Small Gestures Research Articles

Chinese children show sensitivity to transparency in number gestures earlier than Canadian children

Chinese children often outperform North Americans in math, particularly rote skills. In the present study, we test whether Chinese children show advantages in tasks tapping abstract understanding of numeracy: processing unconventional number gestures. Previous research has shown that children from western cultures are not initially sensitive to the one-to-one correspondence in number gestures, showing difficulties interpreting unconventional gestures. Three- to five-year-old Chinese children were compared with same-aged English-speaking Canadian children on producing and interpreting number gestures. The Chinese children outperformed the Canadian children at all ages. Only younger Chinese children showed a small unconventional gesture disadvantage. These results suggest that Chinese children have early abstract understanding of number-related skills. While the Chinese children may follow the same pattern of development, the development is far accelerated relative to Canadian children.

Silence and Small Gestures: Jews and non-Jews in the Netherlands (1940–1945)

Through a systematic analysis of 500 Jewish testimonies, this article seeks to expand the social and cultural history of the Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Shifting the focus away from heated debates about ‘knowledge’ of the Holocaust towards wartime social interactions, it argues that prevailing notions of ‘resistance/collaboration’ and ‘rescue/betrayal’ do not fully account for the civilian obstruction of Nazi policies and many small gestures of support towards Jews. Ultimately, as a crucial addition to German and non-Jewish Dutch sources, Jewish accounts invite further perspectives on the broader landscape of Jews’ perceptions and memories of non-Jews, acts of disobedience and the effects of polarisation across Nazi-occupied Western Europe.

A Hand Gesture Recognition Algorithm Based on Multi-scale Hybrid Features

A human hand gesture recognition algorithm based on multi-scale hybrid features is pro-posed. A large number of gesture data images are organized and annotated by automatic im-age annotation algorithm. Based on dense sampling, the multi-scale Gaussian pyramid is taken into account for enhancing the image details; it can realize the recognition of both large and small target gestures. Meanwhile, according to the aggregation and distribution of gestures, statistical analysis is used to optimize the size and aspect ratio of anchors, which can further improve the accuracy of recognition. The experiment results show that the mean average precisions of this algorithm can be improved to 99.7% and 93.3% for the simple gesture and complex gesture, respectively, which are higher than that obtained by these traditional methods, such as faster region-convolution neural network (Faster R-CNN), You Only Look Once (YOLO), and SSD.

Making Sweet Tea

Making Sweet Tea

A gesture recognition algorithm in a robot therapy for ASD children

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) exhibit significant impairments in gesture imitation. Newest interventions are based on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) since children with ASD cope well with stylized, rule-based and predictable systems. These collaborative approaches encompass therapy games based on joint exercises, imitation and interaction between robots and children. This paper’s aim was to implement an algorithm to automatically recognize small and similar gestures within a humanoid-robot therapy called IOGIOCO for ASD children. IOGIOCO is a multi-level HRI therapy meant to teach 19 meaningful gestures in a semantic framework based on a feedback interaction. Gestures were tracked as 3D coordinates of body keypoints captured by a Kinect. A Residual Neural Network was implemented and trained on a segmented Dataset acquired within this study to generate the offline model which was then exploited in a real-time classification using a sliding window. Feedback as sound stimuli from NAO robot was provided based on the automatic evaluation of each performance. Clinical acquisitions were carried out on 4 ASD children within the IOGIOCO therapy. Offline recognition was successful: exploiting Artificial Neural Networks we reached 95% of test accuracy for 19 gestures. A real-time recognition on healthy subjects reached 94% accuracy. Clinical applications were evaluated through the F1 score that achieved 79% value. These outcomes were encouraging considering the wide gesture set and all the challenges the therapy raises. This kind of automatic algorithm was able to decrease the therapist workload and increase the robustness of the therapy and engagement of the child.

Evaluating the Performance of Machine Learning Algorithms in Gaze Gesture Recognition Systems

Despite the utility of gaze gestures as an input method, there is a lack of guidelines available regarding how to design gaze gestures, what algorithms to use for gaze gesture recognition, and how these algorithms compare in terms of performance. To facilitate the development of applications that leverage gaze gestures, we have evaluated the performance of a combination of template-based and data-driven algorithms on two custom gesture sets that can map to user actions. Template-based algorithms had consistently high accuracies but the slowest runtimes, making them best for small gesture sets or accuracy-critical applications. Data-driven algorithms run much faster and scale better to larger gesture sets, but require more training data to achieve the accuracy of the template-based methods. The main takeaways for gesture set design are 1) gestures should have distinct forms even when performed imprecisely and 2) gestures should have clear key-points for the eyes to fixate onto.

The effect of gestures on the interpretation of plural references

ABSTRACT During language comprehension, comprehenders build conceptual models of linguistic content. Despite their fundamental nature, relatively little is known about how plural expressions are realised in conceptual models. Specifically, it is unknown whether these models contain quantity information when it is left unspecified in the noun phrase. This paper reports two studies that investigate the effect of gestures on plural conceptual representations. Experiment 1 confirmed that small gestures evoke small set sizes and large gestures evoke large set sizes. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and showed that gestures seem to influence comprehenders' representations of number information rather than the amount of space a plural reference occupies. Taken together, these data suggest that when plurals are instantiated in comprehenders' minds, spatial information provided by gestures is used by comprehenders to make inferences about the quantity of objects in a plural set.

