1,720,954 research outputs found

    Impact of Different Speech Interfaces of Personal Devices on Users' Perception

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    Because of Text-to-Speech (TTS) lacks both clarity and prosody of normal human speech, TTS sounds unnatural and is unpleasant to listen to. It is generally accepted using natural speech for a static prompts, whereas synthetic speech for dynamic content. However, most commercial applications on the market adopt mixing human speech and TTS within the same sentence and/or between sentences. But, this mixing approach led to inconsistent interface (Gong & Lai, 2001). So that, an immediate issue in the design of such speech interface is what type of speech should be used. The goal of this project is to explore users’ perception towards different types of speech in order to investigate the acceptability of personal speech interfaces. This study is aimed for the public users of mobile applications. This project explored redevelopment of the speech interface of the Goal Management Training (GMT) system based on results from testing different speech samples by the delivered VoiceTester mobile application. The VoiceTester application has been developed on the iPhone in this study, to facilitate the listening task therefore adding validity to the responses from participants by simulating environment of speech interfaces on personal devices. The contribution of this study is to provide some knowledge to the developers and health researchers about exploring the impact of different types of speech interfaces on users’ perception. The findings are ultimately helpful to the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients. As the recommended software will assist them undertake activities with support to help prevent them from making errors (McPherson, Kayes, & Weatherall, 2009). Six participants from different age groups have been chosen in the form of 3 couples, each couple construct of both genders. The examined types of speech are computer-generated voice (CV), natural voice (NV), and familiar voice (FV). The synthetic voices were generated by computer software, the natural speech samples were provided by two native speakers of New Zealand English, and the familiar voices for each couple were simply the recording of each other voices. Participants completed three times a post paper-and-pencil self-perception of task performance scales after each listening test, and then followed by an interview. The evaluative data were used to inform the participants and the researcher about the study and to guide the interview process. The main methods were largely qualitative through the use of semi-structured interviews to explore the users’ perception about manner of speaking and the speaker of the three examined speech samples, as well as, to investigate the importance of the used voice characteristics. The interviews are analysed to discover themes and patterns related to an analysis framework structured from the literature review. The findings revealed differences between three couples in their perceptions of different types of speech. The effect of gender was slightly present, as the subjects revealed a more positive attitude to their opposite gender. Both human voices, NV and FV, were acceptable to the majority of participants with many reporting improved mood and goal attainment. Participants found working with CV both challenging and rewarding. NV seemed particularly helpful in engaging people in the task process, while FV appeared particularly helpful in providing a structured framework for error prevention in attempting goal performance

    Impact of different speech interfaces of personal devices on users' perception

    No full text
    Because of Text-to-Speech (TTS) lacks both clarity and prosody of normal human speech, TTS sounds unnatural and is unpleasant to listen to. It is generally accepted using natural speech for a static prompts, whereas synthetic speech for dynamic content. However, most commercial applications on the market adopt mixing human speech and TTS within the same sentence and/or between sentences. But, this mixing approach led to inconsistent interface (Gong & Lai, 2001). So that, an immediate issue in the design of such speech interface is what type of speech should be used. The goal of this project is to explore users’ perception towards different types of speech in order to investigate the acceptability of personal speech interfaces. This study is aimed for the public users of mobile applications. This project explored redevelopment of the speech interface of the Goal Management Training (GMT) system based on results from testing different speech samples by the delivered VoiceTester mobile application. The VoiceTester application has been developed on the iPhone in this study, to facilitate the listening task therefore adding validity to the responses from participants by simulating environment of speech interfaces on personal devices. The contribution of this study is to provide some knowledge to the developers and health researchers about exploring the impact of different types of speech interfaces on users’ perception. The findings are ultimately helpful to the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) patients. As the recommended software will assist them undertake activities with support to help prevent them from making errors (McPherson, Kayes, & Weatherall, 2009). Six participants from different age groups have been chosen in the form of 3 couples, each couple construct of both genders. The examined types of speech are computer-generated voice (CV), natural voice (NV), and familiar voice (FV). The synthetic voices were generated by computer software, the natural speech samples were provided by two native speakers of New Zealand English, and the familiar voices for each couple were simply the recording of each other voices. Participants completed three times a post paper-and-pencil self-perception of task performance scales after each listening test, and then followed by an interview. The evaluative data were used to inform the participants and the researcher about the study and to guide the interview process. The main methods were largely qualitative through the use of semi-structured interviews to explore the users’ perception about manner of speaking and the speaker of the three examined speech samples, as well as, to investigate the importance of the used voice characteristics. The interviews are analysed to discover themes and patterns related to an analysis framework structured from the literature review. The findings revealed differences between three couples in their perceptions of different types of speech. The effect of gender was slightly present, as the subjects revealed a more positive attitude to their opposite gender. Both human voices, NV and FV, were acceptable to the majority of participants with many reporting improved mood and goal attainment. Participants found working with CV both challenging and rewarding. NV seemed particularly helpful in engaging people in the task process, while FV appeared particularly helpful in providing a structured framework for error prevention in attempting goal performance

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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