Gender recognition from unconstrained selfie images: a convolutional neural network approach

Human gender recognition is an essential demographic tool. This is reflected in forensic science, surveillance systems and targeted marketing applications. This research was always driven using standard face images and hand-crafted features. Such way has achieved good results, however, the reliability of the facial images had a great effect on the robustness of extracted features, where any small change in the query facial image could change the results. Nevertheless, the performance of current techniques in unconstrained environments is still inefficient, especially when contrasted against recent breakthroughs in different computer vision research. This paper introduces a novel technique for human gender recognition from non-standard selfie images using deep learning approaches. Selfie photos are uncontrolled partial or full-frontal body images that are usually taken by people themselves in real-life environment. As far as we know this is the first paper of its kind to identify gender from selfie photos, using deep learning approach. The experimental results on the selfie dataset emphasizes the proposed technique effectiveness in recognizing gender from such images with 89% accuracy. The performance is further consolidated by testing on numerous benchmark datasets that are widely used in the field, namely: Adience, LFW, FERET, NIVE, Caltech WebFaces andCAS-PEAL-R1

Identity multiplicity among the Muslim second generation in European cities: where are religious and ethnic identities compatible or conflicting with civic identities?

"Drawing on recent cross-nationally comparative survey data of the Turkish and Moroccan second generation in five European cities, this study examines the patterns of identification with ethnic, religious, national and city identities. We take a comparative perspective and analyse data from five cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels and Stockholm) that differ markedly in their policy approach to the integration of immigrants, the socio-economic position of the second generation and the political climate confronting ethnic and religious minorities. The analysis focuses on the question of how the Turkish and Moroccan second generation combines their ethnic and religious minority identities with identification with the country and city of residence. As European national identities are to a greater extent than is the case for US American national identity implicitly tied to and appropriated by the national majority group, we hypothesise that national identities will be non-inclusive of ethnic and religious identification, thus resulting in a negative correlation between Dutch/ Belgian/ Swedish identity on the one hand and Turkish/ Moroccan and Muslim identities on the other. In contrast, we expect a positive correlation with identification with the city of residence, as Europe's cities are more diverse in terms of their population composition, have a more cosmopolitan outlook and are to a lesser extent dominated by one group of the population than the nationstates in which they are located. Secondly, we hypothesise that distinct identification patterns will be related to the modes of incorporation of the second generation, such that identity compatibility (i.e., positive associations between ethnic and religious identities on the one hand and national and city identities on the other) instead of identity conflict (i.e., negative associations) will be more often found in more favourable contexts of reception." (author's abstract)"Das Paper analysiert die Identifikationsmuster der türkischen und marokkanischen zweiten Einwanderergeneration in vergleichender Perspektive auf Basis von neuen ländervergleichenden Umfragedaten in fünf europäischen Städten in drei Ländern (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerpen, Brüssel und Stockholm). Diese unterscheiden sich deutlich in ihrer Einwanderungs- und Integrationspolitik, aber auch in der sozioökonomischen Position der zweiten Generation und in dem Maß der politischen Polarisierung rundum die Themen Immigration und Integration. Daraus ergeben sich länder- und städtespezifische „modes of incorporation“, die hier in Bezug zu den Identifikationsmustern der zweiten Generation gesetzt werden. Dabei richten wir uns vor allem auf die Zusammenhänge zwischen ethnischer und religiöser Identifikation auf der einen Seite – als Identitäten die die türkische und marokkanische zweite Generation von der Mehrheitsgesellschaft unterscheiden – und nationaler (d.h., niederländischer, belgischer und schwedischer) und Städte- Identifikation (z.B. Amsterdamer) – als Identitäten die mit der Mehrheitsgesellschaft geteilt werden. Da europäische nationale Identitäten stärker als dies in den USA der Fall ist von den ethnischen und religiösen Merkmalen der Mehrheitsgesellschaft bestimmt werden und daher ethnische und religiöse Minderheiten eher ausschließen, erwarten wir einen negativen Zusammenhang zwischen nationaler Identifikation auf der einen, und ethnischer und religiöser Identifikation auf der anderen Seite. Im Gegensatz dazu erwarten wir positive Zusammenhänge mit der Identifikation mit der Stadt, da europäische Städte im Vergleich zu den sie umringenden Ländern Zentren ethnischer und kultureller Vielfalt sind und ihre Identität daher weniger von einer einzelnen Gruppe dominiert wird. Aus vergleichender Perspektive erwarten wir, dass die Identifikationsmuster der zweiten Generation die 'modes of incorporation' in den jeweiligen Kontexten widerspiegeln, so dass in für Einwanderer der zweiten Generation günstigeren Kontexten Identitäten eher kompatibel sind (d.h., positiv korrelieren) und sich seltener in Konflikt miteinander befinden (d.h. negativ korrelieren)." (Autorenreferat

