iGrace – Emotional Computational Model for EmI Companion Robot.

Chapitre 4We will discuss in this chapter the research in the field of emotional interaction, to maintain a non-verbal interaction with children from 4 to 8 years. This work fits into the EmotiRob project, whose goal is to comfort the children vulnerable and / or in hospitalization with an emotional robot companion. The use of robots in hospitals is still limited; we decided to put forward simple robot architecture and therefore, the emotional expression. In this context, a robot too complex and too voluminous must be avoided. After a study of advanced research on perception and emotional synthesis, it was important to determine the most appropriate way to express emotions in order to have a recognition rate acceptable to our target. Following an experiment on this subject, we were able to determine the degrees of freedom needed for the robot to express the six primary emotions. The second step was the definition and description of our emotional model. In order to have a wide range of expressions, while respecting the number of degrees of freedom, we use the concepts of emotional experiences. They provide us with almost two hundred different behaviors for the model. However we decide as a first step to limit ourselves to only fifty behaviors. This diversification is possible thanks to a mix of emotions linked to the dynamics of emotions. This theoretical model now established, we have started various experiments on a variety of audiences in order to validate the first time in its relevance and the rate of recognition of emotions. The first experiment was performed using a simulator for the capture of speech and the emotional and behavioral synthesis of the robot. This, validates the model assumptions that will be integrated EMI - Emotional Model of Interaction. Future phases of the project will evaluate the robot, both in its expression than in providing comfort to children. We describe the protocols used and present the results for EMI. These experiments will allow us to adjust and adapt the model. We will finish this chapter with a brief description of the robot's architecture, and the improvements to be made for the second version of EMI

Cultural influence on listener responses to stuttering

Stuttering is a developmental, involuntary, and intermittent fluency disorder. During moments of stuttering, people who stutter demonstrate sudden onsets and offsets of the aberrant struggling behaviors, with primary behaviors affecting mainly speech organs and secondary, ancillary behaviors affecting more distal body parts. Listeners generally respond to stuttering behaviors with negative emotional arousal that is manifested at behavioral, physiological, and emotional levels, and tend to attribute negative, stereotypical personality traits to people who stutter. These listener responses can be an important factor in the development and maintenance of stuttering. Therefore, the nature and properties of listener responses, e.g., the role of culture in shaping listener responses to stuttering, merit further examination.  Culture refers to the characteristics of various groups of people relative to their material traits, social norms, beliefs, attitudes, and values. The value system is believed by many researchers to be the core of most cultural variations. Along with individual biological disposition, culture regulates how people perceive, explain, and respond to various phenomena. Numerous studies have converged to indicate significant contrasts between Easterners and Westerners in cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. In the United States, European-American and African-Americans also show differences in their value systems and many other aspects.   The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate listener responses to stuttering in ethno-racially different groups. Specifically, the investigation focused on listeners' eye gaze responses and physiological responses when witnessing stuttering, and their perceptions toward people who stutter before and after observing stuttering. Participants were recruited from three groups: African-Americans, Chinese, and European-Americans. Results indicated that generally, listeners responded to stuttering in a similar manner at physiological, behavioral, and attitudinal levels. That is, listeners showed increased skin conductance and decreased heart rate in response to stuttering rather than fluent speech; listeners focused more on the speaker's mouth, and reduced their gaze fixation duration on the eyes, when the speaker stuttered. Furthermore, listeners had generally negative perceptions toward people who stutter, and these perceptions did not change significantly with exposure to stuttering. Cultural differences were found mainly between Chinese and American listeners in gaze behaviors and perceptions. Chinese tended to explore the background information while Americans tended to focus on the speaker's eyes and mouth, and Chinese participants considered the people who stutter duller than the normally fluent speaker while Americans did not show such a perception. The interaction of culture by fluency indicated that, when Americans focused more of their gaze on the speaker's mouth when the speaker stuttered, Chinese participants reduced their gaze on the mouth; also, whereas African-Americans considered the stuttering speaker to be more self-derogatory demeanor after observing the stuttering speech, Chinese participants judged the speaker as carrying the same degree of self-derogatory compared to normally fluent speakers, and European-Americans considered the personality trait weakened after witnessing stuttering.  These results indicated that generally, stuttering is able to evoke negative emotional arousal in listeners, regardless of the listener's cultural background. These negative arousals can be manifested at behavioral, physiological, and attitudinal levels. Culture plays a role in regulating some aspects of these negative responses, suggesting that people who stutter in Chinese or African-American societies may undergo more severe social penalties for their stuttering, compared to those in European-American culture. Results from this study have implications in the treatment of people who stutter, and provide quantitative data for stuttering help groups to develop culture-specific strategies to raise social awareness of stuttering.  Ph.D

