Methodological considerations concerning manual annotation of musical audio in function of algorithm development

In research on musical audio-mining, annotated music databases are needed which allow the development of computational tools that extract from the musical audiostream the kind of high-level content that users can deal with in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) contexts. The notion of musical content, and therefore the notion of annotation, is ill-defined, however, both in the syntactic and semantic sense. As a consequence, annotation has been approached from a variety of perspectives (but mainly linguistic-symbolic oriented), and a general methodology is lacking. This paper is a step towards the definition of a general framework for manual annotation of musical audio in function of a computational approach to musical audio-mining that is based on algorithms that learn from annotated data. 1

Speaker-independent emotion recognition exploiting a psychologically-inspired binary cascade classification schema

In this paper, a psychologically-inspired binary cascade classification schema is proposed for speech emotion recognition. Performance is enhanced because commonly confused pairs of emotions are distinguishable from one another. Extracted features are related to statistics of pitch, formants, and energy contours, as well as spectrum, cepstrum, perceptual and temporal features, autocorrelation, MPEG-7 descriptors, Fujisakis model parameters, voice quality, jitter, and shimmer. Selected features are fed as input to K nearest neighborhood classifier and to support vector machines. Two kernels are tested for the latter: Linear and Gaussian radial basis function. The recently proposed speaker-independent experimental protocol is tested on the Berlin emotional speech database for each gender separately. The best emotion recognition accuracy, achieved by support vector machines with linear kernel, equals 87.7%, outperforming state-of-the-art approaches. Statistical analysis is first carried out with respect to the classifiers error rates and then to evaluate the information expressed by the classifiers confusion matrices. © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Systematic evaluation of perceived spatial quality

The evaluation of perceived spatial quality calls for a method that is sensitive to changes in the constituent dimensions of that quality. In order to devise a method accounting for these changes, several processes have to be performed. This paper shows the development of scales by elicitation and structuring of verbal data, followed by validation of the resulting attribute scales

The coupling of action and perception in musical meaning formation

The embodied perspective on music cognition has stressed the central role of the body and body move- ments in musical meaning formation processes. In the present study, we investigate by means of a behavioral experiment how free body movements in response to music (i.e., action) can be linked to specific linguistic, metaphorical descriptions people use to describe the expressive qualities they perceive in the music (i.e., per- ception). We introduce a dimensional model based on the Effort/Shape theory of Laban in order to target musical expressivity from an embodied perspective. Also, we investigate whether a coupling between action and perception is dependent on the musical background of the participants (i.e., trained versus untrained). The results show that the physical appearance of the free body movements that participants perform in response to music are reliably linked to the linguistic descriptions of musical expressiveness in terms of the underlying quality. Moreover, this result is found to be independent of the participants’ musical background

Is Vivaldi smooth and takete? Non-verbal sensory scales for describing music qualities

Studies on the perception of music qualities (such as induced or perceived emotions, performance styles, or timbre nuances) make a large use of verbal descriptors. Although many authors noted that particular music qualities can hardly be described by means of verbal labels, few studies have tried alternatives. This paper aims at exploring the use of non-verbal sensory scales, in order to represent different perceived qualities in Western classical music. Musically trained and untrained listeners were required to listen to six musical excerpts in major key and to evaluate them from a sensorial and semantic point of view (Experiment 1). The same design (Experiment 2) was conducted using musically trained and untrained listeners who were required to listen to six musical excerpts in minor key. The overall findings indicate that subjects\u2019 ratings on non-verbal sensory scales are consistent throughout and the results support the hypothesis that sensory scales can convey some specific sensations that cannot be described verbally, offering interesting insights to deepen our knowledge on the relationship between music and other sensorial experiences. Such research can foster interesting applications in the field of music information retrieval and timbre spaces explorations together with experiments applied to different musical cultures and contexts

Image Semantics in the Description and Categorization of Journalistic Photographs

This paper reports a study on the description and categorization of images. The aim of the study was to evaluate existing indexing frameworks in the context of reportage photographs and to find out how the use of this particular image genre influences the results. The effect of different tasks on image description and categorization was also studied. Subjects performed keywording and free description tasks and the elicited terms were classified using the most extensive one of the reviewed frameworks. Differences were found in the terms used in constrained and unconstrained descriptions. Summarizing terms such as abstract concepts, themes, settings and emotions were used more frequently in keywording than in free description. Free descriptions included more terms referring to locations within the images, people and descriptive terms due to the narrative form the subjects used without prompting. The evaluated framework was found to lack some syntactic and semantic classes present in the data and modifications were suggested. According to the results of this study image categorization is based on high-level interpretive concepts, including affective and abstract themes. The results indicate that image genre influences categorization and keywording modifies and truncates natural image description

What is the impact of blogging used with self-monitoring strategies for adolescents who struggle with writing?

Plan B Paper. 2012. Master of Science in Education- Reading--University of Wisconsin-River Falls. Teacher Education Department. 28 leaves. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 25-26).Writing is an onerous task for those who struggle with the skill. The basic prerequisites of organizing thoughts, transcribing thoughts into words, and writing down those words is fundamental to the more advanced skills of developing a sense of audience, writing with voice and applying conventions. Without proficient skills, students who cannot write, do not write. Positive attitude toward the process of writing suffers. Time spent on actual writing is limited. As a consequence, writing skill does not develop. Students who struggle with writing can be supported in their skill development through self-monitoring strategies. Self-monitoring strategies for writing give students a systematic process to know how to approach a writing task. The clear step-by-step process breaks down difficult skills and allows students to build proficiency through guided practice and eventually, independence. This action research project explored the impact of using self-monitoring strategies with the 21st century skill of blogging within a Writer's Workshop instructional model. Sixteen students (eleven males, five females) in grades 6-8th participated in a twelve week study. Target writing skills of fluency, stamina, motivation, awareness of audience and participation in peer review were measured for changes over the course of the study. Students were instructed in the use of self-monitoring strategies focusing on increasing word counts in correct word sequence timings, on-command prompt passages, and formal writing process pieces. Blogging was introduced and used to apply target skills to a digital writing setting. Each student learned self monitoring strategies to compose posts in personal blogs and to read and comment on other students' blogs. Pre-and post-writing attitude survey, correct word sequence timings and writing samples were taken throughout the study to assess each students' skill level and attitude toward writing. The group showed average gains of 34% in correct word sequence and 66% in word counts of process writing pieces. Qualitative data and quantitative data demonstrate that writing skills and attitudes toward writing also showed positive development when self-monitoring strategies were used to support the writing tasks of blogging in a Writer's Workshop model

Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction