Silent Video Research Articles

Perceptions of improvements in piano performance following a Body Mapping workshop

It is becoming increasingly popular for musicians to study Body Mapping, a method of body movement education, to improve both body movement and musical quality. In Body Mapping workshops, observers frequently claim that they can both see and hear improvements in the performance, yet previous research does not support this anecdotal evidence. In the present study, pianists received a full day Body Mapping workshop and a panel of judges, blind to condition, evaluated audio and silent video clips of performances recorded the day before and the day after the workshop. In Experiment 1, judges were able to identify the post-test recordings by silent video at a rate significantly better than chance, but not with audio alone. In Experiment 2, ratings of quality of body movement were significantly higher for post-test silent video recordings, but no such effect was observed with audio alone. The present findings suggest that there are visible but not audible changes to the pianists’ performance. We discuss visual dominance as a possible explanation for these findings.

Relationship between early neural responses to syntactic and acoustic irregularities in music.

Humans can detect various anomalies in a sound sequence without attending to each dimension explicitly. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have been used to examine the processes of auditory deviance detection. Previous research has shown that music-syntactic anomalies elicit early right anterior negativity (ERAN), whereas more general acoustic irregularities elicit mismatch negativity (MMN). Although these ERP components occur in a similar latency range with a similar scalp topography, the relationship between the detection processes they reflect remains unclear. This study compared these components by manipulating music-syntactic (chord progression) and acoustic (intensity) irregularities orthogonally in two experiments. Non-musicians (Experiment 1: N = 39; Experiment 2: N = 24) were asked to listen to chord sequences, each consisting of 5 four-voice chords, as they watched a silent video clip. Standard, harmonic-deviant, intensity-deviant and double-deviant chords occurred at the final position in each sequence. Deviant stimuli were presented infrequently (p = .10) in Experiment 1 and equiprobably (p = .25) in Experiment 2. Regardless of deviance probability, both harmonic and intensity deviants elicited similar negativities, which were indistinguishable in terms of latency or scalp distribution. When the two deviant types occurred simultaneously, the negativity increased in an additive manner; that is, the amplitude of the double-deviant ERP was as large as the sum of the single-deviant ERPs. These findings suggest that the detection of music-syntactic and acoustic irregularities works independently, based on different regularity representations.

Influence of linguistic properties and hearing impairment on visual speech perception skills in the German language.

Visual input is crucial for understanding speech under noisy conditions, but there are hardly any tools to assess the individual ability to lipread. With this study, we wanted to (1) investigate how linguistic characteristics of language on the one hand and hearing impairment on the other hand have an impact on lipreading abilities and (2) provide a tool to assess lipreading abilities for German speakers. 170 participants (22 prelingually deaf) completed the online assessment, which consisted of a subjective hearing impairment scale and silent videos in which different item categories (numbers, words, and sentences) were spoken. The task for our participants was to recognize the spoken stimuli just by visual inspection. We used different versions of one test and investigated the impact of item categories, word frequency in the spoken language, articulation, sentence frequency in the spoken language, sentence length, and differences between speakers on the recognition score. We found an effect of item categories, articulation, sentence frequency, and sentence length on the recognition score. With respect to hearing impairment we found that higher subjective hearing impairment is associated with higher test score. We did not find any evidence that prelingually deaf individuals show enhanced lipreading skills over people with postlingual acquired hearing impairment. However, we see an interaction with education only in the prelingual deaf, but not in the population with postlingual acquired hearing loss. This points to the fact that there are different factors contributing to enhanced lipreading abilities depending on the onset of hearing impairment (prelingual vs. postlingual). Overall, lipreading skills vary strongly in the general population independent of hearing impairment. Based on our findings we constructed a new and efficient lipreading assessment tool (SaLT) that can be used to test behavioral lipreading abilities in the German speaking population.

On the interpretation of response particles méi(yǒu) and bù to negative polar questions in Mandarin Chinese

The interpretation of isolated response particles (méi(yǒu)/bù) in Mandarin Chinese, when used as fragment answers to negative polar questions, has traditionally been considered as conveying Double Negation. The present study shows that these response particles may express a Single Negation meaning in addition to a Rejection interpretation when specific contextual settings are considered. It is also shown that both Single Negation and Rejection readings are associated with specific prosodic and gestural cues at the time of production. In perception, gestural properties of silent videos are preferably interpreted as conveying Single Negation. In production and interpretation this study supports the conclusion that a Rejection meaning for méiyǒu/bù corresponds to a marked reading, and that Single Negation is produced and interpreted more readily and faster than Rejection. Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese rely on multimodal mechanisms (prosodic and gestural strategies) at the time of expressing both Single Negation and Rejection meanings by means of isolated response particles. We discuss the implications of this study beyond Mandarin Chinese.

Primary school children rate children with autism negatively on looks, speech and speech content.

Adults and adolescents form negative first impressions of ASD adults and children. We examined the first impression ratings of primary school children (6-9 years) of their ASD peers. 146 school children rated either silent videos, speech or transcribe speech from 14 actors (7 ASD, 7 TD). The ASD actors were rated more negatively than the typically developing actors on all three stimulus types. Children with ASD are likely to be judged more negatively than their peers at the very start of their formal education. Contrary to previous research, for primary school children, the content of the speech was judged as negatively as the delivery of the speech.

Trial-by-trial predictions of subjective time from human brain activity.

Human experience of time exhibits systematic, context-dependent deviations from clock time; for example, time is experienced differently at work than on holiday. Here we test the proposal that differences from clock time in subjective experience of time arise because time estimates are constructed by accumulating the same quantity that guides perception: salient events. Healthy human participants watched naturalistic, silent videos of up to 24 seconds in duration and estimated their duration while fMRI was acquired. We were able to reconstruct trial-by-trial biases in participants' duration reports, which reflect subjective experience of duration, purely from salient events in their visual cortex BOLD activity. By contrast, salient events in neither of two control regions-auditory and somatosensory cortex-were predictive of duration biases. These results held despite being able to (trivially) predict clock time from all three brain areas. Our results reveal that the information arising during perceptual processing of a dynamic environment provides a sufficient basis for reconstructing human subjective time duration.

Gendhing Sekaten. (2010) 2020Gendhing Pahargyan. (2012) 2020Gendhing Kurmat Dalem. 2020Gendhing Gati. (2015) 2020Gendhing Gati Volume 2. 2020Gendhing Soran Volume 1. 2021

Gendhing Sekaten. (2010) 2020Gendhing Pahargyan. (2012) 2020Gendhing Kurmat Dalem. 2020Gendhing Gati. (2015) 2020Gendhing Gati Volume 2. 2020Gendhing Soran Volume 1. 2021

Quality of Information in YouTube Videos on Penis Enlargement Surgery

Background: An increasing number of patients and their aesthetic curiosity are causing the online questioning of penis enlargement surgery (PES). Although there is a wealth of healthcare information about PES on the internet, the quality of PES-related information on YouTube, the most visited online video streaming service, has not fully known. It is aimed to evaluate the quality of information about PES in YouTube videos. Materials and Methods: In January 2021, we cross-sectionally performed YouTube search using the keywords "penis enlargement surgery", "penis lengthening surgery", or "penis thickening surgery". We sorted the videos as reliability in terms of containing scientifically proven information by 1 urologist and 1 plastic surgeon. Irrelevant, non-Turkish, and silent videos were not included. Video demographics were analyzed based on the quality and source of the video. A 5-point global quality scale, a 5-point reliability (DISCERN) tool, kappa statistic, the intraclass correlation coefficient, and descriptive statistics in the form of proportions and percentages were used. Results: A total of one-hundred PES videos published on YouTube between 2015-2021 were searched. Thirty-nine of these videos were removed due to duplicate, irrelevant, lack of sound or misleading information. Deceptive videos had a significantly higher number of likes than useful videos. On the other hand, useful videos had significantly more views than misleading videos. Useful videos had a higher DISCERN score compared to misleading videos. The fact that the uploader was sourced by professionals and doctors working at universities significantly contributed to the usefulness of the videos. Conclusion: As searching for information about PES on YouTube, patients are exposed to low-quality and confusing videos. Complexity in the number of views and likes could make accessing the informative PES video difficult. It may be recommended that patients prefer PES videos created by professionals.

Frameworks for the Talk Shows in the American Al Hurra Channel Dealing with the Issues of Arab Countries

This study aims to investigate the frameworks for the talk shows in the American Al-Hurra channel dealing with the issues of Arab countries, and it is considered one of the descriptive and analytical studies, as it relied on analyzing the content of the episodes of the weekly talk show "The Four Bodies" on the (Al-Hurra American) channel during the period between (December 1, 2016 - January 1) 2017), which was the first term of the presidency of the forty-fifth US President Donald Trump and was full of political decisions issued by President Trump and had a direct relationship with the Arab countries. Among most prominent results was that Al-Hurra channel deals with issues related to Arab countries, especially political issues, specifically Trump and foreign policy towards Arab countries. It also showed that the direction of dialogue in the Al Hurra channel for topics related to Arab countries issues has a positive trend, and it used the silent video in the background as a supportive material in addressing the issues are based on opinion dialogue with more than one person, the main figure, and relied on researchers who support the issues at hand. American citizens, also demonstrated the channel’s reliance on political frameworks and ambitions in dealing with Arab countries ’issues through the method of presenting opinions and ideas, especially the mixed public and political decision-makers in the countries. Case owner.

A Case-Control Study Measuring Mentalization in Individuals With PTSD Compared to Controls Using the STOMP Task

AimsSocial cognition is impaired in a variety of psychiatric conditions; evidence for impairment in individuals with PTSD is increasing. Mentalization is one domain of social cognition that refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them. The STOMP task (Spontaneous Theory of Mind Protocol) involves an individual watching two minutes of a silent video and describing what they see. As part of a wider project examining social cognition in PTSD, we aimed to find out whether mentalization in the STOMP task differs between patients with PTSD compared to controls.Methods171 individuals undertook the task: 30 patients were recruited from centres in Cardiff and Bristol at the start of their psychological therapy; 141 controls were recruited through Prolific website. Participants watched a 2-minute silent video and were asked to write 7–10 sentences about the clip. Qualtrics software selected the video and collected the texts. The verbs of the texts were coded and given a score by PM using the Mental-Physical Verb Norms (MPVN) method. MVPN was developed by Orr et al. 2019, to give a value to 250 commonly used verbs based on their mental or physical attributes (the higher the value, the more ‘mental’ the verb). The total score of each text was divided by the number of verbs scored to produce an average that reflects how much mentalization was used. An unpaired t-test was used to calculate the significance in difference between the means of the two groups.ResultsThe overall average score of individuals with PTSD was higher than the controls (38.5 vs. 33.5, p value 0.0047). The median score of individuals with PTSD was 37.95 compared to 31.60 with an actual difference of -6.350 and a Hodges-Lehmann difference of -4.650. These results do not support the hypothesis that mentalization is impaired in patients with PTSD.ConclusionThis case-control study suggests that mentalization could be enhanced in patients with PTSD compared to controls. These results should be interpreted as part of a wider project being undertaken on the topic of social cognition in PTSD. Further studies with more participants from the population of interest and larger sample sizes could produce more reliable results, together with an expansion of the number of verbs coded in the MPVN method.

Perceptual Restoration in Speechreading by Adults With Profound Hearing Loss.

Perceptual restoration occurs when the brain restores missing segments from speech under certain conditions. It is investigated in the auditory modality, but minimal evidence has been collected during speechreading tasks. The authors measured perceptual restoration in speechreading by individuals with hearing loss and compared it to perceptual restoration in auditory speech by normally hearing individuals. Visual perceptual restoration for speechreading was measured in 33 individuals with profound hearing loss by blurring the keywords in silent video recordings of a speaker uttering a sentence. Auditory perceptual restoration was measured in 33 normally hearing individuals by distorting the keywords in spoken sentences. It was found that the amount of restoration was similar for speechreading through the visual modality by individuals with hearing loss and speech perception through the auditory modality by normally hearing individuals. These findings may facilitate understanding of speech processing by individuals with hearing loss.

