Abstract Most studies on adapting voice interfaces to older users work top-down by comparing the ... more Abstract Most studies on adapting voice interfaces to older users work top-down by comparing the interaction behavior of older and younger users. In contrast, we present a bottom-up approach.
ABSTRACT When screening participants for speech perception experiments, formal audiometric screen... more ABSTRACT When screening participants for speech perception experiments, formal audiometric screens are often not an option, especially when studies are conducted over the Internet. We investigated whether a brief standardized self-report questionnaire, the screening version of the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults (HHIA-S), could be used to approximate the results of audiometric screening.
Abstract In this paper, we investigate the acoustic prosodic marking of demonstrative and persona... more Abstract In this paper, we investigate the acoustic prosodic marking of demonstrative and personal pronouns in task-oriented dialog. Although it has been hypothesized that acoustic marking affects pronoun resolution, we find that the prosodic information extracted from the data is not sufficient to predict antecedent type reliably. Inter-speaker variation accounts for much of the prosodic variation that we find in our data. We conclude that prosodic cues should be handled with care in robust, speaker-independent dialog systems.
Abstract A second-occurrence (SO) focus is the semantic focus of a focus-sensitive operator (eg o... more Abstract A second-occurrence (SO) focus is the semantic focus of a focus-sensitive operator (eg only), but is a repeat of anearlier focused occurrence. We report onthe first systematic productionan d perception experiments to show that SO foci occurring after a nuclear accent are, as Rooth (1996b) has claimed, prosodically marked. We find that (i) there is no mean pitch rise on SO foci,(ii) SO foci are marked by longer duration and greater energy, and (iii) listeners are able to detect the difference between SO foci and nonfoci.
ABSTRACT Prosodic correlates of 6 referent status taxonomies and 3 distance-from-last-mention heu... more ABSTRACT Prosodic correlates of 6 referent status taxonomies and 3 distance-from-last-mention heuristics both on the acoustic and on the symbolic level (ToBI) were investigated in a corpus of short news reports read by 6 professional newsreaders. Symbolic correlates are found mainly for pronouns, acoustic correlates for nouns and proper names. However, both form and extent of these correlates varies considerably between speakers.
The working group in Computer Aided Learning and Use of the Internet aims:• to bring together inf... more The working group in Computer Aided Learning and Use of the Internet aims:• to bring together information about resources and tools for computer aided learning (CAL) in the field,• to promote the use of the internet to disseminate information and teaching materials,• to make suggestions of areas of resource development to potential authors,• to encourage the generation of a comprehensive set of high quality resources, and• to create an infrastructure for the management of resources.
In this paper, we report on an experiment that tested users' ability to understand the content of... more In this paper, we report on an experiment that tested users' ability to understand the content of spoken auditory reminders. Users heard meeting reminders and medication reminders spoken in both a natural and a synthetic voice. Our results show that older users can understand synthetic speech as well as younger users provided that the prompt texts are well-designed, using familiar words and contextual cues.
ABSTRACT The Computer Aided Learning (CAL) working group of the SOCRATES thematic network in Spee... more ABSTRACT The Computer Aided Learning (CAL) working group of the SOCRATES thematic network in Speech Communication Science have studied how the Internet is being used and could be used for the provision of self-study materials for education. In this paper we follow up previous recommendations for the design of Internet tutorials with recommendations for their evaluation. The paper proposes that evaluation should be seen as a necessary quality assurance mechanism operating within the life-cycle of CAL materials development.
Abstract In this paper we present a corpus of interactions of older and younger users with nine d... more Abstract In this paper we present a corpus of interactions of older and younger users with nine different dialogue systems. The corpus has been fully transcribed and annotated with dialogue acts and “Information State Update”(ISU) representations of dialogue context. Users not only underwent a comprehensive battery of cognitive assessments, but they also rated the usability of each dialogue system on a standardised questionnaire.
A number of methods exist to gather user requirements from and about people who require care at h... more A number of methods exist to gather user requirements from and about people who require care at home to inform the design of home care technologies. However, there are limits in the extent to which user requirements capture for future home care technologies can be determined by asking potential system users what functionalities or services they would like to see from these emerging technologies.
