scholarly journals The channel capacity of multilevel linguistic features constrains speech comprehension

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Giroud ◽  
Jacques Pesnot Lerousseau ◽  
Francois Pellegrino ◽  
Benjamin Morillon
Keyword(s):  
Channel Capacity ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Major Question ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Measurement Framework ◽  
French Words ◽  
The Impact

Humans are expert at processing speech but how this feat is accomplished remains a major question in cognitive neuroscience. Capitalizing on the concept of channel capacity, we developed a unified measurement framework to investigate the respective influence of seven acoustic and linguistic features on speech comprehension, encompassing acoustic, sub-lexical, lexical and supra-lexical levels of description. We show that comprehension is independently impacted by all these features, but at varying degrees and with a clear dominance of the syllabic rate. Comparing comprehension of French words and sentences further reveals that when supra-lexical contextual information is present, the impact of all other features is dramatically reduced. Finally, we estimated the channel capacity associated with each linguistic feature and compared them with their generic distribution in natural speech. Our data point towards supra-lexical contextual information as the feature limiting the flow of natural speech. Overall, this study reveals how multilevel linguistic features constrain speech comprehension.

scholarly journals Delta-band Cortical Tracking of Acoustic and Linguistic Features in Natural Spoken Narratives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Luo ◽  
Nai Ding
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Cortical Activity ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Neural Encoding ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Cortical Dynamics ◽  
Delta Band ◽  
Linguistic Units

AbstractSpeech contains rich acoustic and linguistic information. During speech comprehension, cortical activity tracks the acoustic envelope of speech. Recent studies also observe cortical tracking of higher-level linguistic units, such as words and phrases, using synthesized speech deprived of delta-band acoustic envelope. It remains unclear, however, how cortical activity jointly encodes the acoustic and linguistic information in natural speech. Here, we investigate the neural encoding of words and demonstrate that delta-band cortical activity tracks the rhythm of multi-syllabic words when naturally listening to narratives. Furthermore, by dissociating the word rhythm from acoustic envelope, we find cortical activity primarily tracks the word rhythm during speech comprehension. When listeners’ attention is diverted, however, neural tracking of words diminishes, and delta-band activity becomes phase locked to the acoustic envelope. These results suggest that large-scale cortical dynamics in the delta band are primarily coupled to the rhythm of linguistic units during natural speech comprehension.

Discourse, Context, and Coherence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Una Stojnić
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Context Sensitivity ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Discourse Context ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Pure Indexicals

On the received view, the resolution of context-sensitivity is at least partly determined by non-linguistic features of utterance situation. If I say ‘He’s happy’, what ‘he’ picks out is underspecified by its linguistic meaning, and is only fixed through extra-linguistic supplementation: the speaker’s intention, and/or some objective, non-linguistic feature of the utterance situation. This underspecification is exhibited by most context-sensitive expressions, with the exception of pure indexicals, like ‘I.’ While this received view is prima facie appealing, I argue it is deeply mistaken. I defend an account according to which context-sensitivity resolution is governed by linguistic mechanisms determining prominence of candidate resolutions of context-sensitive items. Thus, on this account, the linguistic meaning of a context-sensitive expression fully specifies its resolution in a context, automatically selecting the resolution antecedently set by the prominence-governing linguistic mechanisms.

scholarly journals Linguistic feature of anorexia nervosa: a prospective case–control pilot study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vittoria Cuteri ◽  
Giulia Minori ◽  
Gloria Gagliardi ◽  
Fabio Tamburini ◽  
Elisabetta Malaspina ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Anorexia Nervosa ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Statistical Significance ◽  
Case Control ◽  
Pathological Process ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Level Of Evidence ◽  
Linguistic Feature ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
Clinical Conditions

Abstract Purpose Attention has recently been paid to Clinical Linguistics for the detection and support of clinical conditions. Many works have been published on the “linguistic profile” of various clinical populations, but very few papers have been devoted to linguistic changes in patients with eating disorders. Patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) share similar psychological features such as disturbances in self-perceived body image, inflexible and obsessive thinking and anxious or depressive traits. We hypothesize that these characteristics can result in altered linguistic patterns and be detected using the Natural Language Processing tools. Methods We enrolled 51 young participants from December 2019 to February 2020 (age range: 14–18): 17 girls with a clinical diagnosis of AN, and 34 normal-weighted peers, matched by gender, age and educational level. Participants in each group were asked to produce three written texts (around 10–15 lines long). A rich set of linguistic features was extracted from the text samples and the statistical significance in pinpointing the pathological process was measured. Results Comparison between the two groups showed several linguistics indexes as statistically significant, with syntactic reduction as the most relevant trait of AN productions. In particular, the following features emerge as statistically significant in distinguishing AN girls and their normal-weighted peers: the length of the sentences, the complexity of the noun phrase, and the global syntactic complexity. This peculiar pattern of linguistic erosion may be due to the severe metabolic impairment also affecting the central nervous system in AN. Conclusion These preliminary data showed the existence of linguistic parameters as probable linguistic markers of AN. However, the analysis of a bigger cohort, still ongoing, is needed to consolidate this assumption. Level of evidence III Evidence obtained from case–control analytic studies.