Impact of Guidance and Multitasking on Manual Dexterity Skills in Dentistry.

This study investigated the effect of learning by observation on the development of fine motor skills related to endodontic manual instrumentation. We evaluated if learning by observation with guidance had any influence upon operator performance under tense or taxing conditions. Dental students prepared standardized simulated root canals of varying morphology. Learning involved silent video with hand guidance (n = 23), audiovisual combined with oral instructions (n = 23), or silent video (n = 13). Undergraduates who previously completed conventional preclinical endodontics provided comparative data as a control group (n = 16). During investigations, a root canal of a lower molar plastic tooth was shaped, beginning with a primary task, and followed by multitasking conditions. The performance of the students was assessed by evaluating the accuracy of dental canal shaping and time taken to complete the task. Differences were analyzed using ANOVA (p < 0.05). Performance was similar during learning between the three experimental groups. Accuracy of the performance did not differ within each group for the two tests nor between the groups at each test (p > 0.05). These findings demonstrated that performance subsequent to learning by observation without instructions was comparable to learning with instructed observation. The results also identified that the performance of the experimental group (1.5- to 2-hour practice) was comparable with the conventional control group (15- to 20-hour practice). Alternative approaches to learning dexterity skills in dentistry may provide improved outcomes, especially in demanding situations.

Effect of subject state on auditory brainstem response threshold using Kalman-weighted averaging

ObjectivesThis study aims to explore the impact of a subject's testing state on auditory brainstem response (ABR) thresholds using a novel ABR system (Vivosonic Integrity™), which incorporates Kalman-weighted averaging and bluetooth electrical isolation to address the limitation of conventional ABR limitation to obtain a stable result under non-sedated conditions, especially for infants and children. MethodTwenty-four adults (18–34 years old, 48 ears) with normal hearing were enrolled for ABR testing under three different states (lying quietly in the supine position or sleeping—lying; watching silent videos quietly in a seated position—sitting; and writing in a seated position—writing), which simulate the behaviors of young children most often encountered during non-sedated Kalman-weighted ABR testing in clinical practice. The click ABR (cABR) and tone-burst ABR (tbABR) thresholds (0.5, 1, 2, and 4 kHz) of each subject and the time taken to reach the monaural threshold for each kind of stimulus were recorded. Results(1) The cABR and tbABR thresholds were observed to increase in the following order: lying < sitting < writing. Significant threshold differences were found between any two states, except for between the sitting and lying states for the cABR and between sitting and writing for the 0.5 kHz tbABR. (2) The time required for cABR testing in the writing state was significantly longer than that in the lying and sitting states. The time required for 1 and 4 kHz tbABR testing in the lying state was significantly shorter than that in the sitting or writing state. For 2 KHz tbABR, only testing time under writing was significantly longer than that under lying. There were no significant differences in the time used for 0.5 kHz tbABR testing among different states. ConclusionsDifferent testing states have significant impacts on the thresholds of ABRs using Kalman-weighted averaging. A subject's state during ABR testing warrants consideration, and normal levels and correction values to estimate the hearing threshold from the ABR threshold should be determined for different testing states.

EXAMINING RATER PERCEPTION OF HOLDS AS A VISUAL CUE OF LISTENER NONUNDERSTANDING

AbstractThis study examined whether university students perceive holds (i.e., a listener’s temporary cessation of dynamic movement) as a visual cue of nonunderstanding. Conversations between English second language (L2) university students were sampled to extract episodes of other-initiated repair through open clarification requests (e.g., what?, sorry?). Brief, silent video clips were presented to 60 raters across two experiments who assessed the listener’s comprehension, which was their perception about how well the listener had understood the speaker. Experiment 1 tested whether raters can differentiate between the onset and release of listener holds while Experiment 2 examined whether they are sensitive to the sequential organization of holds. Results indicated that raters clearly differentiated between hold onsets and releases and were sensitive to the temporal position of holds in the entire repair sequence. Taken together, these findings suggest that holds are a reliable signal of nonunderstanding with potential implications for L2 teaching and assessment.

