Loneliness: An analysis of beliefs, experience and communication

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Expressive Modulation of Neutral Visual Speech

The need for animated graphical models of the human face is commonplace in the movies, video games and television industries, appearing in everything from low budget advertisements and free mobile apps, to Hollywood blockbusters costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Generative statistical models of animation attempt to address some of the drawbacks of industry standard practices such as labour intensity and creative inflexibility. This work describes one such method for transforming speech animation curves between different expressive styles. Beginning with the assumption that expressive speech animation is a mix of two components, a high-frequency speech component (the content) and a much lower-frequency expressive component (the style), we use Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to identify and manipulate these components independently of one another. Next we learn how the energy for different speaking styles is distributed in terms of the low-dimensional independent components model. Transforming the speaking style involves projecting new animation curves into the lowdimensional ICA space, redistributing the energy in the independent components, and finally reconstructing the animation curves by inverting the projection. We show that a single ICA model can be used for separating multiple expressive styles into their component parts. Subjective evaluations show that viewers can reliably identify the expressive style generated using our approach, and that they have difficulty in identifying transformed animated expressive speech from the equivalent ground-truth

Developing and enhancing communicative competence among foreign language learners in Japan

This thesis presents and discusses ten peer-reviewed publications that focus on enhancing the development of communicative competence among foreign language learners in Japan. This is an important area of research as, despite emphasis being placed on effective communication by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in policy and educational guidelines, many students are not deemed to have reached satisfactory levels of communicative competence when they graduate (MEXT, 2011). In view of this, this PhD by Published Works investigates the impact that different teaching approaches and interventions had on three main themes connected to the development of communicative competence: students’ productive output and lexical retrieval, students’ self-perceptions of ability and levels of confidence, and students’ and teachers’ perceptions of, and reactions to, the interventions. The research was conducted in a range of secondary and tertiary educational contexts, and employed quantitative and qualitative methods in a complementary manner. This enabled different research paradigms to be bridged and a wider range of data to be collected. This body of work contributes to theory by extending a range of concepts, theories, and approaches, including the Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1985, 1995), Interaction Hypothesis (Long, 1981, 1983, 1996), information-processing theory, study-phase retrieval, and the spacing effect, by adding empirical evidence from different teaching contexts. It also has major implications in terms of practical application, providing access to research on alternative teaching practices and introducing a variety of activities, courses, and materials, that can be employed by educators both in Japan and internationally. Furthermore, the thesis make a methodological contribution by introducing of the Cycle of practitioner-research, which has the potential to motivate other educators to embark on a similar journey to my own and experience the many benefits that it has brought. Overall, the research presented in this thesis has contributed to enhanced recognition of the value of core principles, namely maximizing productive output, developing lexical retrieval, and enhancing students’ self-perceptions of ability and levels of confidence

What are the personal and health care experiences of womenwith MS?

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a neurological condition with current statistics highlightingthat, worldwide, women predominantly experience its impact at a rate of 4:1 (Jelinek,2010). There are currently no medical cures for the illness and people can becomeextremely physically disabled (Kalb, 2005). This research explores the livedexperiences of women who have a diagnosis of MS and the primary data in thisresearch were collected during semi-structured interviews with 16 of them agedbetween 21 to 71 years old. The research methodology chosen draws on feministinfluences for the framework of the research design whilst also being influenced bynarrative perspectives of data collection methods and analysis. The research isdescribed as being a qualitative feminist narrative study. As someone who has adiagnosis of MS this thesis also draws on my own self-ethnography and experientialknowledge. The data were analysed using thematic and narrative analysis. Thefindings highlighted that the presentation of MS symptoms to GPs were not initiallyrecognised and that a process of mis diagnosis occurred in the majority of cases for asignificant period of time with up to 27 years being reported in this study. Furtherfindings indicated that the women in this study were not all provided with choices,options and relevant information in relation to MS. The detailed narratives from thewomen about their experiences with MS highlighted a journey of personaldevelopment and insight into living and adjusting to the symptoms of a chronicillness. The women also offer their own interpretations about the onset of their MSsymptoms