The Impact of Stationarity, Regularity, and Context on the Predictability of Individual Human Mobility

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Douglas Do Couto Teixeira ◽  
Aline Carneiro Viana ◽  
Jussara M. Almeida ◽  
Mrio S. Alvim
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Human Mobility ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Prediction Method ◽  
Mobility Prediction ◽  
Mobility Patterns ◽  
Distinct Cell ◽  
Inherent Nature ◽  
The One ◽  
The Impact

Predicting mobility-related behavior is an important yet challenging task. On the one hand, factors such as one’s routine or preferences for a few favorite locations may help in predicting their mobility. On the other hand, several contextual factors, such as variations in individual preferences, weather, traffic, or even a person’s social contacts, can affect mobility patterns and make its modeling significantly more challenging. A fundamental approach to study mobility-related behavior is to assess how predictable such behavior is, deriving theoretical limits on the accuracy that a prediction model can achieve given a specific dataset. This approach focuses on the inherent nature and fundamental patterns of human behavior captured in that dataset, filtering out factors that depend on the specificities of the prediction method adopted. However, the current state-of-the-art method to estimate predictability in human mobility suffers from two major limitations: low interpretability and hardness to incorporate external factors that are known to help mobility prediction (i.e., contextual information). In this article, we revisit this state-of-the-art method, aiming at tackling these limitations. Specifically, we conduct a thorough analysis of how this widely used method works by looking into two different metrics that are easier to understand and, at the same time, capture reasonably well the effects of the original technique. We evaluate these metrics in the context of two different mobility prediction tasks, notably, next cell and next distinct cell prediction, which have different degrees of difficulty. Additionally, we propose alternative strategies to incorporate different types of contextual information into the existing technique. Our evaluation of these strategies offer quantitative measures of the impact of adding context to the predictability estimate, revealing the challenges associated with doing so in practical scenarios.

Impact of Contextual Information on Automation Brittleness

2002 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-386 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer J. Ockerman ◽  
Amy R. Pritchett
Keyword(s):  
Contextual Information ◽  
Decision Aids ◽  
System Function ◽  
Commercial Aircraft ◽  
Complex Automation ◽  
The Impact

Brittleness, the inability to provide accurate assistance in all situations, is frequently an issue with complex automation and automatic decision aids. This paper examines a method of mitigating the impact of brittleness on overall system function. Using the task of planning an emergency descent for a commercial aircraft, this study found that the presence of contextual information in the presentation of an automatically generated emergency descent procedure might aid in mitigating the effects of automation brittleness. By providing pilots with rationale as to the design of the descent procedure, the pilots were better able to correctly determine why a provided procedure was or was not feasible.

scholarly journals Evaluation of PLC Channel Capacity and ABER Performances for OFDM-Based Two-Hop Relaying Transmission

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sana Ezzine ◽  
Fatma Abdelkefi ◽  
Jean Pierre Cances ◽  
Vahid Meghdadi ◽  
Ammar Bouallégue
Keyword(s):  
Channel Capacity ◽  
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Relay Node ◽  
Destination Node ◽  
Direct Link ◽  
Amplify And Forward ◽  
Decode And Forward ◽  
Maximum Ratio Combining ◽  
The Impact

Powerline network is recognized as a favorable infrastructure for Smart Grid to transmit information in the network thanks to its broad coverage and low cost deployment. The existing works are trying to improve and adapt transmission techniques to reduce Powerline Communication (PLC) channel attenuation and exploit the limited bandwidth to support high data rate over long distances. Two-hop relaying BroadBand PLC (BB-PLC) system, in which Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is used, is considered in this paper. We derive and compare the PLC channel capacity and the end-to-end Average BER (ABER) for OFDM-based direct link (DL) BB-PLC system and for OFDM-based two-hop relaying BB-PLC system for Amplify and Forward (AF) and Decode and Forward (DF) protocols. We analyze the improvements when we consider the direct link in a cooperative communication when the relay node only transmits the correctly decoded signal. Maximum ratio combining is employed at the destination node to detect the transmitted signal. In addition, in this paper, we highlight the impact of the relay location on the channel capacity and ABER for AF and DF transmission protocols. Moreover, an efficient use of the direct link was also investigated in this paper.