E2E-V2SResNet: Deep residual convolutional neural networks for end-to-end video driven speech synthesis

Speechreading which infers spoken message from a visually detected articulated facial trend is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end ResNet (E2E-ResNet) model for synthesizing speech signals from the silent video of a speaking individual. The model is the convolutional encoder-decoder framework which captures the frames of video and encodes into a latent space of visual features. The outputs of the decoder are spectrograms which are converted into waveforms corresponding to a speech articulated in the input video. The speech waveforms are then fed to a waveform critic used to decide the real or synthesized speech. The experiments show that the proposed E2E-V2SResNet model is apt to synthesize speech with realism and intelligibility/quality for GRID database. To further demonstrate the potentials of the proposed model, we also conduct experiments on the TCD-TIMIT database. We examine the synthesized speech in unseen speakers using three objective metrics use to measure the intelligibility, quality, and word error rate (WER) of the synthesized speech. We show that E2E-V2SResNet model outscores the competing approaches in most metrics on the GRID and TCD-TIMIT databases. By comparing with the baseline, the proposed model achieved 3.077% improvement in speech quality and 2.593% improvement in speech intelligibility.

Electrophysiological Measures of Tactile and Auditory Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Behavioral differences in responding to tactile and auditory stimuli are widely reported in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, the neural mechanisms underlying distinct tactile and auditory reactivity patterns in ASD remain unclear with theories implicating differences in both perceptual and attentional processes. The current study sought to investigate (1) the neural indices of early perceptual and later attentional factors underlying tactile and auditory processing in children with and without ASD, and (2) the relationship between neural indices of tactile and auditory processing and ASD symptomatology. Participants included 14, 6–12-year-olds with ASD and 14 age- and non-verbal IQ matched typically developing (TD) children. Children participated in an event-related potential (ERP) oddball paradigm during which they watched a silent video while being presented with tactile and auditory stimuli (i.e., 80% standard speech sound/a/; 10% oddball speech sound/i/; 10% novel vibrotactile stimuli on the fingertip with standard speech sound/a/). Children’s early and later ERP responses to tactile (P1 and N2) and auditory stimuli (P1, P3a, and P3b) were examined. Non-parametric analyses showed that children with ASD displayed differences in early perceptual processing of auditory (i.e., lower amplitudes at central region of interest), but not tactile, stimuli. Analysis of later attentional components did not show differences in response to tactile and auditory stimuli in the ASD and TD groups. Together, these results suggest that differences in auditory responsivity patterns could be related to perceptual factors in children with ASD. However, despite differences in caregiver-reported sensory measures, children with ASD did not differ in their neural reactivity to infrequent touch-speech stimuli compared to TD children. Nevertheless, correlational analyses confirmed that inter-individual differences in neural responsivity to tactile and auditory stimuli were related to social skills in all children. Finally, we discuss how the paradigm and stimulus type used in the current study may have impacted our results. These findings have implications for everyday life, where individual differences in responding to tactile and auditory stimuli may impact social functioning.

Stereotypes About Battered Women and Victim's Self-Defense: Legal Implications.