Emotion regulation strategies and psychosocial well-being in adolescence

To study whether and how emotion regulation strategies are associated with adolescents' well-being, 633 Italian adolescents completed a survey that measured, using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003), the strategies of cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES), and their relationship with several well-being measures. Factor analysis and reliability results confirmed the validity of ERQ to assess adolescents' regulation strategies. Correlation and regression results showed that a greater reliance on CR was positively associated with better well-being outcomes for most indicators, especially Life satisfaction, Social support perception and Positive affect; greater preference for ES conversely was associated with lower well-being level for all indicators, including Psychological health, Emotional loneliness, and Negative affect. Neither gender nor age differences were observed for CR nor ES; CR and ES were positively correlated with each other. Both analysis of variance and regression results showed gender to be a significant factor for well being indicators (e.g., males' higher Positive affect and Life satisfaction than females'), whereas age was associated with differences in Psychological health only, with 16-year olds reporting the lowest health, and 14-year olds the highest. The findings overall show that adolescents' well-being is related to preferred emotion regulation strategies, mirroring associations found in the adult population. The study results also suggest the need to further explore this relationship in adolescence

Children’s expressions of gratitude and their association with cultural values among Brazilians, Brazilians in the U. S., and U.S. ethnic groups

Gratitude has mostly been studied as a positive emotion, although scholars have suggested that this conceptualization is confounded with appreciation. In contrast, I define gratitude as a moral virtue; it occurs when one person receives a freely given benefit, recognizes the intentionality of the benefactor, and freely wishes to repay with something of benefit to the benefactor. Gratitude as a moral virtue involves autonomy and relatedness. The cultural dimensions proposed by Kagitçibasi’s (2007) were used here to understand potential cultural variations in the expression of gratitude. The present study aimed to investigate associations between parents’ values and children’s wishes with expressions of gratitude across both societies and groups within the United States. Children (aged 7 to 14) answered two open-ended questions: “What is your greatest wish?” and “What would you do for the person who granted you this wish?” Answers to the first question were categorized as (a) hedonistic, (b) self-, and (c) social-oriented wishes. Those to the second question were categorized as (a) verbal, (b) concrete, and (c) connective gratitude. Parents completed a questionnaire of values for their children with four sub-scales (autonomy, heteronomy, relatedness, and separateness). First, I conducted factor and mean structure analyses to examine differences and similarities in parents’ values within the U. S. (187 European American, 126 African American, 107 Brazilian immigrants, and 102 Hispanics) and across societies (192 Brazilian, 187 European American, and 107 Brazilian immigrants). Secondly, I used multi-group latent class analysis to explore differences in children’s expressions of gratitude across ethnic groups (N = 467; 148 European Americans, 110 Brazilians in the U. S., 106 Hispanics, and 103 African Americans) and societies (N = 614; 274 from Greensboro, 230 from Porto Alegre, and 110 Brazilian immigrants). Finally, I used multinomial logistic regression to explore associations of children’s wishes and parental values with children’s expressions of gratitude. Contrary to what I had expected, Brazilian parents (in the home country and in the United States) scored higher on autonomy than did European Americans; also, Brazilians in the U. S. scored higher in heteronomy than did European Americans and Brazilians. However, all these groups scored higher in both relatedness and autonomy than in heteronomy. Regarding gratitude expressions, with wishes as predictors, Brazilians in the U. S. were more likely than were European Americans to express gratitude verbally than concretely. Brazilians in their home country seemed to be more likely than were other groups to express more than one type of gratitude at the same time. Children expressing hedonistic wishes were less likely to express connective rather than verbal gratitude (for European Americans), and connective rather than verbal and concrete gratitude (for Brazilians in the U. S.). For African Americans, expressing verbal rather than concrete gratitude buffered the expression of hedonistic wishes. Finally, heteronomy was associated with the expression of verbal rather than concrete gratitude for Hispanics and Brazilians in their home country, suggesting a link between valuing to follow societal norms and expressing thanks verbally for those groups. In conclusion, this study advances research on gratitude by considering it as a moral virtue rather than simple appreciation. It also contributes for the knowledge in this topic, given that it includes a diverse sample drawn both from the United States and a non-Western country. Overall, the present study showed both similarities and differences in parental values and children’s gratitude expressions and their relations with children’s values (hedonistic, self-, and social oriented)

Affective Computing for Human-Robot Interaction Research: Four Critical Lessons for the Hitchhiker

Social Robotics and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research relies on different Affective Computing (AC) solutions for sensing, perceiving and understanding human affective behaviour during interactions. This may include utilising off-the-shelf affect perception models that are pre-trained on popular affect recognition benchmarks and directly applied to situated interactions. However, the conditions in situated human-robot interactions differ significantly from the training data and settings of these models. Thus, there is a need to deepen our understanding of how AC solutions can be best leveraged, customised and applied for situated HRI. This paper, while critiquing the existing practices, presents four critical lessons to be noted by the hitchhiker when applying AC for HRI research. These lessons conclude that: (i) The six basic emotions categories are irrelevant in situated interactions, (ii) Affect recognition accuracy (%) improvements are unimportant, (iii) Affect recognition does not generalise across contexts, and (iv) Affect recognition alone is insufficient for adaptation and personalisation. By describing the background and the context for each lesson, and demonstrating how these lessons have been learnt, this paper aims to enable the hitchhiker to successfully and insightfully leverage AC solutions for advancing HRI research.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl