The effect of using voice generation and recognition systems on the performance of dual tasks

Abstract

This paper presents the results of two experiments examining the effect of voice generation and recognition systems on dual-task performance. In the first experiment subjects performed a task combination consisting of a spatial short-term memory task and a verbal short-term memory task. In the second experiment the subjects performed a combination consisting of a one-dimensional compensatory tracking task and the verbal short-term memory task used in experiment I. In both experiments, stimuli for the verbal short-term memory task were presented either visually on a CRT or auditorily using a voice generation system. Subjects responded either by using a keypad or by using a voice recognition system. A strictly between-subjects design was used in both experiments to avoid problems associated with asymmetric transfer. In both experiments the use of a voice generation system benefited dual-task performance. Experiment I showed no significant difference between speech responses and manual responses on any dependent measure. Experiment II showed significantly faster correct reaction times (RTs) for speech responses to the verbal short-term memory task only when the responses were adjusted for the delay inherent in the speech recognition system. The implications of these studies for the application of voice generation and recognition systems is discussed.     

An architectural counterpoint in Universal Everything: Fluid Bodies exhibition

ABSTRACT

This exhibition review focuses on the quest for weaving boundaries between body-form-space-and material relationship using immersive technologies. Emerging as an architectural counterpoint, Universal Everything: Fluid Bodies exhibition held in Borusan Contemporary focuses on how we perceive the motion and form in relation to it, as well as fusing senses of kinaesthetic and synaesthetic through a data driven and motion-based visual representation. Through these algorithms, the exhibition displays how neuroarchitecture reminds us of the senses of perception. The architectural counterpoint, intention as an interaction and encounter of the body with ‘the machine’ as the ‘voyeur body’ and how this observational dialogue becomes a research methodology in understanding the nature of movement in space through digital tools.     

The effects of body armour on the power development and agility of police officers

Abstract

A study was conducted in which 11 police officers wore one of three different types of Individual Light Armour Vests (ILAV), or normal station wear, for an entire day while completing power and agility-based tasks including a vertical jump (VJ), agility test, 20?m sprint and counter movement jump (CMJ). Despite all three ILAVs being significantly (p?<?.05) heavier than normal station wear, there were no significant differences between any of the ILAVs in VJ, time to complete the agility test, 20?m sprint time, peak force, velocity, power and jump distance in the CMJ. There was a significantly (p?<?.05) higher mean force produced in the CMJ while wearing all three ILAVs. The ILAV’s investigated do not appear to be heavy enough to significantly affect the power or agility of police officers. The utilisation of ILAVs by police officers does not appear to hinder policing tasks that involve agility or power development.

Practitioner summary: The addition of the extra load of military-styled body armour is known to decrease performance and mobility. When compared to normal station wear, the wearing of three different ILAV types used in policing do not appear to be heavy enough to affect the power or agility of police officers.

Abbreviations: ILAV: individual light armour vest; VJ: vertical jump; CMJ: counter movement jump; N: normal station wear     

Vocal Telekinesis: towards the development of voice-physical installations

Lately, developers have attempted to explore the relationship between voice and visuals by creating various mappings between them. Hardly any developers, however, delved into forming physical mappings between voice and real objects. Programming non-verbal voice to control inanimate objects has yet to be implemented in highly interactive applications. This paper introduces the concept of Vocal Telekinesis to refer to the physical control of inanimate objects via paralinguistic vocal input. It highlights existing applications that could be considered forms of Vocal Telekinesis and presents some practical implementations of this concept. The aim is to expand the scope of interactive media through exploring various voice-physical mappings which will extend beyond the graphical output to include physical feedback such as changes in the size, brightness, speed, direction, and height of real objects.     

Automatic training of a min-max neural network for function approximation by using a second feed forward network

This research is concerned with a gradient descent training algorithm of a min-max network which we will refer to as the target network. Training makes use of a helper feed-forward network (FFN) to represent the performance function used in training the target network. A helper FFN is trained because the mathematical form of the performance function for the target network in terms of its trainable parameters, p, is not differentiable. Values for the parameter vector, p, of the target network are generated randomly and performance values are determined to produce the data for training the helper FFN with its own connection matrices. Thus we find an approximation to the mathematical relationship between performance values and p by training an FFN. The input to this FFN is a value for p and the output is a performance measure. The transfer function of the helper FFN provides a differentiable function for the performance function of the parameter vector, p, for the target network allowing gradient search methods for finding the optimum p for the target network. The method is successfully tried in approximating a given function and also on training data produced by a randomly selected min-max network.     

Competitive Analysis of On-Line Disk Scheduling

In this paper we study three popular on-line disk scheduling algorithms, FCFS, SSTF, and LOOK, using competitive analysis. Our results show that, in a competitive sense, the performance of LOOK is better than those of SSTF and FCFS. As a by-product, our analysis also reveals quantitatively the role played by the size of the window, which in our model is a waiting buffer that holds a fixed number of requests waiting to be serviced next. The window, in some sense, offers the lookahead ability which is mentioned in several on-line problems. Received February 1997, and in revised form November 1997, and in final form February 1998.     

Designing wearable computing devices for improved comfort and user acceptance

Abstract

This study identified acceptable range of physical attributes (form factors, weight, volume and contact area) of wearable computing devices (WCD) on different body areas in relation to human factors, through human performance tests with 41participants. Findings of this study discovered that there is a different level of threshold to discomfort on each part of the body; forearm has the smallest estimated mean of acceptable maximum weight of WCD followed by shirt pocket and collar area. On the other hand, front waist and back waist, when placed on one side, showed significantly higher estimated means of acceptable maximum weight of WCD than any other areas. Similar data trend was found in acceptable maximum volume and contact area of WCD. Body movement and posture influence the users’ comfort, as the weight of WCD can cause unhealthy posture over time, and increased energy expenditure, which may cause orthopaedic problems and discomfort.

Practitioner summary: This study discovered that in carrying wearable computing devices (WCD), there is a different level of threshold to discomfort on each part of the body, as evidenced by significantly different acceptable maximum weight, volume and contact area of WCD on different body part.

Abbreviations: WCD: wearable computing devices.     

Making friends in online games: gender differences and designing for greater social connectedness

ABSTRACT

While online multiplayer games provide an opportunity for players to both maintain and establish new connections, male and female players have been found to experience these environments differently. Interviews (n?=?22) and focus groups (n?=?14) were used to explore these differences as they impact on creating new social connections, as well as to provide recommendations for the development of new social tools and features that account for these differences. While all participants experienced toxicity and performance pressure as barriers to forming new connections, female players uniquely reported the impacts of misogynistic targeting and stereotype threat. In turn, female players wishing to avoid these stresses would often mask their gender. The common practice of gender misrepresentation by both male and female players impacted female players’ ability to create social connections through voice technology, as well as building their distrust of unknown others. Recommendations are made to build social connectedness between players taking into account the specific constraints faced by female players. These include establishing mentoring opportunities as well as profiling players beyond their immediate skill or rank. Additionally, the desire for control of one’s online identity presents practical challenges that may be overcome through thoughtful design.     

Mathematically modelling the effects of pacing,finger strategies and urgency on numerical typing performance with queuing network model human processor

Numerical typing is an important perceptual-motor task whose performance may vary with different pacing, finger strategies and urgency of situations. Queuing network-model human processor (QN-MHP), a computational architecture, allows performance of perceptual-motor tasks to be modelled mathematically. The current study enhanced QN-MHP with a top-down control mechanism, a close-loop movement control and a finger-related motor control mechanism to account for task interference, endpoint reduction, and force deficit, respectively. The model also incorporated neuromotor noise theory to quantify endpoint variability in typing. The model predictions of typing speed and accuracy were validated with Lin and Wu's (2011) experimental results. The resultant root-mean-squared errors were 3.68% with a correlation of 95.55% for response time, and 35.10% with a correlation of 96.52% for typing accuracy. The model can be applied to provide optimal speech rates for voice synthesis and keyboard designs in different numerical typing situations.

Practitioner Summary: An enhanced QN-MHP model was proposed in the study to mathematically account for the effects of pacing, finger strategies and internalised urgency on numerical typing performance. The model can be used to provide optimal pacing for voice synthesise systems and suggested optimal numerical keyboard designs under urgency.     

Design decisions for a voice navigation system

Voice navigation systems allow users to interact with computer applications by voice. In this paper we present human factors research that evaluated design alternatives for major user interface components. In the first study we evaluated the appropriateness and discriminability of four sets of icons that were candidates for functions in theVoice Toolbar of the navigation system. In the second study we studied two different ways of organizing and presenting voice commands in theWhat Can I Say window. The key finding was that the alternative organization seemed to improve task performance. The results provided the basis for design recommendations.     

The Knower Paradox in the light of provability interpretations of modal logic

This paper propounds a systematic examination of the link between the Knower Paradox and provability interpretations of modal logic. The aim of the paper is threefold: to give a streamlined presentation of the Knower Paradox and related results; to clarify the notion of a syntactical treatment of modalities; finally, to discuss the kind of solution that modal provability logic provides to the Paradox. I discuss the respective strength of different versions of the Knower Paradox, both in the framework of first-order arithmetic and in that of modal logic with fixed point operators. It is shown that the notion of a syntactical treatment of modalities is ambiguous between a self-referential treatment and a metalinguistic treatment of modalities, and that these two notions are independent. I survey and compare the provability interpretations of modality respectively given by Skyrms, B. (1978, The Journal of Philosophy 75: 368–387) Anderson, C.A. (1983, The Journal of Philosophy 80: 338–355) and Solovay, R. (1976, Israel Journal of Mathematics 25: 287–304). I examine how these interpretations enable us to bypass the limitations imposed by the Knower Paradox while preserving the laws of classical logic, each time by appeal to a distinct form of hierarchy.     

