242 research outputs found
Development of neuropsychological measures: Personal experience and lessons learnt
No full textThis paper briefly reviews the history and purposes of neuropsychological assessment, as well as advancements in this area, and discusses the development of neuropsychological tests, using examples developed by the author and his colleagues to measure different aspects of human memory. These include the Shum Visual Learning Test, the Australian Retrograde Memory Test, the Comprehensive Assessment of Prospective Memory and the Virtual Reality Prospective Memory Task. The intended uses and psychometric properties of these tests, as well as examples of their use in research and clinical settings, will also be discussed. The paper will conclude with recommendations and advice on the development of neuropsychological tests based on the author's own experience.Griffith Health, School of Applied PsychologyNo Full Tex
Fast Transformations with Walsh-Hadamard Functions
Get PDFTitle: Fast Transformations with Walsh-Hadamard Functions, Author: Frank Y.Y. Shum, Location: ThodeIn this thesis, various techniques to generate Walsh-Hadamard functions are discussed. Efficient algorithms to compute the discrete Walsh-Hadamard transform have been derived and implemented. The design of a simple, but very fast, digital circuit that can perform the transform or its inverse is presented. These algorithms have been applied to the processing of speech for the investigation of bit rate reduction. Intelligible speech has been reconstructed from 8 or 4 dominant Walsh-Hadamard coefficients out of a field of 64, with a constant update time of 8 milliseconds, on a CDC-1700 computer.ThesisMaster of Engineering (ME
Design and development of smart data dissemination system
No full textThis project cannot be completed without the great mentorship of the author’s supervisor, Prof Perry Shum Ping. Hence, the author would like to appreciate his expertise, understanding and generous guidance throughout the process. Especially during Prof Shum’s busy schedule, he still made time to meet the author weekly for project update and give his suggestion on the progress. He not only directed and supervised the author, but also provided pragamtic solution on applying theoretical knowledge onto the real practice.
Moreover, the author would like to express her sincere graditude to her co- supervisor, Dr. Shao Xuguang, for inspiring the student by regular catch up and building the student community to boost the interactive communication within fellow FYP participants.
The appreciation also goes to Du Hao, a current staff in School of Electrical and Electronics, for his constant support and guidance on the technical aspects of the project, as well as the sharing of his previous experience.
Last but not least, the author would like to indicate her deepest gratitude toward School of Electrical and Electronics and Nanyang Technological University, for providing the wonderful academic ambience and the most significant education to the author and trained her to be such a professional in software engineering industry.Bachelor of Engineerin
Characteristics of suspended-core fiber interferometer : modal analysis
No full textSuspended-core fiber (SCF) represents a promising class of microstructured optical fibers for sensing applications. In this work, we present a thorough modal analysis of the SCF based modal interferometer which is constructed by splicing 50 mm of SCF to single mode fiber at both ends. The measured transmission spectrum exhibits three-beam interference-like spectrum. In the modal analysis, we investigate the intermodal coupling between the fundamental and higher-order modes, as well as the coupling between the orthogonal polarizations in the fundamental modes. In comparison with the typical two-mode interferences in photonic crystal fiber interferometers, the measured spectrum of SCF interferometer has distinctively sharper spectrum for high resolution and high dynamic range application
Multi-layer Lattice Model for Real-Time Dynamic Character Deformation
No full textDue to the recent advancement of computer graphics hardware and software algorithms, deformable characters have become more and more popular in real-time applications such as computer games. While there are mature techniques to generate primary deformation from skeletal movement, simulating realistic and stable secondary deformation such as jiggling of fats remains challenging. On one hand, traditional volumetric approaches such as the finite element method require higher computational cost and are infeasible for limited hardware such as game consoles. On the other hand, while shape matching based simulations can produce plausible deformation in real-time, they suffer from a stiffness problem in which particles either show unrealistic deformation due to high gains, or cannot catch up with the body movement. In this paper, we propose a unified multi-layer lattice model to simulate the primary and secondary deformation of skeleton-driven characters. The core idea is to voxelize the input character mesh into multiple anatomical layers including the bone, muscle, fat and skin. Primary deformation is applied on the bone voxels with lattice-based skinning. The movement of these voxels is propagated to other voxel layers using lattice shape matching simulation, creating a natural secondary deformation. Our multi-layer lattice framework can produce simulation quality comparable to those from other volumetric approaches with a significantly smaller computational cost. It is best to be applied in real-time applications such as console games or interactive animation creation
Prospective memory in patients with closed head injury: A review
No full textThis paper aimed to review the limited, but growing literature on prospective memory (PM) following closed head injury (CHI). Search of two commonly used databases yielded studies that could be classified as: self- or other-report of PM deficits; behavioral PM measures in adults with CHI, behavioral PM measures in children and adolescents with CHI, and treatment of PM in adults with CHI. The methodology and findings of these studies were critically reviewed and discussed. Because of the small number of studies, meta-analysis was only conducted for studies that used behavioral PM measures in adults to integrate findings. PM deficits were found to be commonly reported by patients with CHI and their significant others and they could be identified using behavioral measures in adults, children and adolescents with CHI. However, more work is needed to clarify the nature and mechanisms of these deficits. Although some promising results have been reported by studies that evaluated PM treatment, most studies lack tight experimental control and used only a small number of participants. The paper concluded with some suggestions for future research. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Often Forgetting to do Things: What, Why and How not to?
