Integration of a Spanish-to-LSE machine translation system into an e-learning platform

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-21657-2_61This paper presents the first results of the integration of a Spanish-to-LSE Machine Translation (MT) system into an e-learning platform. Most e-learning platforms provide speech-based contents, which makes them inaccessible to the Deaf. To solve this issue, we have developed a MT system that translates Spanish speech-based contents into LSE. To test our MT system, we have integrated it into an e-learning tool. The e-learning tool sends the audio to our platform. The platform sends back the subtitles and a video stream with the signed translation to the e-learning tool. Preliminary results, evaluating the sign language synthesis module, show an isolated sign recognition accuracy of 97%. The sentence recognition accuracy was of 93%.Authors would like to acknowledge the FPU-UAM grant program for its financial support. Authors are grateful to the FCNSE linguistic department for sharing their knowledge in LSE and performing the evaluations. Many thanks go to María Chulvi and Benjamín Nogal for providing help during the imple-mentation of this system. This work was partially supported by the Telefónica Móviles España S.A. project number 10-047158-TE-Ed-01-1

A novel integrating virtual reality approach for the assessment of the attachment behavioral system

[EN] Virtual reality (VR) technology represent a novel and powerful tool for behavioural research in psychological assessment. Virtual reality provides simulated experiences able to create the sensation of undergoing real situations. Users become active participants in the virtual environment seeing, hearing, feeling, and actuating as if they were in the real world. Currently, the most psychological VR applications concern the treatment of various mental disorders but not the assessment, that it is mainly based on paper and pencil tests. The observation of behaviors is costly, labor-intensive, and it is hard to create social situations in laboratory settings, even if the observation of actual behaviors could be particularly informative. In this framework, social stressful experiences can activate various behaviours of attachment for a significant person that can help to control and soothe them to promote individual s well-being. Social support seeking, physical proximity, and positive and negative behaviors represent the main attachment behaviors that people can carry out during experiences of distress. We proposed virtual reality as a novel integrating approach to measure real attachment behaviours. The first studies on attachment behavioural system by VR showed the potentiality of this approach. To improve the assessment during the VR experience, we proposed virtual stealth assessment (VSA) as a new method. VSA could represents a valid and novel technique to measure various psychological attributes in real-time during the virtual experience. The possible use of this method in psychology could be to generate a more complete, exhaustive, and accurate individual s psychological evaluation.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness funded project "Advanced Therapeutically Tools for Mental Health" (DPI2016-77396-R).Chicchi-Giglioli, IA.; Pravettoni, G.; Sutil Martin, DL.; Parra Vargas, E.; Alcañiz Raya, ML. (2017). A novel integrating virtual reality approach for the assessment of the attachment behavioral system. Frontiers in Psychology. 8(959). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00959S8959Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1978). The Bowlby-Ainsworth attachment theory. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1(3), 436-438. doi:10.1017/s0140525x00075828Andersen, S. M., & Thorpe, J. S. (2009). An IF–THEN theory of personality: Significant others and the relational self. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(2), 163-170. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2008.12.040Bailenson, J. N., Yee, N., Merget, D., & Schroeder, R. 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Toward the Ideal Signing Avatar

The paper discusses ongoing research on the effects of a signing avatar's modeling/rendering features on the perception of sign language animation. It reports a recent study that aimed to determine whether a character's visual style has an effect on how signing animated characters are perceived by viewers. The stimuli of the study were two polygonal characters presenting two different visual styles: stylized and realistic. Each character signed four sentences. Forty-seven participants with experience in American Sign Language (ASL) viewed the animated signing clips in random order via web survey. They (1) identified the signed sentences (if recognizable), (2) rated their legibility, and (3) rated the appeal of the signing avatar. Findings show that while character's visual style does not have an effect on subjects' perceived legibility of the signs and sign recognition, it has an effect on subjects' interest in the character. The stylized signing avatar was perceived as more appealing than the realistic one

An e-tool for undergraduate surveying education: design and evaluation

We describe an innovative e-tool for Surveying Education, report the results of a pilot study with a group of undergraduate students, and discuss lessons learned and future work. The e-tool consists of two parts: a student’s component and an instructor’s component. The students’ component is a 2D Virtual Learning Environment that can be used by students to review surveying concepts and practices and get feedback on their understanding of the subject. The instructor’s component is a summative assessment tool that measures the individual student’s cognitive and practical abilities with accuracy. Results of the pilot study show that students perceived the application as easy to use, useful for reviewing class content, and effective at providing immediate and accurate feedback on their performance. A comparison between the grades obtained by manually grading the field exercise and the grades generated by the e-tool showed a significant disagreement between the two sets of data, with the electronically generated grades being much lower. The study revealed the limitations of the current tool due to its dimensionality (i.e. 2D) and suggested the need for a more realistic 3D learning environment