Spine loading during laboratory-simulated fireground operations — inter-individual variation and method of load quantification

Abstract

Spine loading data are needed to design low-back health-preserving ergonomic interventions for firefighters. Study objectives were to quantify spine loads during simulated fireground operations using simple (polynomial) and advanced (EMG-assisted musculoskeletal model) methods and to describe the variation in spine loads between performers (N?=?20). Spine compression forces differed by as much as 5.5 times bodyweight between individuals performing identical tasks. Anteroposterior and mediolateral shear forces varied by as much 3.2 and 2.1 times bodyweight between individuals performing the same tasks, respectively. Large variations in spine load magnitudes were documented regardless of whether simple or advanced quantification methods were used. Results suggest that low-back loading demands on the fireground would vary widely depending on the physical characteristics of individual firefighters, movement strategies employed, and tasks performed. Thus, personalised ergonomic interventions are warranted to regulate spine loading and load tolerance in firefighters.

Practitioner summary: Even when performing the same work, the associated spine loading demands will vary widely across people due to differences in their body sizes, shapes, and movement strategies. Therefore, personalised interventions are needed to regulate spine loading and load tolerance in workers (e.g. obesity prevention, physical capacity-building exercise, and movement [re]training).     

Touch as techne: rethinking digitality

Abstract

This article introduces Pulse Project (2011–), a doctoral performance research project that engages in critical discourse between art and science through the creation of digital soundscapes that weave together artistic, medical, technological, ancient and modern methodologies. Pulse ‘reading’, case histories, notations of pulses and programming soundscape compositions are all used together as methods for exploring the cultural encounter between artist, participants and diverse medical practices. Pulse Project seeks to provide an examination of the means with which the temporal materiality of touch can be used together with audio programming to form a translation and synthesis of different ecologies and disciplines, e.g. medicine and art, Eastern and Western practices, touch and digitality, etc. Drawing upon my experience as a clinical acupuncturist (with training in biomedicine), I use Chinese pulse diagnostics together with SuperCollider (an audio synthesis programming language) to inform the composition process of each soundscape. In this way, Pulse Project interrogates the aesthetic and philosophical axioms underpinning contemporary medicine, technology and cognitive embodiment through the exploration of their corollary ‘others’—traditional Chinese medicine and music theory—in order to generate a fresh approach to embodiment and soundscape composition.     

Effects of Depth Perception on Performance of Simulated Materials Handling Tasks

Abstract

A series of experiments were performed using ft laboratory simulation of a fork-lift truck setting task. In general, the same effects were observed as found in an another study using fork-lift trucks except that the direction of errors was reversed, showing a reversal of movement relationships in the simulator. The visual angle between the drivers' direction of motion and his line of sight to the target had a large effect on performance times and error rates. When this angle was less than 12°, both times and errors increased sharply. Performance times at different movement amplitudes and target widths were a linear function of an Index of Difficulty except for target widths of less than 2% of the amplitude. Subject age and experience of fork-lift truck driving had a significant effect of performance. Augmentation of vision using a closed circuit television display was beneficial to performance, reducing times by 14% and errors by 52% showing that this is an economic proposition for materials handling vehicles.     

E-ARL: An Economic incentive scheme for Adaptive Revenue-Load-based dynamic replication of data in Mobile-P2P networks

In mobile ad hoc peer-to-peer (M-P2P) networks, frequent network partitioning occurs due to peer movement or owing to peers switching ‘off’ their mobile devices. This leads to typically low data availability in M-P2P networks, thereby necessitating data replication. This work proposes E-ARL, which is a novel Economic scheme for Adaptive Revenue-Load-based dynamic replication of data in dedicated M-P2P networks with the aim of improving data availability. Thus, E-ARL considers a mobile cooperative environment, where the MPs are working towards the same goal, and the network performance is facilitated by the economic scheme. E-ARL essentially allocates replicas based on its economic scheme. Each data item has a price in virtual currency. E-ARL requires a query issuing peer to pay the price of its queried data item to the query-serving peer and a commission to relay peers in the successful query path. The main contributions of E-ARL follow. First, it uses an economic scheme for efficiently managing M-P2P resources in a context-aware manner by facilitating effective replica hosting and message relaying by peers. Second, it collaboratively performs bid-based replica allocation to facilitate better quality of service. Third, it incorporates both revenue-balancing and load-balancing to improve peer participation and performance. Fourth, it conserves the energy of low-energy MPs to facilitate network connectivity. Our performance evaluation shows that E-ARL is indeed effective in improving peer participation in M-P2P networks, thereby improving query response times, query success rates, query hop-counts and replica allocation traffic.     

