246 research outputs found
A Deep Learning-Based Emotion Recognition Pipeline for Public Speaking Anxiety Detection in Social Robotics
No full textSocial robots are increasingly employed as personalized coaches in educational settings, offering new opportunities for applications such as public speaking training. In this domain, emotional self-regulation plays a crucial role, especially for students presenting in a non-native language. This study proposes a novel pipeline for detecting public speaking anxiety (PSA) using multimodal emotion recognition. Unlike traditional datasets that typically rely on acted emotions, we consider spontaneous data from students interacting naturally with a social robot coach. Emotional labels are generated through knowledge distillation, enabling the creation of soft labels that reflect the emotional valence of each presentation. We introduce a lightweight multimodal model that integrates speech prosody and body posture to classify speakers by anxiety level, without relying on linguistic content. Evaluated on a collected dataset of student presentations, the system achieves 74.67% accuracy and an F1-score of 0.64. The model can operate completely disconnected from the transmission network on an NVIDIA Jetson board, safeguarding data privacy and demonstrating its feasibility for real-world deployment
Robots Learning to Say `No': Prohibition and Rejective Mechanisms in Acquisition of Linguistic Negation
No full text`No' belongs to the first ten words used by children and embodies the first
active form of linguistic negation. Despite its early occurrence the details of
its acquisition process remain largely unknown. The circumstance that `no'
cannot be construed as a label for perceptible objects or events puts it
outside of the scope of most modern accounts of language acquisition. Moreover,
most symbol grounding architectures will struggle to ground the word due to its
non-referential character. In an experimental study involving the child-like
humanoid robot iCub that was designed to illuminate the acquisition process of
negation words, the robot is deployed in several rounds of speech-wise
unconstrained interaction with na\"ive participants acting as its language
teachers. The results corroborate the hypothesis that affect or volition plays
a pivotal role in the socially distributed acquisition process. Negation words
are prosodically salient within prohibitive utterances and negative intent
interpretations such that they can be easily isolated from the teacher's speech
signal. These words subsequently may be grounded in negative affective states.
However, observations of the nature of prohibitive acts and the temporal
relationships between its linguistic and extra-linguistic components raise
serious questions over the suitability of Hebbian-type algorithms for language
grounding.Comment: Submitted journal article. 21 pages main paper plus 28 pages
supplementary information / appendix. 8 figures in main pape
Multiple motivations for imitation in infancy
No full textAs the chapters in this book attest, during the last decade the study of imitation has become a topic of central importance through a diverse range of disciplines. There have been a greater number of controlled studies of imitation in non-human animals than ever before. Possible neural foundations of imitation have been identified. Encouraging progress has been made in developing imitation in constructed systems. Our understanding of the processes and mechanisms of imitation has been markedly advanced. Nonetheless, during this period most researchers have primarily focused on how imitation facilitates the acquisition of new skills or behaviours. In so doing, some important aspects of imitation have been neglected. In human development, infants imitate for a wide variety of reasons, both within and across different developmental stages and within and across different contexts. More specifically, for human infants imitation is an important form of pre-verbal communication that provides a means by which they can engage in social interaction. Our aim in this chapter is to provide an overview of the evidence that infants imitate not only to acquire new skills but also to engage socially with others, and this social engagement can itself take a number of different forms, with imitation being used flexibly as a means to various social ends. Before going further a brief note on definition is warranted
Evolution in Asynchronous Cellular Automata
No full textBuilding on the work of Von Neumann, Langton, and Sayama among others, we introduce the rst examples of evolution in populations of self-reproducing con gurations in asynchronous cellular automata. Reliance on a global synchronous update signal has been a limitation of all solutions since the problem of achieving self-production in cellular automata was rst attacked by Von Neumann half a century ago. Results of the author obviate the need for this restriction
Current work and open problems:: A road-map for research into the emergence of communication and language
No full textThis book brings together work on the emergence of communication and language from researchers working in a broad array of scientific paradigms in North America, Europe, Japan and Africa. © 2007 Springer-Verlag London
Emergence of Communication and Language : Language Change among ‘Memoryless Learners’ Simulated in Language Dynamics Equations
No full textLanguage change is considered as a transition of a user population among languages. Language dynamics equations represent such a transition of population. Our purpose in this paper is to develop a new formalism of language dynamics based on a realistic situation of multiple language contact. We assume a situation where memoryless learners are exposed to a number of languages. Our experiments show that contact with other language speakers during the acquisition of a first language reduces learning accuracy and prevents the emergence of a dominant language. We suppose there is a special communicative language which has a higher similarity to some languages than others; when learners are frequently exposed to a variety of languages, these similar languages attract a relatively higher proportion of the population. We discuss the simulation results from the viewpoint of the language bioprogram hypothesis
"Needs only" analysis in linguistic ontogeny and phylogeny
No full textThis chapter reviews the legacy and formulation of the authority behind emphatic 20th century guidance on daylight design. The degree to which these standards were created in response to the experience of industrial atmospheres in Britain is perhaps unsurprising, however, the extrapolation and determination of standards from precedent has a much less logical path. Whereas the quantification of artificial light was ultimately required to enable its commodification for sale, estimates of adequate quantities of daylight would be based on human experience and methods for its measurement derived in part from seemingly obscure coincidences of legal precedent and anecdotal suggestion
“The end of The Dreyfus affair”: (Post)Heideggerian meditations on man, machine and meaning
No full textIn this paper, the possibility of developing a Heideggerian solution to the Schizophrenia Problem associated with cognitive technologies is investigated. This problem arises as a result of the computer bracketing emotion from cognition during human-computer interaction and results in human psychic self-amputation. It is argued that in order to solve the Schizophrenia Problem, it is necessary to first solve the 'hard problem' of consciousness since emotion is at least partially experiential. Heidegger's thought, particularly as interpreted by Hubert Dreyfus, appears relevant in this regard since it ostensibly provides the basis for solving the 'hard problem' via the construction of artificial systems capable of the emergent generation of conscious experience. However, it will be shown that Heidegger's commitment to a non-experiential conception of nature renders this whole approach problematic, thereby necessitating consideration of alternative, post-Heideggerian approaches to solving the Schizophrenia Problem
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