Nitrate transport in the chalk vadose zone in in Picardy (France)

2021 ◽  
pp. SP517-2020-164
Author(s):  
N. Surdyk ◽  
L. Gourcy ◽  
V. Bault ◽  
N. Baran
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Quality ◽  
Vadose Zone ◽  
Nitrate Concentration ◽  
Agricultural Practices ◽  
Nitrate Transport ◽  
Transport Time ◽  
Major Question ◽  
Noticeable Effect ◽  
Fertiliser Application ◽  
The Impact

AbstractSince the 1980s, nitrate has been shown to be present in soils and the vadose zone of various types of geological materials years after fertiliser application. In chalk where the vadose zone is thick, nitrate storage can be considerable and its transport time toward groundwater can be lengthy.In this context, evaluation of the impact of changes in agricultural practices on groundwater quality remains a major question. Improvement of groundwater quality can in certain cases be greatly delayed after the implementation of environmental agricultural practices.The principal objective of this study is to improve our knowledge of when changes in agricultural practices will have a noticeable effect on groundwater quality.To meet this objective, nitrate concentration profiles were performed in agricultural plots in Picardy (France). A crop marker event was used to calculate the transport velocity of water and associated solutes. This method is useful when other tracers (as tritium or chlorine) cannot be used. Estimated velocities range from 0.51 to 0.54 m/year; these values are similar to those described in similar chalk aquifers.

An Empirical Study on the Impact of Design Brief Information on the Creativity of Design Outcomes With Consideration of Gender and Gender Diversity

2019 ◽  
Vol 141 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgios Koronis ◽  
Pei Zhi Chia ◽  
Jacob Kang Kai Siang ◽  
Arlindo Silva ◽  
Christine Yogiaman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Study ◽  
Undergraduate Student ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
First Year ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Collaborative Sketching

This study aims to understand how information in design briefs affects the creativity of design outcomes. We tested this during a Collaborative Sketching (C-Sketch) ideation exercise with first-year undergraduate student designers. We focus on four types of stimuli—quantitative requirements, a visual example (video), a physical example, and contextual information—and we measure creativity according to three metrics—novelty, appropriateness, and usability with either the participants’ gender or the gender diversity of the participants’ groups. The findings suggest that the main effect of providing a video example results in high appropriateness and usability scores but low novelty scores and that physical-contextual briefs have high novelty and usability scores. In addition, we did not find any correlation between gender or gender diversity and creativity scores.

An Efficient IR-HARQ Power Allocation for Relay-Aided Cellular Networks

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (12) ◽  
pp. 1850195
Author(s):  
P. Mangayarkarasi ◽  
J. Raja
Keyword(s):  
Power Allocation ◽  
Cellular Networks ◽  
Channel Capacity ◽  
Energy Efficient ◽  
Base Station ◽  
Relay Station ◽  
Decode And Forward ◽  
Relay Placement ◽  
Cell Coverage ◽  
The Impact

Energy-efficient and reliable data transmission is a challenging task in wireless relay networks (WRNs). Energy efficiency in cellular networks has received significant attention because of the present need for reduced energy consumption, thereby maintaining the profitability of networks, which in turn makes these networks “greener”. The urban cell topography needs more energy to cover the total area of the cell. The base station does not cover the entire area in a given topography and adding more number of base stations is a cost prohibitive one. Energy-efficient relay placement model which calculates the maximum cell coverage is proposed in this work that covers all sectors and also an energy-efficient incremental redundancy-hybrid automatic repeat request (IR-HARQ) power allocation scheme to improve the reliability of the network by improving the overall network throughput is proposed. An IR-HARQ power allocation method maximizes the average incremental mutual information at each round, and its throughput quickly converges to the ergodic channel capacity as the number of retransmissions increases. Simulation results show that the proposed IR-HARQ power allocation achieves full channel capacity with average transmission delay and maintains good throughput under less power consumption. Also the impact of relaying performance on node distances between relay station and base station as well as between user and relay station and relay height for line of sight conditions are analyzed using full decode and forward (FDF) and partial decode and forward (PDF) relaying schemes. Compared to FDF scheme, PDF scheme provides better performance and allows more freedom in the relay placement for an increase in cell coverage.

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