Hidden Deletable Pixel Detection Using Vector Analysis in Parallel Thinning to Obtain Bias-Reduced Skeletons

The improvement of producing skeletons that preserve the significant geometric features of patterns is of great importance. One of feasible approaches is to develop a method embedded in a known parallel algorithm to produce bias-reduced skeletons since a bias skeleton usually degrades the preservation of significant geometric features of patterns. From our observations, bias skeletons always appear in the junction of lines which form an angle less than or near equal to 90°. In this paper, thehidden deletable pixel(HDP) which influences the speed of deleting the boundary pixels on a concave side is newly defined. Based on the comparable performance of our pseudo 1-subcycle parallel thinning algorithm (CH), a reduced form of larger support (twoL-pixel vectors, which is not the form ofk×ksupport) operated by an intermediate vector analysis about the deleted pixels in each thinning iteration is developed for HDP detection to obtain bias-reduced skeletons, which can be purchased by a reasonable computation cost. HDP restoration and parallel implementation are further considered to formulate an improved algorithm (CYS), where the connectivity preservation is guaranteed by the use ofCH's operators and HDP restoration. A set of synthetic images are used to quantify the skeleton from the geometry viewpoint and investigate the skeleton variations of using different (L)s. Based on the analyzing results, 3 ≤L≤ 9 are suggested for the current algorithm ofCYS.CYSis evaluated in comparison with two small support algorithms (AFP3andCH) and one larger support algorithm (VRCT) using the same patterns. Performances are reported by the number of iterations (NI), CPU time (TC), and number of unmatched pixels (N_unmatchfor bias-reduced measure). Results show that on the measure ofTC,CYSis approximately 2 to 3 times slower than the others, while on the measure ofNI, the four algorithms have approximately identical performance. On the measure ofN_unmatch,CYSis approximately 2 to 3 times less than the others. One-pixel boundary noise is also considered for exploring the noise immunity. The results suggest that the noise immunity ofCYSandCHis identical and is better than that ofAFP3. As a result, the better bias-reduced skeletons produced byCYSmay be purchased by a reasonable computation cost.     

Proprioception Variables as Determinants of Lapsed Time Estimation∗

Abstract

It was postulated that increasing positional and force cues would provide more discriminable stimuli to serve as references for the reproduction of a motor response. The levels and mode of the proprioceptive feedback were varied during the coincident positioning task of moving a carriage along a trackway in 2·0 sec. In a balanced design with 80 Ss, 2 values of positional cues, moving the carriage over 2·5 or 65·0 cm, and 2 values of force cues, minimal resistance and 18·9 kg, produced 4 different feedback combinations. Significant learning occurred during 30 trials with knowledge of results (KB), and the combinations involving movement produced the greatest accuracy. Throughout 30 trials without knowledge of results (NoKR) the estimates produced by the movement only and weight only groups became longer, whilst the control group and the movement plus weight group did not drift. It was suggested that the group differences were caused by fatigue.

Interpolated rests of 1 min between groups of 5 trials during the KB condition shortened the first post-rest trial whence performance was restored by the remaining 4 trials. During NoKB the first post-rest trial was again shorter, but since the remaining 4 were overestimated it was more accurate.

In view of these results, apparently redundant movements might aid in timing tasks requiring temporal and spatial organization.     

Evaluation of effects of anti-vibration gloves on manual dexterity

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of anti-vibration gloves on manual dexterity and to explore factors affecting the manual dexterity. The manual dexterity of ten different gloves was investigated with 15 adult male subjects via performing two different dexterity tests, namely ASTM F2010 standard test and Two-Hand Turning and Placing Minnesota test. Two-factor repeated-measures analysis of variance was conducted to evaluate the main effects of glove type, test method and their interaction effect on manual dexterity. Results suggested that glove type yielded significant effect on manual dexterity (p?<?.001), while no significant difference was observed between test methods (p?=?.112). The interaction effect of glove type and test method also revealed a significant difference (p?=?.009). The manual dexterity decreased nearly linearly with increase in the glove thickness, which further showed a moderately significant difference on the number of drops during the tests.

Practitioner Summary: Anti-vibration gloves may adversely affect manual dexterity and work precision, which may discourage their usage. This article presented a study of manual dexterity performance of anti-vibration gloves and the design factors affecting the manual dexterity. The results were discussed in view of a design guidance for improved hand dexterity, which would encourage the use of anti-vibration gloves in the workplace.