The Impact and Status of Carol Fowler's Supramodal Theory of Multisensory Speech Perception

ABSTRACT

One important contribution of Carol Fowler's direct approach to speech perception is its account of multisensory perception. This supramodal account proposes a speech function that detects supramodal information available across audition, vision, and touch. This detection allows for the recovery of articulatory primitives that provide the basis of a common currency shared between modalities as well as between perception and production. Common currency allows for perceptual experience to be shared between modalities and supports perceptually guided speaking as well as production-guided perception. In this report, we discuss the contribution and status of the supramodal approach relative to recent research in multisensory speech perception. We argue that the approach has helped motivate a multisensory revolution in perceptual psychology. We then review the new behavioral and neurophysiological research on (a) supramodal information, (b) cross-sensory sharing of experience, and (c) perceptually guided speaking as well as production guided speech perception. We conclude that Fowler's supramodal theory has fared quite well in light of this research.     

Psychometric Properties of the Cultural Intelligence Scale in a Saudi Arabian Context

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the cultural intelligence scale (CQS) in a Saudi Arabian context. The CQS was administered to a random sample of 553 undergraduate students at Hail University. Results of a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) supported the four‐factor structure of the CQS: cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and behavioral. In addition, the results of a second‐order CFA indicated that these four factors can be further collapsed into one general factor. The CQS showed adequate internal consistency and test–retest reliability as well as convergent and discriminant validity. The results further revealed no significant differences between males and females. In sum, results suggest that the Arabic version of the CQS is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring an individual's intercultural intelligence.     

Social Comparison in Medically High-Risk Pregnant Women1

The present study examined social comparison processes in 147 pregnant women at high risk of incurring an adverse birth outcome such as fetal loss or preterm delivery. These women typically undergo physical and psychological changes which elevate uncertainty and distress. Theoretically derived hypotheses concerning the impact of threat, self-esteem, perceived control, age, and gravidity (previous pregnancy) on social comparison were tested. Women experiencing low pregnancy-related threat and those with higher self-esteem were more likely to compare themselves favorably to other pregnant women. Younger women who had not been pregnant before compared most frequently; comparisons of physical state were more common than comparisons of emotional well-being or interpersonal relationships. Results are contrasted with social comparison processes in other populations facing stressful life events.     

Memory as a state dependent phenomenon: role of ACTH and epinephrine

Rats received an ip injection of saline, epinephrine HCl (5.0 micrograms/kg), or ACTH1--24(0.2 microgram/kg) immediately after training in a step-down inhibitory avoidance task, and an ip injection of saline, or epinephrine (0.5, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 5.0, or 10.0 mu/kg), or ACTH (0.02, 0.04 0.08, 0.12, 0.2, or 0.4 microgram/kg) 6 min prior to a test session of the same task 24 hr after training. Retention was excellent in the groups treated with saline after training, and poor in those treated with ACTH or epinephrine after training and tested under saline. The amnestic effect of the drugs was counteracted by their administration prior to testing, and there was a dose-response curve for this effect: partial recovery from amnesia was obtained with 20 or 40% of the amnestic dose and full recovery was obtained with 60 to 100% of that dose when the same drug was given after training and prior to testing; if the drugs given after training and prior to testing were not the same, full recovery was obtained only with twice the amnestic dose of the latter. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that learning depends on the relation between the endogenous levels of these two hormones in the post-training period and during testing. The animals seem capable of discriminating between the two drugs only partially.     

Randomized controlled trial of an intervention to change cardiac misconceptions in myocardial infarction patients

There is converging evidence that changing beliefs about an illness leads to positive recovery outcomes. However, cardiac misconceptions interventions have been investigated mainly in Angina or Coronary Heart Disease patients, and less in patients following Myocardial Infarction (MI). In these patients, cardiac misconceptions may play a role in the adjustment or lifestyle changes. This article reports a randomized controlled trial of an intervention designed to reduce the strength of misconceptions in patients after a first MI. The primary outcome was the degree of change in misconceptions and the secondary outcomes were: exercise, smoking status, return to work and mood (anxiety and depression). Patients in the intervention condition (n = 60) were compared with a control group (n = 67) receiving usual care. Both groups were evaluated at baseline and 4, 8 and 12 months after hospital discharge. There was a significant time-by-group interaction for the total score of cardiac misconceptions. Patients in the intervention group significantly decreased their total score of cardiac misconceptions at 4 months compared with the control group and this difference was sustained over time. Patients in the intervention group were also more likely to exercise at the follow-up period after MI than the control group. This intervention was effective in reducing the strength of cardiac misconceptions in MI patients and had a positive impact on health behaviour outcomes. These results support the importance of misconceptions in health behaviours and the utility of belief change interventions in promoting health in patients with Myocardial Infarction.     

