Spotting Agreement and Disagreement: A Survey of Nonverbal Audiovisual Cues and Tools

While detecting and interpreting temporal patterns of non–verbal behavioral cues in a given context is a natural and often unconscious process for humans, it remains a rather difficult task for computer systems. Nevertheless, it is an important one to achieve if the goal is to realise a naturalistic communication between humans and machines. Machines that are able to sense social attitudes like agreement and disagreement and respond to them in a meaningful way are likely to be welcomed by users due to the more natural, efficient and human–centered interaction they are bound to experience. This paper surveys the nonverbal cues that could be present during agreement and disagreement behavioural displays and lists a number of tools that could be useful in detecting them, as well as a few publicly available databases that could be used to train these tools for analysis of spontaneous, audiovisual instances of agreement and disagreement

A psycho-ethological approach to social signal processing

The emerging field of social signal processing can benefit from a theoretical framework to guide future research activities. The present article aims at drawing attention to two areas of research that devoted considerable efforts to the understanding of social behaviour: ethology and social psychology. With a long tradition in the study of animal signals, ethology and evolutionary biology have developed theoretical concepts to account for the functional significance of signalling. For example, the consideration of divergent selective pressures responsible for the evolution of signalling and social cognition emphasized the importance of two classes of indicators: informative cues and communicative signals. Social psychology, on the other hand, investigates emotional expression and interpersonal relationships, with a focus on the mechanisms underlying the production and interpretation of social signals and cues. Based on the theoretical considerations developed in these two fields, we propose a model that integrates the processing of perceivable individual features (social signals and cues) with contextual information, and we suggest that output of computer-based processing systems should be derived in terms of functional significance rather than in terms of absolute conceptual meanin

The proximate mechanisms and ultimate functions of smiles

Niedenthal et al's classification of smiles erroneously conflates psychological mechanisms and adaptive functions. This confusion weakens the rationale behind the types of smiles they chose to individuate, and it obfuscates the distinction between the communicative versus denotative nature of smiles and the role of perceived-gaze direction in emotion recognitio

Conceptual analysis of social signals: the importance of clarifying terminology

As a burgeoning field, Social Signal Processing (SSP) needs a solid grounding in the disciplines that have developed important concepts in the study of communication. However, the number and diversity of terms developed in linguistics, psychology, and the behavioural sciences may seem confusing for scholars who are not versed in the subtleties of conceptual analysis and theoretical developments. Indeed, different disciplines sometimes use the same term to mean different things or, conversely, use different terms to mean the same thing. The goals of this article are to present an overview of the different concepts developed in the various disciplines that studied animal and human communication, and to understand the differences and commonalities between concepts emerging from these disciplines. We conclude that such an understanding will greatly improve the efficiency of pluridisciplinary research projects, for the advancement of SSP requires that we look at the complexity of communication from different angle

Evaluating an Open Educational Resource (OER) Rubric

A rubric can serve as an assessment tool of more than just a students work. Instructors can use rubrics to preemptively analyze how a given resource can aid in a students’ achievement of set course objectives. It can also serve as a way for instructors to find the necessary tools for them to guide their students towards achieving the set course objectives. That said, this particular rubric aims to aid in the discovery, adaptation, and adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER)

A Colony’s State of Sovereignty: Decolonization Has Yet to Take Place In Rwanda

Martin Shipway, renowned author of Decolonization and Its Impact and professor of twentieth-century French Studies stated that: [...]it took only about twenty years for most of the formal structures and institutions of colonialism [...]to be swept away.[The] often violent and intermittently intense period of crisis[...] [explains] an international phenomenon as complex as decolonization[...] . Yet this quote by Shipway does not speak to the fact that independence from former colonial powers has not been fully achieved and neither has decolonization. According to the documentation of the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, the former German/Belgian colony of Rwanda did not achieve the “complex international phenomenon”. It can be argued that despite being granted independence in 1962 the Belgian divide and conquer policy, implemented in 1916, still continued to foster separation and hatred amongst the Tutsi and Hutu tribes. Which would lead to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, that would, in turn, shape the nation in the years to come; particularly in its government. Paul Kagame, the former commander of the rebel forces who ended the 1994 genocide, is the current President after having taken power in March of 2000. What role does the Belgian government or oligarchy have on the Rwandan government since as well as prior to the genocide? Aside from the genocide what is the legacy left behind by the Belgians and the Germans? What does it say that President Kagame is still president after 17 years? Can his administration be seen now as a dictatorship? What are the sentiments of the Rwandan people? Do the Germans presently hold sway in Rwanda? Is there political, economic or social unrest in the country today? Frantz Fanon a psychiatrist, philosopher, revolutionary, and writer once said in The Wretched of the Earth: [for] a colonized people an essential value [...] is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity. With his quote, Fanon highlights the struggle of the Rwandan people, which rested on the whim of the tribe in power, before the genocide and which would be among the catalysts for it. Can complete independence be achieved when the echoes of the colonial period can still be seen and heard? Can decolonization truly occur within a nation whose history and traditions have been rewritten or erased to suit the pleasures of the colonial fathers