Recent research on the practices of justice operators with women victims of intimate partner violence has evidenced the existence of gender stereotypes and gender-blind practices in the Spanish legal system (Albertín et al., 2020; García Jiménez et al., 2019, 2020), as well as the graves consequences that such practices imply for these women. In this context, the present study explored the existence of a battered woman stereotype and its variation when the victim defends herself from the abuser. An opportunity sample of 505 undergraduates of Law, Psychology and other studies from two Spanish universities assessed some personality characteristics of a woman after watching a 1-minute-long silent video. The participants were randomly assigned to one of three observation conditions ("control", "victim" or "self-defense victim"), which differed in the previous information given about the target woman. The Principal Components Analysis reduced the information from the questionnaire to three dimensions: "brittleness" (α = .91), "positive" (α = .786), and "hostile" (α = .809). The MANOVA confirmed the battered woman stereotype and its modification when the victim reacts against the abuser in self-defense: in this case the attribution of brittleness decreases and the attribution of hostility increases. The type of academic training showed significant effects on the stereotype, this being more negative among Law students than among Psychology ones. Law students perceive the target woman in the "victim" condition more hostile and manipulator. As for the "self-defense" condition, Law students attribute less brittleness to the victim, and perceive her more manipulator and dangerous. The effect of the observer's gender on the stereotype is consistent with the previous literature. Implications for professional training and judicial practices are discussed.

Convergence in voice fundamental frequency during synchronous speech.

Joint speech behaviours where speakers produce speech in unison are found in a variety of everyday settings, and have clinical relevance as a temporary fluency-enhancing technique for people who stutter. It is currently unknown whether such synchronisation of speech timing among two speakers is also accompanied by alignment in their vocal characteristics, for example in acoustic measures such as pitch. The current study investigated this by testing whether convergence in voice fundamental frequency (F0) between speakers could be demonstrated during synchronous speech. Sixty participants across two online experiments were audio recorded whilst reading a series of sentences, first on their own, and then in synchrony with another speaker (the accompanist) in a number of between-subject conditions. Experiment 1 demonstrated significant convergence in participants' F0 to a pre-recorded accompanist voice, in the form of both upward (high F0 accompanist condition) and downward (low and extra-low F0 accompanist conditions) changes in F0. Experiment 2 demonstrated that such convergence was not seen during a visual synchronous speech condition, in which participants spoke in synchrony with silent video recordings of the accompanist. An audiovisual condition in which participants were able to both see and hear the accompanist in pre-recorded videos did not result in greater convergence in F0 compared to synchronisation with the pre-recorded voice alone. These findings suggest the need for models of speech motor control to incorporate interactions between self- and other-speech feedback during speech production, and suggest a novel hypothesis for the mechanisms underlying the fluency-enhancing effects of synchronous speech in people who stutter.

Watching a remote-video confederate eating facilitates perceived taste and consumption of food

People eat more when their eating confederates eat a lot. However, it was not clear whether participants’ eating is changed by a remote-video confederate. We compared three types of silent videos: 1) a stranger eating potato chips, 2) the stranger calling on the phone, or 3) only objects (food and cellphone). Participants perceived popcorn to taste better only when they watched the video of others eating. Watching others eating induced the participants to eat more than when watching the other two videos. This study indicates that remote-video confederates enhance not only food intake but also the perceived taste of food.

Event-Related Potential Measures of the Passive Processing of Rapidly and Slowly Presented Auditory Stimuli in MCI.

Much research effort is currently devoted to the development of a simple, low-cost method to determine early signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. The present study employs a simple paradigm in which event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to a single auditory stimulus that was presented rapidly or very slowly while the participant was engaged in a visual task. A multi-channel EEG was recorded in 20 healthy older adults and 20 people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). In two different conditions, a single 80 dB sound pressure level (SPL) auditory stimulus was presented every 1.5 s (fast condition) or every 12.0 s (slow condition). Participants were instructed to watch a silent video and ignore the auditory stimuli. Auditory processing thus occurred passively. When the auditory stimuli were presented rapidly (every 1.5 s), N1 and P2 amplitudes did not differ between the two groups. When the stimuli were presented very slowly, the amplitude of N1 and P2 increased in both groups and their latencies were prolonged. The amplitude of N1 did not significantly differ between the two groups. However, the subsequent positivity was reduced in people with MCI compared to healthy older adults. This late positivity in the slow condition may reflect a delayed P2 or a summation of a composite P2 + P3a. In people with MCI, the priority of processing may not be switched from the visual task to the potentially much more relevant auditory input. ERPs offer promise as a means to identify the pathology underlying cognitive impairment associated with MCI.