15,070 research outputs found
Emerging Linguistic Functions in Early Infancy
This paper presents results from experimental
studies on early language acquisition in infants and
attempts to interpret the experimental results within
the framework of the Ecological Theory of
Language Acquisition (ETLA) recently proposed
by (Lacerda et al., 2004a). From this perspective,
the infant’s first steps in the acquisition of the
ambient language are seen as a consequence of the
infant’s general capacity to represent sensory input
and the infant’s interaction with other actors in its
immediate ecological environment. On the basis of
available experimental evidence, it will be argued
that ETLA offers a productive alternative to
traditional descriptive views of the language
acquisition process by presenting an operative
model of how early linguistic function may emerge
through interaction
Cognitive, neural, and social mechanisms of rhythmic interpersonal coordination
Humans possess the exceptional capacity to temporally coordinate their movements with one another with a high degree of accuracy, precision, and flexibility. Musical ensemble performance is a refined example of this, where a range of cognitive and sensory-motor processes work together to support rhythmic interpersonal coordination. However, the influence of social factors on the underlying cognitive-motor and neural mechanisms that facilitate rhythmic interpersonal coordination is yet to be established. This thesis draws on theoretical perspectives related to joint action, including co-representation, self-other integration and segregation, and theoretical models of sensorimotor synchronisation to consider this topic. Three experiments were conducted to investigate how social factors influence rhythmic interpersonal coordination. This broad empirical question was broken down by considering both extrinsic factors—such as the social context and perceived characteristics of an interaction partner (e.g. the degree of partner intentionality and responsiveness)—as well as intrinsic social factors, such as individual differences in attitudes and social preferences. This thesis concludes that extrinsic and intrinsic social factors affect rhythmic interpersonal coordination at multiple levels. A key aspect of this influence relates to how people regulate the integration and segregation of their representations of self and others. However, importantly, these effects are mediated by individual differences in intrinsic social factors such as personal preferences and biases. Top-down processes related to beliefs thus influence bottom-up sensorimotor processes during joint action, but the nature of this influence appears to be different for different people. This outcome highlights the necessity of taking individual differences into account, particularly when investigating the nuances of social processing during dynamic social interactions. Furthermore, the current findings suggest that beliefs about a partner during social interaction may be just as, or even more so, influential on performance than the actual characteristics of the partner. Recognising the potency of social beliefs has implications not only for research into basic psychological mechanisms underpinning rhythmic interpersonal coordination, but also for understanding the broader social dynamics of real-life situations involving cooperative joint action understanding the broader social dynamics of real-life situations involving cooperative joint action
Visually Indicated Sounds
Objects make distinctive sounds when they are hit or scratched. These sounds
reveal aspects of an object's material properties, as well as the actions that
produced them. In this paper, we propose the task of predicting what sound an
object makes when struck as a way of studying physical interactions within a
visual scene. We present an algorithm that synthesizes sound from silent videos
of people hitting and scratching objects with a drumstick. This algorithm uses
a recurrent neural network to predict sound features from videos and then
produces a waveform from these features with an example-based synthesis
procedure. We show that the sounds predicted by our model are realistic enough
to fool participants in a "real or fake" psychophysical experiment, and that
they convey significant information about material properties and physical
interactions
A Trip to the Moon: Personalized Animated Movies for Self-reflection
Self-tracking physiological and psychological data poses the challenge of
presentation and interpretation. Insightful narratives for self-tracking data
can motivate the user towards constructive self-reflection. One powerful form
of narrative that engages audience across various culture and age groups is
animated movies. We collected a week of self-reported mood and behavior data
from each user and created in Unity a personalized animation based on their
data. We evaluated the impact of their video in a randomized control trial with
a non-personalized animated video as control. We found that personalized videos
tend to be more emotionally engaging, encouraging greater and lengthier writing
that indicated self-reflection about moods and behaviors, compared to
non-personalized control videos
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