A cognitive approach to user perception of multimedia quality: An empirical investigation

Whilst multimedia technology has been one of the main contributing factors behind the Web's success, delivery of personalized multimedia content has been a desire seldom achieved in practice. Moreover, the perspective adopted is rarely viewed from a cognitive styles standpoint, notwithstanding the fact that they have significant effects on users’ preferences with respect to the presentation of multimedia content. Indeed, research has thus far neglected to examine the effect of cognitive styles on users’ subjective perceptions of multimedia quality. This paper aims to examine the relationships between users’ cognitive styles, the multimedia quality of service delivered by the underlying network, and users’ quality of perception (understood as both enjoyment and informational assimilation) associated with the viewed multimedia content. Results from the empirical study reported here show that all users, regardless of cognitive style, have higher levels of understanding of informational content in multimedia video clips (represented in our study by excerpts from television programmes) with weak dynamism, but that they enjoy moderately dynamic clips most. Additionally, multimedia content was found to significantly influence users’ levels of understanding and enjoyment. Surprisingly, our study highlighted the fact that Bimodal users prefer to draw on visual sources for informational purposes, and that the presence of text in multimedia clips has a detrimental effect on the knowledge acquisition of all three cognitive style groups

Stars in their eyes: What eye-tracking reveal about multimedia perceptual quality

Perceptual multimedia quality is of paramount importance to the continued take-up and proliferation of multimedia applications: users will not use and pay for applications if they are perceived to be of low quality. Whilst traditionally distributed multimedia quality has been characterised by Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, these neglect the user perspective of the issue of quality. In order to redress this shortcoming, we characterise the user multimedia perspective using the Quality of Perception (QoP) metric, which encompasses not only a user’s satisfaction with the quality of a multimedia presentation, but also his/her ability to analyse, synthesise and assimilate informational content of multimedia. In recognition of the fact that monitoring eye movements offers insights into visual perception, as well as the associated attention mechanisms and cognitive processes, this paper reports on the results of a study investigating the impact of differing multimedia presentation frame rates on user QoP and eye path data. Our results show that provision of higher frame rates, usually assumed to provide better multimedia presentation quality, do not significantly impact upon the median coordinate value of eye path data. Moreover, higher frame rates do not significantly increase level of participant information assimilation, although they do significantly improve overall user enjoyment and quality perception of the multimedia content being shown

Grand Challenges in Music Information Research

This paper discusses some grand challenges in which music information research will impact our daily lives and our society in the future. Here, some fundamental questions are how to provide the best music for each person, how to predict music trends, how to enrich human-music relationships, how to evolve new music, and how to address environmental, energy issues by using music technologies. Our goal is to increase both attractiveness and social impacts of music information research in the future through such discussions and developments

A Method to the Madness: My Quest for a New System of Acting

How does one get actors to embrace work and imbue it with the same truth they bring to realistic theatre and how does one prevent them from turning into robots performing meaningless gestures? How does one work in experimental ways while still giving actors something human to hang onto? This thesis will examine a new system of acting to embrace the demands of the work and explore how to articulate and collaborate with actors to create the work

A method of rapid curriculum development for foreign language teaching

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The development of temporal concepts: Learning to locate events in time

A new model of the development of temporal concepts is described that assumes that there are substantial changes in how children think about time in the early years. It is argued that there is a shift from understanding time in an event-dependent way to an event-independent understanding of time. Early in development, very young children are unable to think about locations in time independently of the events that occur at those locations. It is only with development that children begin to have a proper grasp of the distinction between past, present, and future, and represent time as linear and unidirectional. The model assumes that although children aged 2 to 3 years may categorize events differently depending on whether they lie in the past or the future, they may not be able to understand that whether an event is in the past or future is something that changes as time passes and varies with temporal perspective. Around 4 to 5 years, children understand how causality operates in time, and can grasp the systematic relations that obtain between different locations in time, which provides the basis for acquiring the conventional clock and calendar system

Introduction to Creativity: A Lecture and Curriculum Framework for Students Who Identify Themselves as Creative

This project focuses on the creative person, process, product and press- the 4Ps of creativity as articulated by Rhodes (1961). A curricular framework was developed with an emphasis on enhancing the abilities of those who already identify themselves as creative, specifically undergraduate Freshmen and Sophomores looking to study various fields of Design at the university level. The objective of the framework is to not only identify the innate processes that may have led these students to identify themselves as creative- thereby choosing their major- but also to allow them to recognize, improve and be deliberate in those processes, to enhance their creative environments, and to allow them to see that creativity is transferable beyond their chosen craft or profession. This curriculum framework also focuses on identifying the knowledge-gathering, thinking, and decision-making skills that are the foundation for the type of innovation and problem-solving that is valuable in industry

How can Video Interaction Guidance be implemented with children and young people to promote wellbeing?

D. App. Ed. Psy. ThesisThere are growing concerns for children and young people’s (CYP) mental health and it has been suggested that more needs to be done within schools to support CYP’s wellbeing. Within this research, I adopt a relational stance to understanding wellbeing and propose that wellbeing can be enhanced through developing CYP’s relationships at school using Video Interaction Guidance (VIG). VIG, a relationship-based intervention, provides the focus of this thesis. As an under-researched area, the use of VIG with CYP as participants is explored. The systematic literature review looks into the benefits of VIG as a school-based intervention with CYP as participants in the process. The findings of studies included in the review describe a wide range of benefits, which are summarised into two overarching categories – personal benefits and relational benefits. The empirical research project reports on a professional inquiry, which explored how VIG can be used to support relationships between pupils within a single Year 4 class. Thematic analysis of interview data from the teacher, teaching assistant and seven children, suggests that participating in VIG facilitated children’s appreciation of interpersonal skills in themselves and others, promoted prosocial attitudes and behaviour and fostered an inclusive relational environment within the class. Implementation factors associated with VIG are also reported and related to the organisation of the project and shared reviews. As professional psychologists embedded within educational settings, educational psychologists have a significant role in providing support to promote CYP’s wellbeing. This research has implications for future initiatives aimed at enhancing CYP’s wellbeing, highlighting VIG as an intervention which has the potential to develop relationships between CYP and promote an inclusive social environment