Mother's prenatal and postpartum depression symptoms and infant's sleep problems at 6 months

Mother's prenatal and postpartum depression have been associated with infant's sleep problems. This study aimed to analyze (a) the effects of mother's prenatal and postpartum depression symptoms, including the effects of prenatal and postpartum anxiety and depression scores of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), on infant's sleep problems at 6 months, and (b) the interaction effect between mother's prenatal and postpartum depression symptoms and infant's sex on infant's sleep problems at 6 months. The sample was comprised of 164 mother–infant dyads whose mothers completed measures of depression at the third trimester of pregnancy, 2 weeks, 3 and 6 months postpartum and a measure of infant's sleep problems at 6 months (CSHQ-I). Mother's prenatal depression symptoms, specifically depression scores of the EPDS, predicted more infant's sleep anxiety and daytime sleepiness, while mother's depression symptoms at 2 weeks postpartum, specifically anxiety scores of the EPDS, predicted more bedtime resistance and CSHQ-I total scores at 6 months. Boys of mothers with more prenatal depression symptoms presented more sleep anxiety at 6 months. Both mother's prenatal and early postpartum depression symptoms have a negative effect on the emergence of infant's sleep problems. Additionally, boys seem more vulnerable to mother's prenatal depression symptoms.     

On computing ELECTRE's credibility indices under partial information

The ELECTRE family of decision aid methods is a well‐known approach to help decision makers (DMs) advance in a decision process. Among the most recent methods in the family, ELECTRE IS, III, and TRI compute fuzzy indices for the credibility of a given action outranking some other. We consider the case when the DMs are unsure which values each parameter should take, which may result from insufficient, imprecise or contradictory information, as well as from different preferences among a group of DMs. In the framework of a robustness analysis approach, where DMs provide only partial information on the parameter values (through constraints on acceptable combinations), we study how to find whether an outranking among two actions in an ELECTRE method is robust. In this context, we study the resulting nonlinear problems of optimizing a credibility index (under the type of constraints that we consider to appear in practice) and present some examples. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Internet-based exercise intervention systems: Are more interactive designs better?

Abstract

The benefits of Internet-based health promotion programmes are much discussed, yet the literature on their feasibility and utility is limited. Here, we evaluate an Internet-based exercise motivation and action support system (Test system), relative to a group receiving no intervention (Reference) and another receiving a less interactive version of the same system (Control). We report results from a 10-week pilot study with 75 participants aged 23–54 years. We found that, relative to the control system and reference group, the more interactive (test) system was more engaging (better user retention), created higher expectations for exercise, greater satisfaction with motivation and increased self-perception of fitness. Seven months after the intervention, participants who used the test system reported greater levels of increase in exercise than the control or reference groups. Our study adds to the growing body of evidence on the benefits of interactive systems and the role they could play in health promotion programmes. However, it should also be noted that not all Web-based systems offer the same level of advantage; careful design is crucial to ensure that key messages are clearly communicated to attentive users. Further research is required to identify the optimum interactive system design principles, across a range of user types.     

Aesthetics and Ethics in Engineering: Insights from Polanyi

Polanyi insisted that scientific knowledge was intensely personal in nature, though held with universal intent. His insights regarding the personal values of beauty and morality in science are first enunciated. These are then explored for their relevance to engineering. It is shown that the practice of engineering is also governed by aesthetics and ethics. For example, Polanyi’s three spheres of morality in science—that of the individual scientist, the scientific community and the wider society—has parallel entities in engineering. The existence of shared values in engineering is also demonstrated, in aesthetics through an example that shows convergence of practitioner opinion to solutions that represent accepted models of aesthetics; and in ethics through the recognition that many professional engineering institutions hold that the safety of the public supersedes the interests of the client. Such professional consensus can be seen as justification for studying engineering aesthetics and ethics as inter-subjective disciplines.     

Learning emergent behaviours for a hierarchical Bayesian framework for active robotic perception

In this research work, we contribute with a behaviour learning process for a hierarchical Bayesian framework for multimodal active perception, devised to be emergent, scalable and adaptive. This framework is composed by models built upon a common spatial configuration for encoding perception and action that is naturally fitting for the integration of readings from multiple sensors, using a Bayesian approach devised in previous work. The proposed learning process is shown to reproduce goal-dependent human-like active perception behaviours by learning model parameters (referred to as "attentional sets") for different free-viewing and active search tasks. Learning was performed by presenting several 3D audiovisual virtual scenarios using a head-mounted display, while logging the spatial distribution of fixations of the subject (in 2D, on left and right images, and in 3D space), data which are consequently used as the training set for the framework. As a consequence, the hierarchical Bayesian framework adequately implements high-level behaviour resulting from low-level interaction of simpler building blocks by using the attentional sets learned for each task, and is able to change these attentional sets "on the fly," allowing the implementation of goal-dependent behaviours (i.e., top-down influences).