Qualitative analysis of emotion regulation as seen in Middle Eastern American psychotherapy clients

Middle Eastern individuals represent a heterogeneous group comprised of different nationalities, languages, and religious identifications. Yet, Middle Eastern Americans are widely underrepresented in the psychotherapy literature. Extant literature appears to focus on professional opinions about what psychotherapists should do when working with this population, including understanding cultural factors, such as incorporating family in treatment and acculturation status. Considering cultural communication patterns among this population, emotion in generally understood to be inhibited or suppressed, as disclosing personal problems and expressing emotion outside the family sphere can be viewed as disloyal and/or shaming. Thus, one of the many areas mental health clinicians should consider when working with Middle Eastern clients is how to recognize emotional communication patterns and identify and assist their clients with emotion regulation and/or dysregulation in a culturally sensitive manner. To address the need for research on how emotions are expressed and regulated in psychotherapy with Middle Eastern clients, this study qualitatively analyzed three psychotherapy cases from a university\u27s community counseling center\u27s archival research database. More specifically, the researchers used an inductive content analysis approach with emotion, emotion regulation and InVivo codes to observe themes of emotional expression, regulation and dysregulation that emerged from the gathered data from a course of psychotherapy with these Middle Eastern American clients to further classify the observable phenomena (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008; Hsieh & Shannon, 2005; Saldaña, 2009; Weber, 1990). Consistent with previous literature, results indicated that negative emotions were coded more frequently in psychotherapy sessions that positive emotions, as was the emotional regulation strategy of Experiential Avoidance. Surprisingly, data emerged revealing positive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., acceptance and emotional identification) that were not identified by literature describing this population. By obtaining a better understanding of how Middle Eastern American clients expressed and utilized their emotions in treatment, this study may be useful to the future work of clinicians and researchers targeting treatment of these individuals in a culturally sensitive manner and in an approach that emphasizes positive emotion regulation strategies

Basic Communication Course Annual Vol. 8

(207 Pages, 7.696 MB

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions with Biomedical Applications (MAVEBA) workshop came into being in 1999 from the particularly felt need of sharing know-how, objectives and results between areas that until then seemed quite distinct such as bioengineering, medicine and singing. MAVEBA deals with all aspects concerning the study of the human voice with applications ranging from the neonate to the adult and elderly. Over the years the initial issues have grown and spread also in other aspects of research such as occupational voice disorders, neurology, rehabilitation, image and video analysis. MAVEBA takes place every two years always in Firenze, Italy

Architecture, Affect and Architectural Practice

This thesis builds on and contributes to work in theories of affect that has risen within diverse fields, including geography, cultural studies, media studies and feminist writings, challenging the nature of textual and representational-based research. Although numerous studies have examined how affect emerges in- and through- the occupation of architectural spaces, little analytical attention has been paid to the creative process of design and the role that affect plays in the many contingencies and uncertainties that arise in the process. In this context, the question that this thesis explores is what architectural and theoretical relations can be drawn out when architectural practices are viewed through the lens of affect. Such inquiry is critical to allow practices of architecture to be seen not through defined patterns or contained agenda’s but rather through intensities and forces between bodies (both human and non-human); it is to discover practice as sites of potential - and in doing so to address the usefulness of affect to be applied to more grounded empirical fields. In order to explore the above question, the study is based on a qualitative research methodology, including interviewing; writing of observational notes; visiting the architectural offices as well as the projects, where possible/appropriate; and collection of key documents, architectural drawings, and images relating to the design project discussed. This thesis begins with a review of current critical thinking of affect. Its focus is upon how these renderings present particular links between affect, body and space. Further, the thesis considers a range of ideas from architectural scholars and geographers attempting to identify connections between architecture, affect and architectural practice, through notions of affective mediation, tinkering, and stuttering. The thesis then moves forward to present an in-depth case study of three architectural practices, RUR Architecture PC, Kerstin Thompson Architects and Shigeru Ban Architects, with specific architectural projects, in order to evaluate how affect is a significant element in the design process for emergent practices of architecture. Ultimately, this thesis argues how architectural practice may extend theories of affect, particularly broadening Sara Ahmed’s notion of ‘sticky affects’ within the context of architecture, through sticky images, sticky processes and sticky objects, respectively to each case study. Importantly, the thesis engages with the often mundane but highly creative aspect of design processes, not so much in terms of the results, or impact, of affect in the final architectural space, but in terms of how design processes consist of stuttering’s where affect can bring bodies together through affective stickiness. The thesis offers an alternative and extended model for the study of how affect plays itself out in the dynamic relationships between different bodies, happenings and relations in practices of architecture

