During Lipreading Training With Sentence Stimuli, Feedback Controls Learning and Generalization to Audiovisual Speech in Noise

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of external feedback on perceptual learning of visual speech during lipreading training with sentence stimuli. The goal was to improve visual-only (VO) speech recognition and increase accuracy of audiovisual (AV) speech recognition in noise. The rationale was that spoken word recognition depends on the accuracy of sublexical (phonemic/phonetic) speech perception; effective feedback during training must support sublexical perceptual learning. Method: Normal-hearing (NH) adults were assigned to one of three types of feedback: Sentence feedback was the entire sentence printed after responding to the stimulus. Word feedback was the correct response words and perceptually near but incorrect response words. Consonant feedback was correct response words and consonants in incorrect but perceptually near response words. Six training sessions were given. Pre- and posttraining testing included an untrained control group. Test stimuli were disyllable nonsense words for forced-choice consonant identification, and isolated words and sentences for open-set identification. Words and sentences were VO, AV, and audio-only (AO) with the audio in speech-shaped noise. Results: Lipreading accuracy increased during training. Pre- and posttraining tests of consonant identification showed no improvement beyond test–retest increases obtained by untrained controls. Isolated word recognition with a talker not seen during training showed that the control group improved more than the sentence group. Tests of untrained sentences showed that the consonant group significantly improved in all of the stimulus conditions (VO, AO, and AV). Its mean words correct scores increased by 9.2 percentage points for VO, 3.4 percentage points for AO, and 9.8 percentage points for AV stimuli. Conclusions: Consonant feedback during training with sentences stimuli significantly increased perceptual learning. The training generalized to untrained VO, AO, and AV sentence stimuli. Lipreading training has potential to significantly improve adults' face-to-face communication in noisy settings in which the talker can be seen.

Healthy people and biochemical enhancement: A new paradigmatic approach to the enhancement of human beings?

The authors analyse a new paradigmatic approach to the enhancement of human beings proposed in transhumanist visions. Transhumanist authors promote the biochemical enhancement of healthy people via the concepts of bio-happiness and bio-love (love drugs). The paper is based on an assessment of the value attributed to the lives of disabled people vis-à-vis those of healthy people. The value imbalance in the transhumanist conception is criticized on the grounds that it is an incorrect response to the posthuman urge to redefine human beings. The authors’ final standpoint is that the value of human beings should be derived primarily from our naturalness and that artificiality (which is indisputably a part of people) should be subordinate to this.

Teachers’ Use of Scaffolds Within Conversations During Shared Book Reading

Purpose: We studied conversations initiated through teacher questions during shared book reading in prekindergarten and kindergarten classrooms as these conversations provide opportunities for the teacher to scaffold emerging language skills. This study provides detailed analysis of scaffolding strategies used by teachers after children answered teachers' questions. Method: Participants included 93 prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers who read aloud a standard narrative text to their class of students. All the sessions were video-recorded, transcribed, and then coded for conversational turns and teacher scaffolding strategies. Results: Descriptive findings showed great variability in the length of conversations and the extent to which teachers used scaffolding strategies. Most teacher scaffolds matched children's accuracy of response such that they provided support after incorrect responses and provided additional challenge after correct responses. Significant sequential associations were observed between the level of children's response and multiple types of scaffolds (e.g., corrective feedback scaffold after incorrect response; discussing factual questions after a correct response). Conclusions: Findings indicate that during shared reading, teachers are responsive to children's answers and are able to provide challenge or support as needed. However, teachers infrequently used scaffolding strategies like causal effects, predictions, and recasts . Given evidence that strategies such as recasts support early language skills, professional development experiences could encourage early childhood teachers to incorporate this and other key scaffolding strategies.