Liefert Prominenz, also der relative Grad perzeptueller Markiertheit, eine Grundlage f ur die aku... more Liefert Prominenz, also der relative Grad perzeptueller Markiertheit, eine Grundlage f ur die akustische Realisierung von weitem, engem und kontrastivem Fokus in der Concept {to {Speech Synthese? Die Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, da enger Objektfokus durch Prominenz markiert werden kann und da hohe Prominenzwerte kontrastiven Fokus signalisieren.
Although older people are an important user group for smart environments, there has been relative... more Although older people are an important user group for smart environments, there has been relatively little work on adapting natural language interfaces to their requirements. In this paper, we focus on a particularly thorny problem: processing speech input from older users. Our experiments on the MATCH corpus show clearly that we need age-specific adaptation in order to recognize older users' speech reliably.
Abstract An interactive theatre piece has been designed to facilitate requirements gathering with... more Abstract An interactive theatre piece has been designed to facilitate requirements gathering with a diverse range of user groups and stakeholders within the conceptual stage of telecare equipment for the home environment. The piece has been devised and produced by theatre professionals in consultation with computer engineers as part of a major research programme developing computer systems to support older and disabled people.
ABSTRACT Control of prosody is essential for the synthesis of natural sounding speech. Text-to-sp... more ABSTRACT Control of prosody is essential for the synthesis of natural sounding speech. Text-to-speech systems tend to accent too many words when taking into account only the distinction between open-class and closed-class words. In the prominence-based approach [1], the degree of accentuation of a syllable is described in terms of a gradual prominence parameter.
Abstract While there has been a lot of research on the usability of reminders and alarms in the w... more Abstract While there has been a lot of research on the usability of reminders and alarms in the work context, the home has been somewhat neglected despite the importance of reminder systems for telecare and assistive living systems. We conducted a comprehensive mixed-methods study into the requirements for useable and acceptable reminders in the home. The study consisted of a questionnaire (N= 379), 6 focus groups, and 7 home tour interviews.
Abstract We present the MATCH corpus, a unique data set of 447 dialogues in which 26 older and 24... more Abstract We present the MATCH corpus, a unique data set of 447 dialogues in which 26 older and 24 younger adults interact with nine different spoken dialogue systems. The systems varied in the number of options presented and the confirmation strategy used. The corpus also contains information about the users' cognitive abilities and detailed usability assessments of each dialogue system.
Abstract In this thesis, a diphone {based text {to {speech system for Scottish Gaelic, a language... more Abstract In this thesis, a diphone {based text {to {speech system for Scottish Gaelic, a language spoken by about 80.000 native speakers in Scotland and Canada, is presented. Text {to {speech systems convert orthographic text input into speech output.
User quality judgements can show a bewildering amount of variation that is diffcult to capture us... more User quality judgements can show a bewildering amount of variation that is diffcult to capture using traditional quality prediction approaches. Using clustering, an ex-ploratory statistical analysis technique, we reanalysed the data set of a Wizard-of-Oz experiment where 25 users were asked to rate the dialogue after each turn. The sparse data problem was addressed by careful a priori parameter choices and comparison of the results of different cluster algorithms.
Abstract In this paper we argue that Musicons, short samples from pieces of music are a useful wa... more Abstract In this paper we argue that Musicons, short samples from pieces of music are a useful way to present private but memorable reminder messages. We investigated accuracy, memorability and response times for short, medium, and long Musicons. User performance on the Musicons was also compared to short spoken reminders. The study consisted of two sessions a week apart. Quantitative measures were augmented with qualitative questions about associations and memories.
Abstract Most studies on adapting voice interfaces to older users work top-down by comparing the ... more Abstract Most studies on adapting voice interfaces to older users work top-down by comparing the interaction behavior of older and younger users. In contrast, we present a bottom-up approach.
