10,470 research outputs found
Modeling Task Effects in Human Reading with Neural Attention
Humans read by making a sequence of fixations and saccades. They often skip
words, without apparent detriment to understanding. We offer a novel
explanation for skipping: readers optimize a tradeoff between performing a
language-related task and fixating as few words as possible. We propose a
neural architecture that combines an attention module (deciding whether to skip
words) and a task module (memorizing the input). We show that our model
predicts human skipping behavior, while also modeling reading times well, even
though it skips 40% of the input. A key prediction of our model is that
different reading tasks should result in different skipping behaviors. We
confirm this prediction in an eye-tracking experiment in which participants
answers questions about a text. We are able to capture these experimental
results using the our model, replacing the memorization module with a task
module that performs neural question answering
Prosody-Based Automatic Segmentation of Speech into Sentences and Topics
A crucial step in processing speech audio data for information extraction,
topic detection, or browsing/playback is to segment the input into sentence and
topic units. Speech segmentation is challenging, since the cues typically
present for segmenting text (headers, paragraphs, punctuation) are absent in
spoken language. We investigate the use of prosody (information gleaned from
the timing and melody of speech) for these tasks. Using decision tree and
hidden Markov modeling techniques, we combine prosodic cues with word-based
approaches, and evaluate performance on two speech corpora, Broadcast News and
Switchboard. Results show that the prosodic model alone performs on par with,
or better than, word-based statistical language models -- for both true and
automatically recognized words in news speech. The prosodic model achieves
comparable performance with significantly less training data, and requires no
hand-labeling of prosodic events. Across tasks and corpora, we obtain a
significant improvement over word-only models using a probabilistic combination
of prosodic and lexical information. Inspection reveals that the prosodic
models capture language-independent boundary indicators described in the
literature. Finally, cue usage is task and corpus dependent. For example, pause
and pitch features are highly informative for segmenting news speech, whereas
pause, duration and word-based cues dominate for natural conversation.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. To appear in Speech Communication 32(1-2),
Special Issue on Accessing Information in Spoken Audio, September 200
Evolution of Subjective Hurricane Risk Perceptions: A Bayesian Approach
This paper studies how individuals update subjective risk perceptions in response to hurricane track forecast information, using a unique data set from an event market, the Hurricane Futures Market (HFM). We derive a theoretical Bayesian framework which predicts how traders update their perceptions of the probability of a hurricane making landfall in a certain range of coastline. Our results suggest that traders behave in a way consistent with Bayesian updating but this behavior is based on the perceived quality of the information received.risk perceptions, learning, Bayesian learning, event markets, prediction markets, favorite-longshot bias, hurricanes
Testing quantum mechanics: a statistical approach
As experiments continue to push the quantum-classical boundary using
increasingly complex dynamical systems, the interpretation of experimental data
becomes more and more challenging: when the observations are noisy, indirect,
and limited, how can we be sure that we are observing quantum behavior? This
tutorial highlights some of the difficulties in such experimental tests of
quantum mechanics, using optomechanics as the central example, and discusses
how the issues can be resolved using techniques from statistics and insights
from quantum information theory.Comment: v1: 2 pages; v2: invited tutorial for Quantum Measurements and
Quantum Metrology, substantial expansion of v1, 19 pages; v3: accepted; v4:
corrected some errors, publishe
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Real-time decoding of question-and-answer speech dialogue using human cortical activity.
Natural communication often occurs in dialogue, differentially engaging auditory and sensorimotor brain regions during listening and speaking. However, previous attempts to decode speech directly from the human brain typically consider listening or speaking tasks in isolation. Here, human participants listened to questions and responded aloud with answers while we used high-density electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings to detect when they heard or said an utterance and to then decode the utterance's identity. Because certain answers were only plausible responses to certain questions, we could dynamically update the prior probabilities of each answer using the decoded question likelihoods as context. We decode produced and perceived utterances with accuracy rates as high as 61% and 76%, respectively (chance is 7% and 20%). Contextual integration of decoded question likelihoods significantly improves answer decoding. These results demonstrate real-time decoding of speech in an interactive, conversational setting, which has important implications for patients who are unable to communicate
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