962 research outputs found
The color of smiling: computational synaesthesia of facial expressions
This note gives a preliminary account of the transcoding or rechanneling
problem between different stimuli as it is of interest for the natural
interaction or affective computing fields. By the consideration of a simple
example, namely the color response of an affective lamp to a sensed facial
expression, we frame the problem within an information- theoretic perspective.
A full justification in terms of the Information Bottleneck principle promotes
a latent affective space, hitherto surmised as an appealing and intuitive
solution, as a suitable mediator between the different stimuli.Comment: Submitted to: 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and
Processing (ICIAP 2015), 7-11 September 2015, Genova, Ital
Inverse modeling of cloud-aerosol interactions – Part 1: Detailed response surface analysis
This is the final version of the article. Available from EGU via the DOI in this record.New methodologies are required to probe the sensitivity of parameters describing cloud droplet activation. This paper presents an inverse modeling-based method for exploring cloud-aerosol interactions via response surfaces. The objective function, containing the difference between the measured and model predicted cloud droplet size distribution is studied in a two-dimensional framework, and presented for pseudo-adiabatic cloud parcel model parameters that are pair-wise selected. From this response surface analysis it is shown that the susceptibility of cloud droplet size distribution to variations in different aerosol physiochemical parameters is highly dependent on the aerosol environment and meteorological conditions. In general the cloud droplet size distribution is most susceptible to changes in the updraft velocity. A shift towards an increase in the importance of chemistry for the cloud nucleating ability of particles is shown to exist somewhere between marine average and rural continental aerosol regimes.
We also use these response surfaces to explore the feasibility of inverse modeling to determine cloud-aerosol interactions. It is shown that the "cloud-aerosol" inverse problem is particularly difficult to solve due to significant parameter interaction, presence of multiple regions of attraction, numerous local optima, and considerable parameter insensitivity.
The identifiability of the model parameters will be dependent on the choice of the objective function. Sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the location of the information content within the calibration data to confirm that our choice of objective function maximizes information retrieval from the cloud droplet size distribution.
Cloud parcel models that employ a moving-centre based calculation of the cloud droplet size distribution pose additional difficulties when applying automatic search algorithms for studying cloud-aerosol interactions. To aid future studies, an increased resolution of the region of the size spectrum associated with droplet activation within cloud parcel models, or further development of fixed-sectional cloud models would be beneficial. Despite these improvements, it is demonstrated that powerful search algorithms remain necessary to efficiently explore the parameter space and successfully solve the cloud-aerosol inverse problem.We gratefully acknowledge the financial
support of the Bert Bolin Centre for Climate research. We gratefully
appreciate G. J. Roelofs, IMAU, Utrecht, the Netherlands,
for providing us with the pseudo-adiabatic cloud parcel model
used in this study. We gratefully acknowledge Hamish Struthers
valuable discussions and his help to improve the readability of
the manuscript. Some of the calculations made during the course
of this study have been made possible using the LISA cluster
from the SARA centre for parallel computing at the University
of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. AS acknowledges support from
an Office of Naval Research YIP award (N00014-10-1-0811).The
authors acknowledge the Swedish Environmental Monitoring
Program a
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
Vocation, Belongingness, and Balance: A Qualitative Study of Veterinary Student Well-Being
An elevated risk for suicide among veterinarians has stimulated research into the mental health of the veterinary profession, and more recently attention has turned to the veterinary student population. This qualitative study sought to explore UK veterinary students' perceptions and experiences of university life, and to consider how these may affect well-being. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 students from a single UK school who were purposively selected to include perspectives from male, female, graduate-entry, standard-entry (straight from high school), and widening participation students across all 5 years of the program. Three main themes were identified: a deep-rooted vocation, navigating belongingness, and finding balance. Participants described a long-standing goal of becoming a veterinarian, with a determination reflected by often circuitous routes to veterinary school and little or no consideration of alternatives. Although some had been motivated by a love of animals, others were intrinsically interested in the scientific and problem-solving challenges of veterinary medicine. Most expressed strong feelings of empathy with animal owners. The issue of belongingness was central to participants' experiences, with accounts reflecting their efforts to negotiate a sense of belongingness both in student and professional communities. Participants also frequently expressed a degree of acceptance of poor balance between work and relaxation, with indications of a belief that this imbalance could be rectified later. This study helps highlight future avenues for research and supports initiatives aiming to nurture a sense of collegiality among veterinary students as they progress through training and into the profession
Towards a Human-Centered Approach for VRET Systems: Case Study for Acrophobia
This paper presents a human-centered methodology for designing and developing Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET) systems. By following the steps proposed by the methodology – Users analysis, Domain Analysis, Task Analysis and Representational Analysis, we developed a system for acrophobia therapy composed of 9 functional, interrelated modules which are responsible for patients, scenes, audio and graphics management, as well as with physiological monitoring and event triggering. The therapist visualizes in real time the patient’s biophysical signals and adapts the exposure scenario accordingly, as. he can lower or increase the level of exposure. There are 3 scenes in the game, depicting a ride by cable car, one by ski lift and a walk by foot in a mountain landscape. A reward system is implemented and emotion dimension ratings are collected at predefined points in the scenario. They will be stored and later used for constructing an automatic machine learning emotion recognition and exposure adaptation modul
From affect programs to dynamical discrete emotions
According to Discrete Emotion Theory, a number of emotions are distinguishable on the basis of neural, physiological, behavioral and expressive features. Critics of this view emphasize the variability and context-sensitivity of emotions. This paper discusses some of these criticisms, and argues that they do not undermine the claim that emotions are discrete. This paper also presents some works in dynamical affective science, and argues that to conceive of discrete emotions as self-organizing and softly assembled patterns of various processes accounts more naturally than traditional Discrete Emotion Theory for the variability and context-sensitivity of emotions
Conveying Audience Emotions through Humanoid Robot Gestures to an Orchestra during a Live Musical Exhibition
In the last twenty years, robotics have been applied in many
heterogeneous contexts. Among them, the use of humanoid robots during
musical concerts have been proposed and investigated by many authors.