No full textWe rely on prospective memory (PM) to carry out intended actions at an appropriate time in the future. This ability is very important for day-to-day functioning, for example, remembering to take medication, attend appointments and pay bills. The literature covering the topic of PM has increased exponentially in the past 20-30 years. This paper will describe this relatively novel form of memory and discuss the debilitating effect PM deficits have on everyday living. It will also examine the populations who experience significantly more frequent and severe PM impairments and explore the causes and mechanisms of PM impairments by reviewing behavioural, clinical, genetic and neuroimaging studies. The paper will conclude by discussing the latest research into ways of treating PM impairments in clinical populations. Where applicable, examples of research conducted by the author and his colleagues will be used to illustrate these topics.Griffith Health, School of Applied PsychologyFull Tex
The effects of perceptual training on the production qualities of nonnative speech
No full textA recent study demonstrated that high-variability perceptual training (HVPT) helped native Cantonese-speaking adults distinguish among English words that differ in the voicing quality of the final phoneme (e.g., unvoiced or voiced, as in tap vs. tab) (Shum, Kit-fong Au, Romo & Jun, 2021). Using the production data from Shum et al.’s (2021) study, we investigated whether the production qualities of their speech were also influenced by training. Research shows that training can make second language (L2) speech more comprehensible, but the impact training has on L2 acoustic features is not fully understood.The present thesis addressed this gap by measuring L2 comprehensibility (Study 1), conducting fine-grained analyses on select L1 and L2 acoustic features of L2 speech (Study 2), and examining the acoustic qualities of the English stimuli (Study 3). While L2 comprehensibility did not improve after training, L2 speakers tended to use acoustic features found in English (i.e., vowel duration) rather than Cantonese (i.e., aspiration) in production.
Further inspection of the data suggested that L2 productions that were acoustically more English- like, were also more comprehensible. Lastly, an examination of the English stimuli revealed that vowel duration was robust, perhaps leading L2 speakers to perceive, and later implement vowel duration differences during production.
These findings suggest that the specific qualities associated with training stimuli can influence the degree to which training is successful. More research is needed to investigate the link between L2 perception and production to fully understand how the perception of robust cues may influence production.M.S.Includes bibliographical reference
Transgression, ambivalence and self-reflexivity : sex and laughter in the Jingpingmei
No full textThe Jinpingmei, as an open text, is susceptible to different interpretations. But instead of fixing the interpretation within an ideological framework, I choose to focus on the two transgressive textual elements of sex and laughter, and demonstrate how they work together to contribute to the ambivalent structure of the novel. Considering the morally provocative and aesthetically allusive quality of the rhetorical use of sex and laughter, the study shows that the text has embodied within itself an ambivalence to transgress an established moral threshold. The study on sex and laughter has also led to the question of intertextual play which is partly subordinated to the rhetorical convention of the novelistic discourse, and partly manipulated by the self-conscious author to flaunt his talent. The study shows that the literatus' indulgence in the verbal act is no less excessive than the indulgence of the erotic characters. He has consciously or unconsciously created a metafiction in which the story of the libertine is built upon a multitude of other stories.Through the implied author's narrative voice and its dialogic relationship with the characters, the novel is implicitly seen as an expression of the author's self/other. The frustration as well as the unfulfilled desire of the female figures as narrative object is seen as an oblique reflection of the author's fe/male subjectivity. While the author is subject to the literary convention of using the image of "beauty and flowers" (meiren xiangcao) for self-expression, the female characters, presented as libertine both sympathetic and condemnable, reflect the ambivalence of the author's urge to subvert the stereotypical convention and his anxiety to search for an identity against a constellation of multiple values and ethics. Through his subversion of the rhetorical image of beauty and flowers, the discourse can also be interpreted as a self-parody of the author.</p
Jean Starobinski and the critical gaze
Get PDFThis paper explores Jean Starobinski's often tacit conception of the implied author, with a view to clarifying his intellectual legacy for literary criticism. It argues that it is plausible to trace a certain strand in the intellectual genealogy of Starobinski's literary theory from the descriptive psychology of Wilhelm Dilthey to twentieth-century psychoanalysis and phenomenology. Accordingly, the question "Who is Jean Starobinski?" is formulated in a sense which seeks to move beyond the bare facticity of biographical detail, a sense that can be expected to differentiate between scholarly and purely journalistic enquiry to ask: who, exactly, is the Jean Starobinski that we encounter in his major works - works like "The Living Eye" and "Transparency and Obstruction"? It is from this vantage point that the discussion proceeds to clarify Starobinski's ambivalent relations to both Rousseau and Freud, and thereby to illuminate some of the tensions and nuances inherent in his notion of the implied author
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