ABSTRACT When screening participants for speech perception experiments, formal audiometric screen... more ABSTRACT When screening participants for speech perception experiments, formal audiometric screens are often not an option, especially when studies are conducted over the Internet. We investigated whether a brief standardized self-report questionnaire, the screening version of the Hearing Handicap Inventory for Adults (HHIA-S), could be used to approximate the results of audiometric screening.
Abstract In this paper, we investigate the acoustic prosodic marking of demonstrative and persona... more Abstract In this paper, we investigate the acoustic prosodic marking of demonstrative and personal pronouns in task-oriented dialog. Although it has been hypothesized that acoustic marking affects pronoun resolution, we find that the prosodic information extracted from the data is not sufficient to predict antecedent type reliably. Inter-speaker variation accounts for much of the prosodic variation that we find in our data. We conclude that prosodic cues should be handled with care in robust, speaker-independent dialog systems.
Abstract A second-occurrence (SO) focus is the semantic focus of a focus-sensitive operator (eg o... more Abstract A second-occurrence (SO) focus is the semantic focus of a focus-sensitive operator (eg only), but is a repeat of anearlier focused occurrence. We report onthe first systematic productionan d perception experiments to show that SO foci occurring after a nuclear accent are, as Rooth (1996b) has claimed, prosodically marked. We find that (i) there is no mean pitch rise on SO foci,(ii) SO foci are marked by longer duration and greater energy, and (iii) listeners are able to detect the difference between SO foci and nonfoci.
ABSTRACT Prosodic correlates of 6 referent status taxonomies and 3 distance-from-last-mention heu... more ABSTRACT Prosodic correlates of 6 referent status taxonomies and 3 distance-from-last-mention heuristics both on the acoustic and on the symbolic level (ToBI) were investigated in a corpus of short news reports read by 6 professional newsreaders. Symbolic correlates are found mainly for pronouns, acoustic correlates for nouns and proper names. However, both form and extent of these correlates varies considerably between speakers.
The working group in Computer Aided Learning and Use of the Internet aims:• to bring together inf... more The working group in Computer Aided Learning and Use of the Internet aims:• to bring together information about resources and tools for computer aided learning (CAL) in the field,• to promote the use of the internet to disseminate information and teaching materials,• to make suggestions of areas of resource development to potential authors,• to encourage the generation of a comprehensive set of high quality resources, and• to create an infrastructure for the management of resources.
In this paper, we report on an experiment that tested users' ability to understand the content of... more In this paper, we report on an experiment that tested users' ability to understand the content of spoken auditory reminders. Users heard meeting reminders and medication reminders spoken in both a natural and a synthetic voice. Our results show that older users can understand synthetic speech as well as younger users provided that the prompt texts are well-designed, using familiar words and contextual cues.
ABSTRACT The Computer Aided Learning (CAL) working group of the SOCRATES thematic network in Spee... more ABSTRACT The Computer Aided Learning (CAL) working group of the SOCRATES thematic network in Speech Communication Science have studied how the Internet is being used and could be used for the provision of self-study materials for education. In this paper we follow up previous recommendations for the design of Internet tutorials with recommendations for their evaluation. The paper proposes that evaluation should be seen as a necessary quality assurance mechanism operating within the life-cycle of CAL materials development.
Abstract In this paper we present a corpus of interactions of older and younger users with nine d... more Abstract In this paper we present a corpus of interactions of older and younger users with nine different dialogue systems. The corpus has been fully transcribed and annotated with dialogue acts and “Information State Update”(ISU) representations of dialogue context. Users not only underwent a comprehensive battery of cognitive assessments, but they also rated the usability of each dialogue system on a standardised questionnaire.
A number of methods exist to gather user requirements from and about people who require care at h... more A number of methods exist to gather user requirements from and about people who require care at home to inform the design of home care technologies. However, there are limits in the extent to which user requirements capture for future home care technologies can be determined by asking potential system users what functionalities or services they would like to see from these emerging technologies.
