Optimal Acoustic Reverberation Evaluation of Byzantine Chanting in Churches

(Abstract to follow

Modeling Reader's Emotional State Response on Document's Typographic Elements

We present the results of an experimental study towards modeling the reader's emotional state variations induced by the typographic elements in electronic documents. Based on the dimensional theory of emotions we investigate how typographic elements, like font style (bold, italics, bold-italics) and font (type, size, color and background color), affect the reader's emotional states, namely, Pleasure, Arousal, and Dominance (PAD). An experimental procedure was implemented conforming to International Affective Picture System guidelines and incorporating the Self-Assessment Manikin test. Thirty students participated in the experiment. The stimulus was a short paragraph of text for which any content, emotion, and/or domain dependent information was excluded. The Analysis of Variance revealed the dependency of (a) all the three emotional dimensions on font size and font/background color combinations and (b) the Pleasure dimension on font type and font style. We introduce a set of mapping rules showing how PAD vary on the discrete values of font style and font type elements. Moreover, we introduce a set of equations describing the PAD dimensions' dependency on font size. This novel model can contribute to the automated reader's emotional state extraction in order, for example, to enhance the acoustic rendition of the documents, utilizing text-to-speech synthesis

Grounding the Simulation of Iconic Gestures in Gesture Typology

Bergmann K, Kopp S, Rieser H. Grounding the Simulation of Iconic Gestures in Gesture Typology. In: Efthimiou E, Kouroupetroglou G, eds. Proceedings of the 9th International Gesture Workshop: Gestures in Embodied Communication and Human-Computer Interaction. Berlin/Heidelberg, Germany: Springer; 2011: 33-36

World-Wide-Web Supporting for the Learning of NonOrthographic

This paper describes the design and the implementation of a novel integrated open system for the effective supporting, through the World-Wide-Web (WWW), of multiple non-orthographic languages' learning. The teacher can access educational material and rich multimedia representations of meanings and formulate student specific courseware according to individual needs. After a user requirement analysis, the architecture of the systems is presented along with implementation issues. The system fulfills the crucial need to prepare, organize and update the training material on time, free of those constrains brought by location or operation platform and with an efficient economic way for the teacher of non-orthographic languages for an efficient, learner centered, education. The system allows an individual or a team of teachers to focus on content specification and other high level tasks, while developing course

Text Normalization for the Pronunciation of Non-Standard Words in an Inflected Language

In this paper we present a novel approach, called Text to Pronunciation (TtP), for the proper normalization of Non-Standard Words (NSWs) in unrestricted texts. The methodology deals with inflection issues for the consistency of the NSWs with the syntactic structure of the utterances they belong to. Moreover, for the achievement of an augmented auditory representation of NSWs in Text-to-Speech (TtS) systems, we introduce the coupling of the standard normalizer with: i) a language generator that compiles pronunciation formats and ii) VoiceXML attributes for the guidance of the underlying TtS to imitate the human speaking style in the case of numbers. For the evaluation of the above model in the Greek language we have used a 158K word corpus with 4499 numerical expressions. We achieved an internal error rate of 7,67% however, only 1,02% were perceivable errors due to the nature of the language

Designing an educational scenario using the principles of Universal Design for Learning

Grounded on new research in neuroscience Universal Design for Learning (UDL) constitutes an educational approach that promotes access, participation and progress in the general curriculum for all. UDL recognises the need to create opportunities for the inclusion of diverse learners by providing curricula and instructional activities that allow for multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement. In the first decade of its development, the emphasis in the domain of UDL was on the use of technology to inclusive education and accessibility for the disabled. Although UDL has great potential it has been hard to implement on a large scale. UDL requires collaborative planning amongst teachers with different curriculum knowledge and skills. Complaints that are often raised include lack of time to co-plan and lack of resources to teach a differentiated curriculum. Open Discovery Space is a portal to browse and build educational content, lesson plans and scenarios. In order to bridge the gap between policies and practice in applying UDL, we present the adaptation of an educational scenario template so as to incorporate the UDL principles