Search results for "speech"
showing 10 items of 1281 documents
Communicative spontaneity in autism: exploring supportive prompts in an educational context
2014
The purpose of this article was to describe a Finnish research project concerning communicative spontaneity in pupils with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD is a behavioural syndrome which is neurobiological in origin and which involves atypical developmental dysfunctions in the brain. The essential features are persistent impairment in reciprocal social communication and social interaction, and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interest, and activities. However, an important part of flexible interaction is functional communication between partners, and spontaneity is a critical aspect of functional communication. Communicative spontaneity can be assessed by examining the rela…
Cueing complex animations: Does direction of attention foster learning processes?
2011
Abstract The time course of learners’ processing of a complex animation was studied using a dynamic diagram of a piano mechanism. Over successive repetitions of the material, two forms of cueing (standard colour cueing and anti-cueing) were administered either before or during the animated segment of the presentation. An uncued group and two other control conditions were also employed. Development of an internal representation of the movements depicted in the animation was evaluated through participant demonstrations of the mechanism’s operation on a replica piano mechanism. Eye tracking (fixation lengths) indicated that overall, conventional visuospatially-based cueing was largely ineffect…
Linguistic interpretation of speech errors
2016
The paper is an attempt to illustrate the linguistic interpretation of speech, known that it remains insufficiently resolved, especially for Romanian. The cause is given by the multitude of criteria that can or should be considered important in speech processing. The aim of this study is to develope a computational tool in order to identify the possible errors related to the morphosintactic structure of speech. Our goal is to assist users who can receive automatically different suggestions that can help them to improve the quality of their text. Thus, we chose an interdisciplinary approach through speech analysis that brings together the key fields of linguistics, computer science and so on…
2020
Visual attention-related processes include three functional sub-processes: alerting, orienting, and inhibition. We examined these sub-processes using reaction times, event-related potentials (ERPs), and their neuronal source activations during the Attention Network Test (ANT) in control children, attentional problems (AP) children, and reading difficulties (RD) children. During the ANT, electroencephalography was measured using 128 electrodes on three groups of Finnish sixth-graders aged 12-13 years (control = 77; AP = 15; RD = 23). Participants were asked to detect the direction of a middle target fish within a group of five fish. The target stimulus was either preceded by a cue (center, d…
Insults, humour and freedom of speech
2016
In this article we argue that freedom of speech should be understood as a social freedom. In the public discussion after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, it has often been understood as an absolute right to say anything – to offend, to make a fool of others and of oneself, and to express any opinion regardless of the consequences. We challenge this view and propose that advocating freedom of speech without understanding its social foundations is misleading and counterproductive. Based on the critical social theories of Erich Fromm, Charles Taylor and Axel Honneth, we show that there is an alternative tradition in which freedom is fundamentally rooted in social relations and therefore requires re…
On the importance of the prosodic component in the expression of linguistic im/politeness
2014
This paper outlines the important relationship between prosody and im/politeness and presents a brief overview of what has been done in this field. Sections 2, 3 and 4 present several theoretical concepts which are especially relevant for understanding im/politeness in concrete frameworks (mainly in conversation). Section 5 points out the necessity of studying a pragmatic phenomenon like im/politeness with its prosodic expression. Finally, section 6 discusses some studies in this field on different languages, with a special focus on prosodic values like the F0 (pitch/fundamental frequency), intonation patterns, duration and speech rate. Keywords: F0, duration, speech rate, im/politeness, co…
Exploring Frequency-Dependent Brain Networks from Ongoing EEG Using Spatial ICA During Music Listening
2020
Recently, exploring brain activity based on functional networks during naturalistic stimuli especially music and video represents an attractive challenge because of the low signal-to-noise ratio in collected brain data. Although most efforts focusing on exploring the listening brain have been made through functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), sensor-level electro- or magnetoencephalography (EEG/MEG) technique, little is known about how neural rhythms are involved in the brain network activity under naturalistic stimuli. This study exploited cortical oscillations through analysis of ongoing EEG and musical feature during freely listening to music. We used a data-driven method that co…
Facial geometry and speech analysis for depression detection.
2017
Depression is one of the most prevalent mental disorders, burdening many people world-wide. A system with the potential of serving as a decision support system is proposed, based on novel features extracted from facial expression geometry and speech, by interpreting non-verbal manifestations of depression. The proposed system has been tested both in gender independent and gender based modes, and with different fusion methods. The algorithms were evaluated for several combinations of parameters and classification schemes, on the dataset provided by the Audio/Visual Emotion Challenge of 2013 and 2014. The proposed framework achieved a precision of 94.8% for detecting persons achieving high sc…
Demosthenes and the Greek Oral Culture in the Framework of Semiotic Textology. An Application of János Sándor Petőfi’s Theory to Classical Greek Lite…
2011
The intention of this paper is to show how Semiotic Textology, the theory elaborated by the Hungarian linguist János Sándor Petőfi, can be applied to a determinate case study. In order to perform this task, firstly the main aspects of the theoretical framework are presented and some specific aspects concerning the application to verbal texts are noted. Secondly an ancient text of Classical Greek Literature is analyzed within the above-mentioned framework. The text is the "On the Peace" speech (Περὶ τῆς Εἰρήνης) composed by the Attic orator Demosthenes. Of the 25 paragraphs of the speech (divided in 3 different sections) only paragraphs 1-12 are considered, in order to evidence some interest…