Liefert Prominenz, also der relative Grad perzeptueller Markiertheit, eine Grundlage f ur die aku... more Liefert Prominenz, also der relative Grad perzeptueller Markiertheit, eine Grundlage f ur die akustische Realisierung von weitem, engem und kontrastivem Fokus in der Concept {to {Speech Synthese? Die Ergebnisse weisen darauf hin, da enger Objektfokus durch Prominenz markiert werden kann und da hohe Prominenzwerte kontrastiven Fokus signalisieren.
Although older people are an important user group for smart environments, there has been relative... more Although older people are an important user group for smart environments, there has been relatively little work on adapting natural language interfaces to their requirements. In this paper, we focus on a particularly thorny problem: processing speech input from older users. Our experiments on the MATCH corpus show clearly that we need age-specific adaptation in order to recognize older users' speech reliably.
Abstract An interactive theatre piece has been designed to facilitate requirements gathering with... more Abstract An interactive theatre piece has been designed to facilitate requirements gathering with a diverse range of user groups and stakeholders within the conceptual stage of telecare equipment for the home environment. The piece has been devised and produced by theatre professionals in consultation with computer engineers as part of a major research programme developing computer systems to support older and disabled people.
ABSTRACT Control of prosody is essential for the synthesis of natural sounding speech. Text-to-sp... more ABSTRACT Control of prosody is essential for the synthesis of natural sounding speech. Text-to-speech systems tend to accent too many words when taking into account only the distinction between open-class and closed-class words. In the prominence-based approach [1], the degree of accentuation of a syllable is described in terms of a gradual prominence parameter.
Abstract While there has been a lot of research on the usability of reminders and alarms in the w... more Abstract While there has been a lot of research on the usability of reminders and alarms in the work context, the home has been somewhat neglected despite the importance of reminder systems for telecare and assistive living systems. We conducted a comprehensive mixed-methods study into the requirements for useable and acceptable reminders in the home. The study consisted of a questionnaire (N= 379), 6 focus groups, and 7 home tour interviews.
Abstract We present the MATCH corpus, a unique data set of 447 dialogues in which 26 older and 24... more Abstract We present the MATCH corpus, a unique data set of 447 dialogues in which 26 older and 24 younger adults interact with nine different spoken dialogue systems. The systems varied in the number of options presented and the confirmation strategy used. The corpus also contains information about the users' cognitive abilities and detailed usability assessments of each dialogue system.
Abstract In this thesis, a diphone {based text {to {speech system for Scottish Gaelic, a language... more Abstract In this thesis, a diphone {based text {to {speech system for Scottish Gaelic, a language spoken by about 80.000 native speakers in Scotland and Canada, is presented. Text {to {speech systems convert orthographic text input into speech output.
User quality judgements can show a bewildering amount of variation that is diffcult to capture us... more User quality judgements can show a bewildering amount of variation that is diffcult to capture using traditional quality prediction approaches. Using clustering, an ex-ploratory statistical analysis technique, we reanalysed the data set of a Wizard-of-Oz experiment where 25 users were asked to rate the dialogue after each turn. The sparse data problem was addressed by careful a priori parameter choices and comparison of the results of different cluster algorithms.
Abstract In this paper we argue that Musicons, short samples from pieces of music are a useful wa... more Abstract In this paper we argue that Musicons, short samples from pieces of music are a useful way to present private but memorable reminder messages. We investigated accuracy, memorability and response times for short, medium, and long Musicons. User performance on the Musicons was also compared to short spoken reminders. The study consisted of two sessions a week apart. Quantitative measures were augmented with qualitative questions about associations and memories.
Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, May 4, 2019
Asynchronous Research Communities methodology (ARC) has been used to explore HCI topics in a rang... more Asynchronous Research Communities methodology (ARC) has been used to explore HCI topics in a range of contexts. This innovative methodology takes advantage of the technological tools and platforms that are often the subject of HCI research to extend existing methods of data collection, pushing methodology beyond historical modes and allowing better connection with populations who have previously been left out of the research process. This SIG will make space for researchers and practitioners who are interested in using ARC methodology to connect with people who have already used ARC and discuss challenges and opportunities with this methodology, and how to extend similar kinds of innovative, distributed computing based methods into new contexts.
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