In this paper, we propose a contribution in the area of robotics application
in music, consisting of a system for conveying audience emotions
during a live musical exhibition, by means of a humanoid robot. In particular,
we provide all spectators with a mobile app, by means of which
they can select a specific color while listening to a piece of music (act).
Each color is mapped to an emotion, and the audience preferences are
then processed in order to select the next act to be played. This decision,
based on the overall emotion felt by the audience, is then communicated
by the robot through body gestures to the orchestra. Our first results
show that spectators enjoy such kind of interactive musical performance,
and are encouraging for further investigations
Cognitive appraisal of environmental stimuli induces emotion-like states in fish
The occurrence of emotions in non-human animals has been the focus of debate over the years. Recently, an interest in expanding this debate to non-tetrapod vertebrates and to invertebrates has emerged. Within vertebrates, the study of emotion in teleosts is particularly interesting since they represent a divergent evolutionary radiation from that of tetrapods, and thus they provide an insight into the evolution of the biological mechanisms of emotion. We report that Sea Bream exposed to stimuli that vary according to valence (positive, negative) and salience (predictable, unpredictable) exhibit different behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular states. Since according to the dimensional theory of emotion valence and salience define a two-dimensional affective space, our data can be interpreted as evidence for the occurrence of distinctive affective states in fish corresponding to each the four quadrants of the core affective space. Moreover, the fact that the same stimuli presented in a predictable vs. unpredictable way elicited different behavioural, physiological and neuromolecular states, suggests that stimulus appraisal by the individual, rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the stimulus, has triggered the observed responses. Therefore, our data supports the occurrence of emotion-like states in fish that are regulated by the individual's perception of environmental stimuli.European Commission [265957 Copewell]; Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia [SFRH/BD/80029/2011, SFRH/BPD/72952/2010]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Facial expressions depicting compassionate and critical emotions: the development and validation of a new emotional face stimulus set
Attachment with altruistic others requires the ability to appropriately process affiliative and kind facial cues. Yet there is no stimulus set available to investigate such processes. Here, we developed a stimulus set depicting compassionate and critical facial expressions, and validated its effectiveness using well-established visual-probe methodology. In Study 1, 62 participants rated photographs of actors displaying compassionate/kind and critical faces on strength of emotion type. This produced a new stimulus set based on N = 31 actors, whose facial expressions were reliably distinguished as compassionate, critical and neutral. In Study 2, 70 participants completed a visual-probe task measuring attentional orientation to critical and compassionate/kind faces. This revealed that participants lower in self-criticism demonstrated enhanced attention to compassionate/kind faces whereas those higher in self-criticism showed no bias. To sum, the new stimulus set produced interpretable findings using visual-probe methodology and is the first to include higher order, complex positive affect displays
Subjective and objective measures
One of the greatest challenges in the study of emotions and emotional states is their measurement. The techniques used to measure emotions depend essentially on the authors’ definition of the concept of emotion. Currently, two types of measures are used: subjective and objective. While subjective measures focus on assessing the conscious recognition of one’s own emotions, objective measures allow researchers to quantify and assess the conscious and unconscious emotional processes. In this sense, when the objective is to evaluate the emotional experience from the subjective point of view of an individual in relation to a given event, then subjective measures such as self-report should be used. In addition to this, when the objective is to evaluate the emotional experience at the most unconscious level of processes such as the physiological response, objective measures should be used. There are no better or worse measures, only measures that allow access to the same phenomenon from different points of view. The chapter’s main objective is to make a survey of the main measures of evaluation of the emotions and emotional states more relevant in the current scientific panorama.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio
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