the Virtual Environment Workstation (VIEW) Project at NASA-Ames. The acoustic display is capable of generating localized acoustic cues in real time over headphones. An auditory symbology, a related collection of representational auditory 'objects' or 'icons', can be designed using ACE (Auditory Cue Editor), which links both discrete and continuously varying acoustic parameters with information or events in the display. During a given display scenario, the symbology can be dynamically coordinated in real time with 3-D visual objects, speech, and gestural displays. The types of displays feasible with the system range from simple warnings and alarms to the acoustic representation of multidimensional data or events

    An investigation of the relationship between aphasia and sensorimotor level cognitive functions

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    It is the purpose of this study to investigate the relationship between the level of severity of aphasia and the classification of aphasia, as determined by the Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination, and the ability to perform sensorimotor level cognitive tasks as determined by the Uzgiris-Hunt Assessment in Infancy: Ordinal Scales of Psychological Development, adapted for use with an adult aphasic population. It is hypothesized that a disturbance of preverbal perceptual functioning is demonstrated in the responses of the aphasic subjects to the measures of sensorimotor function; that there is a positive relationship between the degree of severity of aphasia and the degree of impairment of sensorimotor functions as measured on seven different scales; that the greater the degree of severity of linguistic disturbance in the aphasic, the lower the scores obtained on each of the seven scales; that there is a significant difference between the classifications of aphasia with regard to the scores obtained on the seven measures of sensorimotor function; that the combination of sensorimotor scale measures will explain a significant proportion of the variance in the degree of severity of linguistic disturbances; and that the combination of sensorimotor scale measures will explain a significant proportion of the variance in classifications of aphasia

    Ecologies of Practice in Musical Performance

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    This article presents an ecological model of musical performance drawn from the field of Gibsonian Ecological Psychology and the techniques of Actor-Network Theory as explicated by Bruno Latour and others. Citing a wide body of empirical research, it is argued that musicians and their musical instruments exist in an ecological relationship at the level of embodied gesture. Furthermore, it is proposed that every act of musicking amounts to a construction of a network of actors that define an “Ecology of Practice,” a thick description more fully encompassing the complexities of musicking than traditional notions of performance practice.Cet article présente un modèle écologique de l’interprétation musicale inspiré du champ de la psychologie écologique gibsonienne et des techniques de la théorie de l’acteur- réseau telle que définie par Bruno Latour et d’autres. Sur la base d’un large corpus de recherche empirique, il avance que les musiciens et leurs instruments existent dans une relation écologique au niveau du geste incarné. En outre, il propose que chaque acte consistant à jouer de la musique corresponde à la construction d’un réseau d’acteurs qui définissent une « écologie de la pratique », description dense qui englobe plus pleinement les complexités du fait de jouer de la musique que les notions de pratiques performancielles

    Understanding of intentionality in children with Williams syndrome and Down syndrome, The

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    2012 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation examined the development of the understanding of intentionality in two different neurogenetic disorders, Williams syndrome (WS) and Down syndrome (DS). The study of intentionality focuses on how children come to understand the intentions of others. Meltzoff's (1995) behavioral reenactment paradigm is a nonverbal procedure wherein a child is presented with a series of objects. Prior to each presentation, the examiner either performs a successful action (e.g. the target action) or an unsuccessful action (e.g. the failed intentional action). A child's understanding of intentionality is assessed by their ability to interpret the experimenter's intention during failed attempt trials, and their subsequent completion of the task. This examination of intentionality was divided into two studies. Study 1 was designed to test Tager-Flusberg and Sullivan's (2000) hypothesis that there is a dissociation between social-perceptual abilities and social-cognitive abilities in individuals with Williams syndrome. In order to explore this dissociation, the behavioral reenactment procedure was administered with and without experimenter affective cues. Participants were 25 children with a confirmed diagnosis of WS. There were two groups of WS, one that received affective cues (N=13) and one that did not (N=12). Also, children with WS in the no affect group were compared to 12 mental-age matched children with developmental disabilities. The findings of this study indicates that the understanding of intentionality improves with developmental status in children with WS. Also, this study indicates that there may be a dissociation between social-perceptual and social-cognitive skills in this population during early social-emotional development. Specifically, it seems that the presence of emotional cues during intersubjective tasks leads to an emotional response instead of a response based on social cognition. Study 2 was motivated by past research suggesting that children with DS demonstrate deficits in some aspects of social cognition, even though many children with DS have strengths in other aspects of social-emotional functioning. Therefore, it is likely that the understanding of intentionality in children with Down syndrome may be influenced by other foundational cognitive abilities (i.e. joint attention and affect sharing in early childhood and executive functioning in middle childhood). Participants were 40 children with a confirmed diagnosis of Down syndrome, 16 young children with DS and 24 older children with DS. In addition, the 16 young children with DS were compared to 16 mental-age matched children with other developmental disabilities. The results of this study suggests that the understanding of intentionality improves with developmental status for young children with DS. This study also suggest that difficulties in joint attention and EF lead children with DS to miss the target relevant information during the behavioral reenactment procedure leading them to perform more "other actions". This dissertation is the first study to examine the development of intentionality in WS and DS. From these studies, it may be possible to begin to characterize how the understanding of intentionality develops in children with WS and DS. Characterizing social cognition in WS and DS will help to identify areas for targeted intervention to prevent the possible cascading effects of difficulties in social cognition on other aspects of development

    Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

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    Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

    Being There & Being With: The Philosophical and Cognitive Notions of Presence and Embodiment in Virtual Instruments

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    International audienceIn this paper, we will discuss two main concepts, associated with the development of Virtual Worlds, which are "Presence" and "Embodiment". Presence is stamped as the sense of "Being there", that has to be reconstructed in Local world to render Distant Worlds accessible by net-worked or mediated communications. "Embodiment" could be the property of a Virtual entity to be incorporated by human as a second nature. We will show then, how (1) the first situation can be seen as a definition of "immateriality" and its correlative concept of infinity, (2) the second situation can be seen as a definition of "tangibility" with its correlative concept of instrumental embodiment. After exploring the complementary properties of these situations in detail, we will focus on the second one, identified as "the instrumental situation". We will propose some of its relevant properties, those that are able to trigger the sense of embodiment, as the main property supported in the real physical world by the feature of "tangibility". Consequently, we estimate that "embodiment" is more important than the tangibility in itself and we examine some criteria able to help us to recreate them in digital representations

    The phonetics of second language learning and bilingualism

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    This chapter provides an overview of major theories and findings in the field of second language (L2) phonetics and phonology. Four main conceptual frameworks are discussed and compared: the Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2, the Native Language Magnet Theory, the Automatic Selection Perception Model, and the Speech Learning Model. These frameworks differ in terms of their empirical focus, including the type of learner (e.g., beginner vs. advanced) and target modality (e.g., perception vs. production), and in terms of their theoretical assumptions, such as the basic unit or window of analysis that is relevant (e.g., articulatory gestures, position-specific allophones). Despite the divergences among these theories, three recurring themes emerge from the literature reviewed. First, the learning of a target L2 structure (segment, prosodic pattern, etc.) is influenced by phonetic and/or phonological similarity to structures in the native language (L1). In particular, L1-L2 similarity exists at multiple levels and does not necessarily benefit L2 outcomes. Second, the role played by certain factors, such as acoustic phonetic similarity between close L1 and L2 sounds, changes over the course of learning, such that advanced learners may differ from novice learners with respect to the effect of a specific variable on observed L2 behavior. Third, the connection between L2 perception and production (insofar as the two are hypothesized to be linked) differs significantly from the perception-production links observed in L1 acquisition. In service of elucidating the predictive differences among these theories, this contribution discusses studies that have investigated L2 perception and/or production primarily at a segmental level. In addition to summarizing the areas in which there is broad consensus, the chapter points out a number of questions which remain a source of debate in the field today.https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uHX9K99Bl31vMZNRWL-YmU7O2p1tG2wHhttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1uHX9K99Bl31vMZNRWL-YmU7O2p1tG2wHhttps://drive.google.com/open?id=1uHX9K99Bl31vMZNRWL-YmU7O2p1tG2wHAccepted manuscriptAccepted manuscrip

    Urban Image and Otherness: An investigation through practice of installation art.

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    This research examines the hypothesis that installation art: -is not a medium but a mode of address, addressing the world as a multiplicity; -uses tactics of 'dispersal', which as perceptual gesture is in affinity with notions of multiplicity. The explanatory framework, which legitimates 'dispersal' as installation's defining tactic, is introduced step by step, through the articulation of certain concepts such as: 'field of activities' (Kaye, 2000), 'intervening screen', (Deleuze, 1968), 'dilation' (Ahearne, 1995), afterwardness' (Laplanche, 1992), 'the knowing not to know' (Derrida, 1992), 'emotion-value' (Barthes, 1977) and 'autopoetics closure' (Luhmann, 2000). Structured by this framework, the practice for this research addresses, on one hand, the concept of otherness - understood as the infinite learning of 'differential truths' (Ahearne, 1995, p. 192) and on the other hand, a notion of urban image - understood as fragmentary imagery able to accommodate a sense of public space over imprints of experienced time. From the analysis of this practice the research concludes that: -the employment of 'dispersal' as a defining tactic allows the work to surface into visibility as a sharing of a system of relevance; -this sharing aims to displace meaning, by pushing it away from an autonomous condition, located on the work's surface; -meaning, when presented as a sharing of a system of relevance, is relocated throughout different 'levels of immersion' inside the work; -from this new positioning, meaning will only be retrieved by the work-in-situ of a particular viewer's reading; -this condition of random retrieval implies that the work will generate meaning as 'differential truth' (Ahearne, 1995, p. 192), which exists outside 'the disease of identity' (Certeau, 1969, p. 179); -as 'differential truth', meaning becomes a function, not of the authority of a specific voice, but of the ability to respond [a response-ability], exercised by the maker in facing the world, and by the viewer in the face of the work
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