Evolutionary and Cognitive Approaches to Voice Perception in Humans: Acoustic Properties, Personality and Aesthetics

Voices are used as a vehicle for language, and variation in the acoustic properties of voices also contains information about the speaker. Listeners use measurable qualities, such as pitch and formant traits, as cues to a speaker’s physical stature and attractiveness. Emotional states and personality characteristics are also judged from vocal stimuli. The research contained in this thesis examines vocal masculinity, aesthetics and personality, with an emphasis on the perception of prosocial traits including trustworthiness and cooperativeness. I will also explore themes which are more cognitive in nature, testing aspects of vocal stimuli which may affect trait attribution, memory and the ascription of identity. Chapters 2 and 3 explore systematic differences across vocal utterances, both in types of utterance using different classes of stimuli and across the time course of perception of the auditory signal. These chapters examine variation in acoustic measurements in addition to variation in listener attributions of commonly-judged speaker traits. The most important result from this work was that evaluations of attractiveness made using spontaneous speech correlated with those made using scripted speech recordings, but did not correlate with those made of the same persons using vowel stimuli. This calls into question the use of sustained vowel sounds for the attainment of ratings of subjective characteristics. Vowel and single-word stimuli are also quite short – while I found that attributions of masculinity were reliable at very short exposure times, more subjective traits like attractiveness and trustworthiness require a longer exposure time to elicit reliable attributions. I conclude with recommending an exposure time of at least 5 seconds in duration for such traits to be reliably assessed. Chapter 4 examines what vocal traits affect perceptions of pro-social qualities using both natural and manipulated variation in voices. While feminine pitch traits (F0 and F0-SD) were linked to cooperativeness ratings, masculine formant traits (Df and Pf) were also associated with cooperativeness. The relative importance of these traits as social signals is discussed. Chapter 5 questions what makes a voice memorable, and helps to differentiate between memory for individual voice identities and for the content which was spoken by administering recognition tests both within and across sensory modalities. While the data suggest that experimental manipulation of voice pitch did not influence memory for vocalised stimuli, attractive male voices were better remembered than unattractive voices, independent of pitch manipulation. Memory for cross-modal (textual) content was enhanced by raising the voice pitch of both male and female speakers. I link this pattern of results to the perceived dominance of voices which have been raised and lowered in pitch, and how this might impact how memories are formed and retained. Chapter 6 examines masculinity across visual and auditory sensory modalities using a cross-modal matching task. While participants were able to match voices to muted videos of both male and female speakers at rates above chance, and to static face images of men (but not women), differences in masculinity did not influence observers in their judgements, and voice and face masculinity were not correlated. These results are discussed in terms of the generally-accepted theory that masculinity and femininity in faces and voices communicate the same underlying genetic quality. The biological mechanisms by which vocal and facial masculinity could develop independently are speculated

Designing Embodied Interactive Software Agents for E-Learning: Principles, Components, and Roles

Embodied interactive software agents are complex autonomous, adaptive, and social software systems with a digital embodiment that enables them to act on and react to other entities (users, objects, and other agents) in their environment through bodily actions, which include the use of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in face-to-face interactions with the user. These agents have been developed for various roles in different application domains, in which they perform tasks that have been assigned to them by their developers or delegated to them by their users or by other agents. In computer-assisted learning, embodied interactive pedagogical software agents have the general task to promote human learning by working with students (and other agents) in computer-based learning environments, among them e-learning platforms based on Internet technologies, such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus (www.linguistics-online.com). In these environments, pedagogical agents provide contextualized, qualified, personalized, and timely assistance, cooperation, instruction, motivation, and services for both individual learners and groups of learners. This thesis develops a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and user-oriented view of the design of embodied interactive pedagogical software agents, which integrates theoretical and practical insights from various academic and other fields. The research intends to contribute to the scientific understanding of issues, methods, theories, and technologies that are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied interactive software agents for different roles in e-learning and other areas. For developers, the thesis provides sixteen basic principles (Added Value, Perceptible Qualities, Balanced Design, Coherence, Consistency, Completeness, Comprehensibility, Individuality, Variability, Communicative Ability, Modularity, Teamwork, Participatory Design, Role Awareness, Cultural Awareness, and Relationship Building) plus a large number of specific guidelines for the design of embodied interactive software agents and their components. Furthermore, it offers critical reviews of theories, concepts, approaches, and technologies from different areas and disciplines that are relevant to agent design. Finally, it discusses three pedagogical agent roles (virtual native speaker, coach, and peer) in the scenario of the linguistic fieldwork classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus and presents detailed considerations for the design of an agent for one of these roles (the virtual native speaker)