An evolutionary approach to human social behaviour : the case of smiling and laughing

Living in large groups is, for many species, an adaptive solution to survival and reproductive issues. It followed that in primates, and even more so humans, communication evolved into a complex signalling system that includes language, nonverbal vocalisations such as laughter, and facial expressions. A series of studies were designed to address the function of smiling and laughter through an analysis of context and consequences. First, naturalistic observations were conducted in areas where people could be watched interacting in stable social groups. Focal sampling of men and women allowed the recording of smiling and laughter frequencies, as well as other interpersonal aspects such as talking and listening time, and body contacts. Smiles were classified in two categories: spontaneous and forced. A test based on predictions derived from three hypotheses (mate choice, social competition, and cooperation) revealed that spontaneous smiling and laughter are likely to be involved in the formation of cooperative relationships. A closer examination of dyadic interactions revealed that smiling was related to talking and listening time, whereas female's vocalised laughter positively affected the partner's speech output. Finally, smiling and laughter rates increased the probability of observing affiliative body contacts between individuals. A second set of studies investigated the possibility that smiling could (1) advertise attributes relevant to the formation of social relationships, and (2) be a honest signal of altruistic dispositions. The assessment of various traits was examined through people's judgments of neutral and smiling photographs. Results showed that smiling faces were perceived as being significantly more attractive, more generous, healthier, more agreeable, more extroverted, and more open to experiences than their neutral counterparts. Interestingly, men were influenced by smiling in a much larger extent than women, particularly when smiling faces were female's. The rating study also revealed that people who displayed smiles involving an emotional component (Duchenne smiles) received higher scores on extroversion and generosity than people who did not, indicating that people's ratings of sociability and generosity are sensitive to facial movements that are not easy to produce on purpose. A final study investigated the effect of bargaining contexts on smiling and laughter rates between friends. Analysis of videotaped interactions showed that Duchenne smiling and vocalised laughter were displayed at significantly higher rates when people were involved in the sharing of material resources (as opposed to a control interaction). Moreover, data confirmed that Duchenne smiling could be a reliable signal of altruism, as its frequency of occurrence in the bargaining interaction was positively affected by measures of altruism. Finally, results showed that smiling and laughter could advertise personality traits as well as aspects of the relationship between sender and receiver. All in all, the present thesis indicates that smiling and laughter could be used adaptively to develop social alliances, and that this bonding process would entail the reliable advertisement of evolutionarily relevant attributes. The relevance of smiling to a behavioural style based on cooperation and prosocial activities is also discussed

Library Quarterly - December 2018

Quarterly Recap Invitation to Speak at the Library Retrospective: 22 Years at the Library Quarterly Funnies Faculty Pubs Lynn University Archives Have You Looked for LexisNexis Lately? Enter the ACE Awardshttps://spiral.lynn.edu/libpubs/1017/thumbnail.jp

Voice attractiveness: Influence of stimulus duration and type

Voice attractiveness is a relatively new area of research. Some aspects of the methodology used in this domain deserve particular attention. Especially, the duration of voice samples is often neglected as a factor and happens to be manipulated without the perceptual consequences of these manipulations being known. Moreover, the type of voice stimulus varies from a single vowel to complex sentences. The aim of this experiment was to investigate the extent to which stimulus duration (nonmanipulated vs. normalized) and type (vowel vs. word) influence perceived voice attractiveness. Twenty-seven male and female raters made attractiveness judgments of 30 male and female voice samples. Voice samples included a single vowel /a/, a three-vowel series /i a o/, and the French word "bonjour” (i.e., "hello”). These samples were presented in three conditions: nonmanipulated, shortened, and lengthened duration. Duration manipulation was performed using the pitch synchronous overlap and add (PSOLA) algorithm implemented in Praat. Results for the effect of stimulus type showed that word length samples were more attractive to the opposite sex than vowels. Results for the effect of duration showed that the nonmanipulated sound sample duration was not predictive of perceived attractiveness. Duration manipulation, on the other hand, altered perceived attractiveness for the lengthening condition. In particular, there was a linear decrease in attractiveness as a function of modification percentage (especially for the word, as compared with the vowels). Recommendations for voice sample normalization with the PSOLA algorithm are thus to prefer shortening over lengthening and, if not possible, to limit the extent of duration manipulation—for example, by normalizing to the mean sample duratio