Time for Action: Neural Basis of the Costs and Benefits of Temporal Predictability for Competing Response Choices

The brain can anticipate the time of imminent events to optimize sensorimotor processing. Yet, there can be behavioral costs of temporal predictability under situations of response conflict. Here, we sought to identify the neural basis of these costs and benefits by examining motor control processes in a combined electroencephalography–EMG study. We recorded electrophysiological markers of response activation and inhibition over motor cortex when the onset-time of visual targets could be predicted, or not, and when responses necessitated conflict resolution, or not. If stimuli were temporally predictable but evoked conflicting responses, we observed increased intertrial consistency in the delta range over the motor cortex involved in response implementation, perhaps reflecting increased response difficulty. More importantly, temporal predictability differentially modulated motor cortex activity as a function of response conflict before the response was even initiated. This effect occurred in the hemisphere ipsilateral to the response, which is involved in inhibiting unwanted actions. If target features all triggered the same response, temporal predictability increased cortical inhibition of the incorrect response hand. Conversely, if different target features triggered two conflicting responses, temporal predictability decreased inhibition of the incorrect, yet prepotent, response. This dissociation reconciles the well-established behavioral benefits of temporal predictability for nonconflicting responses as well as its costs for conflicting ones by providing an elegant mechanism that operates selectively over the motor cortex involved in suppressing inappropriate actions just before response initiation. Taken together, our results demonstrate that temporal information differentially guides motor activity depending on response choice complexity.

A Natural-Language-Processing-Based Procedure for Generating Distractors for Multiple-Choice Questions

One of the most challenging aspects of writing multiple-choice test questions is identifying plausible incorrect response options—i.e., distractors. To help with this task, a procedure is introduced that can mine existing item banks for potential distractors by considering the similarities between a new item’s stem and answer and the stems and response options for items in the bank. This approach uses natural language processing to measure similarity and requires a substantial pool of items for constructing the generating model. The procedure is demonstrated with data from the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE®). For about half the items in the study, at least one of the top three system-produced candidates matched a human-produced distractor exactly; and for about one quarter of the items, two of the top three candidates matched human-produced distractors. A study was conducted in which a sample of system-produced candidates were shown to 10 experienced item writers. Overall, participants thought about 81% of the candidates were on topic and 56% would help human item writers with the task of writing distractors.

No gesture too small: An investigation into the ability of gestural information to mislead eyewitness accounts by 5-8-year-olds.

The accuracy of eyewitness interviews has legal and clinical implications within the criminal justice system. Leading verbal suggestions have been shown to give rise to false memories and inaccurate testimonies in children, but only a small body of research exists regarding non-verbal communication. The present study examined whether 5-8-year-olds in the UK could be misled about their memory of an event through exposure to leading gestural information, which suggested an incorrect response, using a variety of question and gesture types. Results showed that leading gestures corrupted participants’ memory, with the level of centrality (central details such as what and how, compared to peripheral descriptive detail) and saliency (how visible and expressive a gesture is) significantly affecting the level to which participants were misled, and even subtle gestures demonstrating a strong misleading influence. We discuss the implications of these findings for the guidelines governing eyewitness interviews.

Evaluation of Knowledge Gain through Training Programmes on Scientific Pig Farming

The present study was conducted with an objective of assessing the knowledge gained by trainees about various aspects of scientific pig farming organised by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Lakhimpur. A total of 180 numbers of trainees participated in trainings on scientific pig farming over a period during 2019 and 2020 on random selection. The data were collected on pre and post completion of the training with the help of questionnaire which were distributed to the trainees before training. The questionnaire consisted of 13 different aspects on knowledge on Indian and exotic Pig Breeds, knowledge on selection of piglets, castration age of piglets, attainment of puberty in pigs, oestrus period of a sow, heat detection in gilt, gestation period of sow, care of young piglets, deworming in pigs, marketing age of pigs, feeding of lactating sow, knowledge on Vaccination of pigs and common diseases of pigs. A score of one and zero score was assigned for each correct and incorrect response, respectively for analysis of knowledge gain. It was found that majority of the trainees were youths (52.22%), followed by Middle aged (32.22%) and Old age (15.55%).Majority of the trainees were from ST category (33.88%) followed by OBC (32.77%), General (21.11%) and SC (12.22%). Among those who attended training 32.22% had education till middle school level followed by primary 22.77, 16.11 % were found illiterate whereas 15% completed secondary, 10.55% higher secondary and 3.33 % completed education upto graduate level. The overall knowledge of trainees on pre training evaluation was found to be 19.17% which ended up on a high note with 93.15% on post training evaluation, which is indicative of the positive impact of training on knowledge gain. Evaluation of knowledge gain on various aspects of scientific pig farming showed that maximum knowledge was gained on vaccination in pigs (88.89%, Rank I) and minimum gain was in knowledge of gestation period of sow (54.44%, Rank XIII).

