Generating expressive speech for storytelling applications

Work on expressive speech synthesis has long focused on the expression of basic emotions. In recent years, however, interest in other expressive styles has been increasing. The research presented in this paper aims at the generation of a storytelling speaking style, which is suitable for storytelling applications and more in general, for applications aimed at children. Based on an analysis of human storytellers' speech, we designed and implemented a set of prosodic rules for converting "neutral" speech, as produced by a text-to-speech system, into storytelling speech. An evaluation of our storytelling speech generation system showed encouraging results

Development and validation of the first adaptive test of emotion perception in music

The Musical Emotion Discrimination Task (MEDT) is a short, non-adaptive test of the ability to discriminate emotions in music. Test-takers hear two performances of the same melody, both played by the same performer but each trying to communicate a different basic emotion, and are asked to determine which one is “happier”, for example. The goal of the current study was to construct a new version of the MEDT using a larger set of shorter, more diverse music clips and an adaptive framework to expand the ability range for which the test can deliver measurements. The first study analysed responses from a large sample of participants (N = 624) to determine how musical features contributed to item difficulty, which resulted in a quantitative model of musical emotion discrimination ability rooted in Item Response Theory (IRT). This model informed the construction of the adaptive MEDT. A second study contributed preliminary evidence for the validity and reliability of the adaptive MEDT, and demonstrated that the new version of the test is suitable for a wider range of abilities. This paper therefore presents the first adaptive musical emotion discrimination test, a new resource for investigating emotion processing which is freely available for research use

Early behavioral markers for neurodevelopmental disorders in the first 3 years of life: An overview of systematic reviews

Being able to recognize red flags for neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) is crucial to provide timely intervention programs. This work aims to support - within a scientific framework - the construction of an instrument capable to early detect all spectrum of NDD and explore all areas of development, detect failures in typical developmental pathways and point out atypical signs at all ages. This overview of reviews provides evidence for differences in children later diagnosed with NDD compared to typically developing peers such as delays in motor, language development and temperament in the first three years of age, repetitive/stereotyped behaviors, atypicalities/delays in play, object use, attention, visual, sensory processing and social engagement in the first and second year, and difficulties in feeding and sleeping in the first year. These behaviors must be carefully observed as potential red flags for NDD. However, data of the systematic reviews are not yet useful to develop an evidence-based clinical screening. It urges to increase efforts in producing systematic reviews on early behavioral markers for each NDD. Trial registration:CRD42019137731. (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.php?RecordID=137731)

Review of assessment measures in the early years: Language and literacy, numeracy and social emotional development and mental health

We completed a systematic search of measures to assess language, literacy, numeracy, and socialemotional development for children up to the age of six. These included individual assessments of children’s competencies in these areas and assessments of the children’s home and early years environment. A review of the relevant competencies for these four core domains provides the basis for identifying appropriate assessments. Norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests of children’s performance were included. At this point in their development, the majority of direct assessments of children’s competencies involve one-to-one assessments. Measures completed by proxy (by parents, care staff, or teachers) were also included and typically used for social-emotional aspects of development and assessments of the environment. All measures were evaluated for developmental appropriateness and psychometric features. One hundred and forty-six individual child assessments were identified, of which 13 had no published information and were excluded from further evaluation. For the remaining 133 assessments, a qualitative synthesis was completed where there were appropriate U.K. norms for the measure and where data was provided on reliability and validity (N = 47). We also included criterion-referenced assessments that included the key domains. In addition, we identified nine published tools reporting psychometric information for evaluating home and early learning environments. A wide range of language measures with established norms was identified. By contrast, for the domains of numeracy and literacy, fewer measures were available. However, for children in the target age range, criterion-referenced measures may be more appropriate for identifying early literacy and numeracy skills. Although there are many measures of social-emotional development available, the majority failed to meet the psychometric selection criteria. Four measures of social-emotional development captured a range of key elements of the domain. A set of questions to consider when choosing a measure to evaluate children’s abilities was developed from the review process

