6,503 research outputs found
Recognizing Emotions in a Foreign Language
Expressions of basic emotions (joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust) can be recognized pan-culturally from the face and it is assumed that these emotions can be recognized from a speaker's voice, regardless of an individual's culture or linguistic ability. Here, we compared how monolingual speakers of Argentine Spanish recognize basic emotions from pseudo-utterances ("nonsense speech") produced in their native language and in three foreign languages (English, German, Arabic). Results indicated that vocal expressions of basic emotions could be decoded in each language condition at accuracy levels exceeding chance, although Spanish listeners performed significantly better overall in their native language ("in-group advantage"). Our findings argue that the ability to understand vocally-expressed emotions in speech is partly independent of linguistic ability and involves universal principles, although this ability is also shaped by linguistic and cultural variables
Recognizing Uncertainty in Speech
We address the problem of inferring a speaker's level of certainty based on
prosodic information in the speech signal, which has application in
speech-based dialogue systems. We show that using phrase-level prosodic
features centered around the phrases causing uncertainty, in addition to
utterance-level prosodic features, improves our model's level of certainty
classification. In addition, our models can be used to predict which phrase a
person is uncertain about. These results rely on a novel method for eliciting
utterances of varying levels of certainty that allows us to compare the utility
of contextually-based feature sets. We elicit level of certainty ratings from
both the speakers themselves and a panel of listeners, finding that there is
often a mismatch between speakers' internal states and their perceived states,
and highlighting the importance of this distinction.Comment: 11 page
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Rhythm in the speech of a person with right hemisphere damage: Applying the pairwise variability index
Although several aspects of prosody have been studied in speakers with right hemisphere damage (RHD), rhythm remains largely uninvestigated. This study compares the rhythm of an Australian English speaker with right hemisphere damage (due to a stroke, but with no concomitant dysarthria) to that of a neurologically unimpaired individual. The speakers' rhythm is compared using the pairwise variability index (PVI) which allows for an acoustic characterization of rhythm by comparing the duration of successive vocalic and intervocalic intervals. A sample of speech from a structured interview between a speech and language therapist and each participant was analysed. Previous research has shown that speakers with RHD may have difficulties with intonation production, and therefore it was hypothesized that there may also be rhythmic disturbance. Results show that the neurologically normal control uses a similar rhythm to that reported for British English (there are no previous studies available for Australian English), whilst the speaker with RHD produces speech with a less strongly stress-timed rhythm. This finding was statistically significant for the intervocalic intervals measured (t(8) = 4.7, p < .01), and suggests that some aspects of prosody may be right lateralized for this speaker. The findings are discussed in relation to previous findings of dysprosody in RHD populations, and in relation to syllable-timed speech of people with other neurological conditions
Facial emotion processing in schizophrenia : a non-specific neuropsychological deficit?
Original article can be found at : http://journals.cambridge.org/ Copyright Cambridge University PressBackground: Identification of facial emotions has been found to be impaired in schizophrenia but there are uncertainties about the neuropsychological specificity of the finding. Method: Twenty-two patients with schizophrenia and 20 healthy controls were given tests requiring identification of facial emotion, judgement of the intensity of emotional expressions without identification, familiar face recognition and the Benton Facial Recognition Test (BFRT). The schizophrenia patients were selected to be relatively intellectually preserved. Results: The patients with schizophrenia showed no deficit in identifying facial emotion, although they were slower than the controls. They were, however, impaired on judging the intensity of emotional expression without identification. They showed impairment in recognizing familiar faces but not on the BFRT. Conclusions: When steps are taken to reduce the effects of general intellectual impairment, there is no deficit in identifying facial emotions in schizophrenia. There may, however, be a deficit in judging emotional intensity. The impairment found in naming familiar faces is consistent with other evidence of semantic memory impairment in the disorder.Peer reviewe
Emotional characters for automatic plot creation
The Virtual Storyteller is a multi-agent framework for automatic story generation. In this paper we describe how plots emerge from the actions of semi-autonomous character agents, focusing on the influence of the characters’ emotions on plot development
Perception and comprehension of linguistic and affective prosody in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome
International audienceThe present study investigated language outcomes in children with Landau-Kleffner syndrome compared with 7 to 8 year-old healthy children and healthy adults. We examined their capacity of understanding simple sentences using linguistic and affective prosodic cues and perceiving them. A battery of prosodic tests was elaborated and used for this study. Results revealed certain delayed language development or a different pattern of performance in participants with Landau-Kleffner syndrome. With more subjects tested in the future results from our battery of prosodic tests would allow us to better understand language development in child and it would be helpful for speech-language therapies
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