Grip Force Reveals the Context Sensitivity of Language-Induced Motor Activity during “Action Words

Studies demonstrating the involvement of motor brain structures in language processing typically focus on \ud time windows beyond the latencies of lexical-semantic access. Consequently, such studies remain inconclusive regarding whether motor brain structures are recruited directly in language processing or through post-linguistic conceptual imagery. In the present study, we introduce a grip-force sensor that allows online measurements of language-induced motor activity during sentence listening. We use this tool to investigate whether language-induced motor activity remains constant or is modulated in negative, as opposed to affirmative, linguistic contexts. Our findings demonstrate that this simple experimental paradigm can be used to study the online crosstalk between language and the motor systems in an ecological and economical manner. Our data further confirm that the motor brain structures that can be called upon during action word processing are not mandatorily involved; the crosstalk is asymmetrically\ud governed by the linguistic context and not vice versa

Adaptation of the difficulty level in an infant-robot movement contingency study

19th International Workshop of Physical Agents (WAF). Madrid (22-23 Noviembre 2018)ABSTRACT: This paper presents a personalized contingency feedback adaptation system that aims to encourage infants aged 6 to 8 months to gradually increase the peak acceleration of their leg movements. The ultimate challenge is to determine if a socially assistive humanoid robot can guide infant learning using contingent rewards, where the reward threshold is personalized for each infant using a reinforcement learning algorithm. The model learned from the data captured by wearable inertial sensors measuring infant leg movement accelerations in an earlier study. Each infant generated a unique model that determined the behavior of the robot. The presented results were obtained from the distributions of the participants' acceleration peaks and demonstrate that the resulting model is sensitive to the degree of differentiation among the participants; each participant (infant) should have his/her own learned policy.This work was supported by NSF award 1706964 (PI: Smith, Co-PI: Matarić). In addition, this work was developed during an international mobility program at the University of Southern California being also partially funded by the European Union ECHORD++ project (FP7-ICT-601116), the LifeBots project (TIN2015-65686-C5) and THERAPIST project (TIN2012-38079)

Why Robots Should Be Social: Enhancing Machine Learning through Social Human-Robot Interaction.

Social learning is a powerful method for cultural propagation of knowledge and skills relying on a complex interplay of learning strategies, social ecology and the human propensity for both learning and tutoring. Social learning has the potential to be an equally potent learning strategy for artificial systems and robots in specific. However, given the complexity and unstructured nature of social learning, implementing social machine learning proves to be a challenging problem. We study one particular aspect of social machine learning: that of offering social cues during the learning interaction. Specifically, we study whether people are sensitive to social cues offered by a learning robot, in a similar way to children's social bids for tutoring. We use a child-like social robot and a task in which the robot has to learn the meaning of words. For this a simple turn-based interaction is used, based on language games. Two conditions are tested: one in which the robot uses social means to invite a human teacher to provide information based on what the robot requires to fill gaps in its knowledge (i.e. expression of a learning preference); the other in which the robot does not provide social cues to communicate a learning preference. We observe that conveying a learning preference through the use of social cues results in better and faster learning by the robot. People also seem to form a "mental model" of the robot, tailoring the tutoring to the robot's performance as opposed to using simply random teaching. In addition, the social learning shows a clear gender effect with female participants being responsive to the robot's bids, while male teachers appear to be less receptive. This work shows how additional social cues in social machine learning can result in people offering better quality learning input to artificial systems, resulting in improved learning performance

Early childhood feeding practices and dental caries in preschool children: a multi-centre birth cohort study

Extent: 7p.Background Dental caries (decay) is an international public health challenge, especially amongst young children. Early Childhood Caries is a rapidly progressing disease leading to severe pain, anxiety, sepsis and sleep loss, and is a major health problem particularly for disadvantaged populations. There is currently a lack of research exploring the interactions between risk and protective factors in the development of early childhood caries, in particular the effects of infant feeding practises. Methods/Design This is an observational cohort study and involves the recruitment of a birth cohort from disadvantaged communities in South Western Sydney. Mothers will be invited to join the study soon after the birth of their child at the time of the first home visit by Child and Family Health Nurses. Data on feeding practices and dental health behaviours will be gathered utilizing a telephone interview at 4, 8 and 12 months, and thereafter at 6 monthly intervals until the child is aged 5 years. Information collected will include a) initiation and duration of breastfeeding, b) introduction of solid food, c) intake of cariogenic and non-cariogenic foods, d) fluoride exposure, and e) oral hygiene practices. Children will have a dental and anthropometric examination at 2 and 5 years of age and the main outcome measures will be oral health quality of life, caries prevalence and caries incidence. Discussion This study will provide evidence of the association of early childhood feeding practices and the oral health of preschool children. In addition, information will be collected on breastfeeding practices and the oral health concerns of mothers living in disadvantaged areas in South Western Sydney.Amit Arora, Jane A Scott, Sameer Bhole, Loc Do, Eli Schwarz and Anthony S Blinkhor

Relação entre as palavras eliciadas na Avaliação Fonológica da Criança e as variáveis idade, gênero e gravidade do desvio fonológico Relationship between words elicited in the Children Phonological Assessment and the variables age, gender and severity level of the phonological disorders

OBJETIVO: Verificar a relação entre as palavras pertencentes e não pertencentes à Avaliação Fonológica da Criança (AFC) e as variáveis idade, gênero e gravidade do desvio fonológico (DF), e analisar as palavras produzidas e as palavras substituídas com maior frequência na AFC. MÉTODOS: Fizeram parte do estudo 45 crianças com DF, de ambos os gêneros, com idades entre 4 anos e 7 anos e 11 meses. O corpus de fala foi composto por 6463 palavras, que foram divididas em palavras pertencentes ou não à AFC. A amostra foi dividida quanto à faixa etária, à gravidade do desvio fonológico e ao gênero. Os dados foram analisados estatisticamente. RESULTADOS: Houve maior produção de palavras não pertencentes à AFC e relação significativa entre a palavra pertencer ou não ao AFC quanto à faixa etária, gênero e gravidade do DF. As palavras-alvo enunciadas com maior frequência foram equivalentes a nomes de objetos do dia a dia da criança, ao contrário das substituições, que foram mais frequentes quando a palavra-alvo correspondia a objetos não conhecidos visualmente pelas crianças. CONCLUSÃO: A produção de palavras pertencentes à AFC é influenciada pela idade, gênero e gravidade do DF. É fundamental que nas palavras selecionadas para uma avaliação fonológica sejam consideradas tais variáveis, bem como, aspectos regionais, classe gramatical de substantivo, e o repertório da criança.<br>PURPOSE: To verify the relationship between words belonging and not belonging to the Children Phonological Assessment (CPA) and the variables age, gender, and severity level of phonological disorders (PD), and to analyze the most frequently produced and substituted words in the CPA. METHODS: Participants were 45 children with PD of both genders, aged between 4 years and 7 years and 11 months. The speech corpus was composed of 6463 words, divided into belonging and not belonging in the CPA. The sample was divided according to age, gender and severity level of the PD. Data were statistically analyzed. RESULTS: There was greater production of words not belonging in the CPA, and significant relationship between belonging or not belonging in the CPA according to age, gender, and severity level of PD. The target-words produced more frequently were those referring to names of objects belonging to the daily routine of children, unlike substitutions, which were more frequent when the target-word corresponded to objects visually unknown to the children. CONCLUSION: The production of the words belonging in the CPA is influenced by age, gender and severity level of phonological disorders. It is essential that the words selected for a phonological assessment consider these variables, as well as regional aspects, grammatical class of noun, and the child's repertory