Objective methods for reliable detection of concealed depression

Recent research has shown that it is possible to automatically detect clinical depression from audio-visual recordings. Before considering integration in a clinical pathway, a key question that must be asked is whether such systems can be easily fooled. This work explores the potential of acoustic features to detect clinical depression in adults both when acting normally and when asked to conceal their depression. Nine adults diagnosed with mild to moderate depression as per the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) were asked a series of questions and to read a excerpt from a novel aloud under two different experimental conditions. In one, participants were asked to act naturally and in the other, to suppress anything that they felt would be indicative of their depression. Acoustic features were then extracted from this data and analysed using paired t-tests to determine any statistically significant differences between healthy and depressed participants. Most features that were found to be significantly different during normal behaviour remained so during concealed behaviour. In leave-one-subject-out automatic classification studies of the 9 depressed subjects and 8 matched healthy controls, an 88% classification accuracy and 89% sensitivity was achieved. Results remained relatively robust during concealed behaviour, with classifiers trained on only non-concealed data achieving 81% detection accuracy and 75% sensitivity when tested on concealed data. These results indicate there is good potential to build deception-proof automatic depression monitoring systems

Objective methods for reliable detection of concealed depression

Recent research has shown that it is possible to automatically detect clinical depression from audio-visual recordings. Before considering integration in a clinical pathway, a key question that must be asked is whether such systems can be easily fooled. This work explores the potential of acoustic features to detect clinical depression in adults both when acting normally and when asked to conceal their depression. Nine adults diagnosed with mild to moderate depression as per the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II) and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) were asked a series of questions and to read a excerpt from a novel aloud under two different experimental conditions. In one, participants were asked to act naturally and in the other, to suppress anything that they felt would be indicative of their depression. Acoustic features were then extracted from this data and analysed using paired t-tests to determine any statistically significant differences between healthy and depressed participants. Most features that were found to be significantly different during normal behaviour remained so during concealed behaviour. In leave-one-subject-out automatic classification studies of the 9 depressed subjects and 8 matched healthy controls, an 88% classification accuracy and 89% sensitivity was achieved. Results remained relatively robust during concealed behaviour, with classifiers trained on only non-concealed data achieving 81% detection accuracy and 75% sensitivity when tested on concealed data. These results indicate there is good potential to build deception-proof automatic depression monitoring systems

Clinical Assessment of Pragmatics (CAPs): A Validation Study

The purpose of this study was bi-fold: to develop and analyze the validity and reliability of a comprehensive pragmatic language diagnostic tool, the Clinical Assessment of Pragmatics as well as comparatively examine and analyze pragmatic language profiles of three groups of adolescents. These included students with Language Impairment (LI), High-Functioning Autism (HFA) and typically developing students. During the validation phase of the study, thirty participants, ages 14 to 16 years old, were administered 3 pragmatic judgment and 3 pragmatic performance subtests comprised of 10 items each for a total of 60 test items. A series of validity and reliability measures were employed for the purpose of validating target diagnostic tool. During the second part of this study, one hundred and twenty participants, ages 14 to 16 years old, were administered the CAPs to comparatively analyze their receptive and expressive pragmatic language performance. Study results revealed that this instrument provides a valid and reliable comprehensive measure of pragmatic language skills. Both test-retest and interrater reliability were found to be strong. Experts rated the CAPs highly for both content and clarity. Concurrent validity was obtained on three of the CAPs subtests and was found to correlate to three existing pragmatic language instruments and measures (the Clinical Assessment of Spoken Language – Pragmatic Judgement subtest, the Test of Pragmatic Language and the Social Language Development Test, adolescent). Further, the results revealed significant differences among all groups of students on expressive and receptive pragmatic language tasks. Students with HFA and SLI demonstrated adequate performances on instrumental pragmatic language tasks. However, they had significant difficulties on higher order pragmatics such as perceiving irony, sarcasm, and expressing sorrow or support. Furthermore, the HFA group was distinguished by profound deficits in students’ ability to recognize and appropriately use facial expressions. CAPs is a tool which is both valid and reliable and can be used as a means of determining whether school-aged students present with deficits in pragmatic language skills, specifically, high-functioning autism or specific language impairment