Cognitive load influences oculomotor behavior in natural scenes

Cognitive neuroscience researchers have identified relationships between cognitive load and eye movement behavior that are consistent with oculomotor biomarkers for neurological disorders. We develop an adaptive visual search paradigm that manipulates task difficulty and examine the effect of cognitive load on oculomotor behavior in healthy young adults. Participants (N = 30) free-viewed a sequence of 100 natural scenes for 10 s each, while their eye movements were recorded. After each image, participants completed a 4 alternative forced choice task in which they selected a target object from one of the previously viewed scenes, among 3 distracters of the same object type but from alternate scenes. Following two correct responses, the target object was selected from an image increasingly farther back (N-back) in the image stream; following an incorrect response, N decreased by 1. N-back thus quantifies and individualizes cognitive load. The results show that response latencies increased as N-back increased, and pupil diameter increased with N-back, before decreasing at very high N-back. These findings are consistent with previous studies and confirm that this paradigm was successful in actively engaging working memory, and successfully adapts task difficulty to individual subject’s skill levels. We hypothesized that oculomotor behavior would covary with cognitive load. We found that as cognitive load increased, there was a significant decrease in the number of fixations and saccades. Furthermore, the total duration of saccades decreased with the number of events, while the total duration of fixations remained constant, suggesting that as cognitive load increased, subjects made fewer, longer fixations. These results suggest that cognitive load can be tracked with an adaptive visual search task, and that oculomotor strategies are affected as a result of greater cognitive demand in healthy adults.

Learning of monotone functions with single error correction

Learning of monotone functions is a well-known problem. Results obtained by V. K. Korobkov and G. Hansel imply that the complexity φM (n) of learning of monotone Boolean functions equals C n ⌊ n / 2 ⌋ $\begin{array}{} \displaystyle C_n^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor} \end{array}$ + C n ⌊ n / 2 ⌋ + 1 $\begin{array}{} \displaystyle C_n^{\lfloor n/2\rfloor+1} \end{array}$ (φM (n) denotes the least number of queries on the value of an unknown monotone function on a given input sufficient to identify an arbitrary n-ary monotone function). In our paper we consider learning of monotone functions in the case when the teacher is allowed to return an incorrect response to at most one query on the value of an unknown function so that it is still possible to correctly identify the function. We show that learning complexity in case of the possibility of a single error is equal to the complexity in the situation when all responses are correct.

QEPro: An ability measure of emotional intelligence for managers in a French cultural environment

Managers’ interest in the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has grown steadily due to an accumulation of published articles and books touting EI’s benefits. For over thirty years, many researchers have used or designed tools for measuring EI, most of which raise important psychometric, cultural and contextual issues. The aim of this article is to address some of the main limitations observed in previous studies of EI. By developing and validating QEPro we propose a new performance-based measure of EI based on a modified version of Mayer and Salovey’s (1997) four-branch model. QEPro is an ability EI measure specifically dedicated to managers and business executives in a French cultural environment (N = 1035 managers and executives). In order to increase both the ecological and the face validity of the test for the target population we used the Situational Judgment Tests framework and a theory-based item development and scoring approach. For all items, correct and incorrect response options were developed using established theories from the emotion and management fields. Our study showed that QEPro has good psychometric qualities such as high measurement precision and internal consistency, an appropriate level of difficulty and a clear factorial structure. The tool also correlates in meaningful and theoretically congruent ways with general intelligence, Trait EI measures, the Big Five factors of personality, and the Affect measures used in this study. For all these reasons, QEPro is a promising tool for studying the role of EI competencies in managerial outcomes.