Acoustic cues for body size: how size-related features are used and perceived

We live in a noisy world. There is no place on the Earth where it is possible to have the experience of complete silence, not even the deepest place in the ocean. Billions of living and nonliving objects around us produce sounds, which are extremely different in their physical structure. Some of these sounds are noisy, some are harmonic, some are continuous, others are impulsive, soft, loud; the sound environment contains an infinite combination of all these characteristics and more. Evolving in such an environment has resulted in a human auditory system that is able to extract useful information from sounds. We are able to say whether a sound source is still or moving (and in the latter case, the direction of movement), what kind of object produced the sound, and the meaning of the message if the perceived sound is an intentional communicative signal. When we hear someone\u2019s voice, for instance, we are able to extract useful information about talker identity apart from the meaning of the heard words. This thesis focuses on a particular kind of information that can be extracted from an acoustic signal: the apparent size of the sound-producing object

The evolution of auditory contrast

This paper reconciles the standpoint that language users do not aim at improving their sound systems with the observation that languages seem to improve their sound systems. Computer simulations of inventories of sibilants show that Optimality-Theoretic learners who optimize their perception grammars automatically introduce a so-called prototype effect, i.e. the phenomenon that the learner’s preferred auditory realization of a certain phonological category is more peripheral than the average auditory realization of this category in her language environment. In production, however, this prototype effect is counteracted by an articulatory effect that limits the auditory form to something that is not too difficult to pronounce. If the prototype effect and the articulatory effect are of a different size, the learner must end up with an auditorily different sound system from that of her language environment. The computer simulations show that, independently of the initial auditory sound system, a stable equilibrium is reached within a small number of generations. In this stable state, the dispersion of the sibilants of the language strikes an optimal balance between articulatory ease and auditory contrast. The important point is that this is derived within a model without any goal-oriented elements such as dispersion constraints

The Dixit Method of Language Sampling in Early Adolescence

The current study examined two methods of language sampling (interview and the Dixit Method) in early adolescents with typical language development. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the two procedures in eliciting lexical diversity in spoken language samples in the early adolescent population. To examine lexical diversity, traditional methods of analysis (type token ratio, average type token ratio, and mean length of utterance) were applied. However, because literature historically alludes to flaws in these traditional methods, the researchers also applied an ecological approach to analysis of lexical diversity proposed by Scott Jarvis (2013). Student participants (n = 22) in the sixth grade (11:0 -12:11 years of age) were recruited through a local middle school. Both methods of language sampling were compared in a within-subject design for diversity of spoken language samples by applying the previously mentioned analysis procedures. The data was evaluated using a pairedsamples two-tailed t test. Although the sample size was small, evidence from this study indicates the Dixit Method provides a more holistic view of lexical diversity than the traditional method by considering six ecological components that are reflected in typical language use

How a transsexual woman claims a new identity through voice

Thesis (S.M. in Science Writing)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Humanities, Graduate Program in Science Writing, 2007."September 2007."Includes bibliographical references (leaves 36-37).The human voice is an important indicator of a person's gender. For male-to-female transgender individuals (or transsexuals) the voice is one of the most difficult parts of the gender transition. Males have larger and heavier vocal apparatuses (larynx and vocal folds), which generally produce a lower sound. Transgender women can have voice surgery, but it can sometimes cause a Minnie Mouse-like falsetto or the complete loss of the voice. As a result, many transgendered women turn to specially trained voice therapists to learn how to speak more convincingly like women. The voice's pitch, although important, is not the only factor in creating a more female sound. Intonation, resonance, volume, speech patterns and formant frequencies also play significant roles in making a realistic feminine sound. There continue to be many unanswered questions about how listeners perceive the voices of transgender women and how best to blend the voices of transwomen into a comfortable range. Transgender women have many hurdles to face as they transition from male to female, and possessing an authentic voice is a way to smooth out the bumpy path they face.by Katharine Stoel Gammon.S.M.in Science Writin

Size discrimination of transient signals

The importance of spectral cues in size discrimination of transient signals was investigated, and a model for this ability, tAIM, was created based on the biological principles of human hearing. A psychophysics experiment involving 40 participants found that the most important cue for size discrimination of transient signals, created by striking different sizes of polystyrene spheres, was similar to that of speakers listening to vowels – the relative positions of the resonances between comparison signals. It was found possible to scale the sphere signals in order to confuse listeners into believing the signal source was a different size, but two methods of scaling signals in order to sound the same size as another proved inconclusive, suggesting the possibility that transient signals cannot be scaled in a linear fashion as has been shown possible for vowels. Filtering the signals in a number of different ways found that the most important cue in size discrimination of transient signals is the difference between the most prominent resonances available in the spectra of the comparison signals. A model of the auditory system using the dynamic compressive Gammachirp filterbank, and based on the well-known AIM, was created to produce auditory images of transient signals that could be normalised for size. Transient-AIM, or tAIM used the Mellin transform to produce images that showed size normalisation was possible due to the spectral envelope similarities across the sizes of the spheres. tAIM was extended to carry out size discrimination of the spheres using the information contained within the Mellin images. There was a systematic association between Mellin phase and size of objects of various shapes, which suggests that tAIM is able to infer object size from sound recordings of objects being struck

에이전트의 성별에 따른 뉴스 컨텐츠의 인지된 신뢰도 연구

학위논문 (석사) -- 서울대학교 대학원 : 인문대학 협동과정 인지과학전공, 2020. 8. 이준환.In light of the previous studies related to voice agents, there are little and limited discussions on the content which is delivered by the agents. If the discussions on voice agents only aim general interactions between the agents and humans, so-called small talks, this cannot be used as a formative aspect in designing services that will be put into voice agents. In this study, a Wizard of Oz experiment was conducted to see peoples idea of credibility in news contents related to the gender, which is the most intuitive aspect in voice agents, of the voice agents. A total of 45 students at the Seoul National University participated in this study. The results of this experiment suggest that depending on users gender, there was a difference in credibility score tendencies. Based on the findings from both experiments and semi-structured interviews, a mental model during the use of voice agents as informants will be discussed in this paper.음성 에이전트와 관련된 이전의 연구에서 비추어 볼 때, 음성 에이전트에 의해 전달되는 내용에 중점을 둔 논의들은 매우 제한적으로 이루어졌다. 음성 에이전트에 대한 논의가 에이전트와 사람들 사이의 일반적인 상호작용 즉, 이른바 스몰톡을 주로 다루고 있는데 이는 음성 에이전트 설계와 이 에이전트에 삽입되는 서비스를 설계하기에는 부족하다. 하여, 본 연구에서는 음성 에이전트의 가장 직관적인 측면이라 볼 수 있는 성별과 관련된 뉴스 컨텐츠에 대한 사람들의 신뢰도를 살펴보고자 한다. 더 나아가 반구조화 인터뷰를 통해 음성 에이전트를 정보 소비의 창구로서 사용하는 유저들의 멘탈 모델을 제시한다. 총 45 명의 서울대학교 학생들이 오즈의 마법사 방법과 반구조화 인터뷰에 참여하였다. 참여자들은 어떤 성별을 가진 음성 에이전트가 전달하는 뉴스에 가장 신뢰가 가는지에 대해 응답하였으며, 이후 뉴스 소비 성향에 대한 인터뷰에 참여했다.Chapter 1. Introduction 1 Chapter 2. Literature Review 7 Chapter 3. Experiment 15 Chapter 4. Semi-Structured Interview 24 Chapter 5. General Discussion 34 References 46 Appendix 51 Abstract (Korean) 54Maste