Into the periphery: Acting into fleeting, unfinished, just perceptible movements of experience in scenes of joint action

Much of what goes on in organisational life happens at the edge of language, in the form of vague stirrings, fleeting feelings or small gestures. In the midst of relating to others, we may sense a potential new opening or an ill-defined disquiet. Usually, it is only later that we can make reference to a some-thing that has since emerged. I offer two reflective narratives of moments of action occurring with colleagues and students. I propose that as organisational and action research practitioners we need to learn a particular kind of artistry, one that pays attention to minor shifts and variations as they are occurring, often at the periphery of our awareness. I draw on Manning’s work on ‘minor gestures’ and Shotter’s notions of ‘joint action’ and ‘withness thinking’. I turn to novelist Clarice Lispector to explore how we might approach crafting after-the-fact, reflexive accounts that remain in touch with the precarious potentiality of where things might go next.

Basketball shooting angle calculation and analysis by deeply-learned vision model

To solve the problem that standard image decomposition cannot conduct image decomposition of basketball shooting angle according to the change of basketball projection Angle, an intelligent visual image decomposition method of basketball projection angle using odd-difference value decomposition was proposed. By analyzing the change of basketball shooting angle under different shooting conditions, the basketball shooting angle is determined. Based on this, singular value decomposition is introduced to judge the image decomposition of intelligent vision. Observations have shown that the intelligent vision image decomposition judgment method can improve the image contrast of shooting motion decomposition. In the shortest time, according to the change of basketball projection angle, the shooting motion image decomposition is fulfilled. In order to improve the accuracy of human motion recognition in videos and computation of large-scale data sets, a motion recognition technique by leveraging double-core extreme learning machine and deep learning technology are proposed. In the first layer of the double-core extreme learning component, the linear kernel extreme learning machine is used to predict the dense trajectory characteristics and deep learning characteristics. In the second layer, dense trajectory features are combined with deep learning features. In deep features, deep video features are fused with video RGB trichromatic features as deep features. Simulation experiments are conducted on a massive-scale and real-world data sets and a small basketball gesture data set. The experimental results have shown that our method exhibits a high recognition accuracy for both data sets. The analysis results have shown that the improved model has higher recognition rate and better action recognition effect than its competitors.

Managing the emotional aspects of compassion fatigue among teachers in Israel: a qualitative study

ABSTRACT Teachers interact with schoolchildren on a daily basis. Hence, they are likely to be the first to recognise a child’s problem and the first to extend help. Yet showing concern and providing help to schoolchildren with complex needs can be stressful, making teachers vulnerable to compassion fatigue in that they become over-involved and begin to identify with the suffering and distress of those they are trying to help. To date, very little research has focused on the impact of compassion fatigue among teachers. The present study adopted a qualitative approach, using in-depth semi-structured interviews to evaluate perceived compassion fatigue among 42 teachers. Three main themes emerged from the interviews: a) ‘The burden is too heavy for me to bear’: Stress symptoms as perceived by the teachers; b) ‘Each new incident shocks me, causing me to relive my own trauma’: Stress triggers; and c) ‘Small gestures bring me satisfaction’: Positive aspects of teachers’ compassionate work. The study reveals teachers’ feelings of stress and burnout at work, the significant impact of secondary trauma on their lives and the need for a formal support system.

Relational Practice in Multilingual Peer Discourse: Talk as a Marker of Gender Identity

This paper examines relational practice in multilingual peer discourse to inspect the distinct identity patterns of the male and the female participants involved in gender dynamics. There is a growing impetus of discourse studies as an emerging area of sociolinguistic and ethno methodological research. In this paper, talk as a marker of gender identity is explored in the light of the theoretical framework suggested by Holmes (2006) who studies the different relational strategies of male and female interlocutors in workplace environment. In the current study, conversations of six male and female postgraduate students of English language at Sargodha University, Pakistan are recorded and transcribed to see how the participants create team as a relational practice using gender specific norms via talk. The study has found that the males create team through humor in discourse while females tilt towards small talk and frequent verbal gestures of approval. Moreover, masculinities and femininities of the peers are manifested in their style and function of the conversations. The study is significant because it is going to lay a foundation for the study and exploration of gender integrated conversations in multilingual context in Pakistani English and other varieties spoken in casual talk in Pakistan.

Ruby’s Oyster Dressing, or Edible Nostalgia

Ruby’s Oyster Dressing, or Edible Nostalgia

Social Reactivity and Small Gestures of Solidarity: A Social Anthropologist's Perspective

Social Reactivity and Small Gestures of Solidarity: A Social Anthropologist's Perspective

The Rock from the Sky by Jon Klassen

Reviewed by: The Rock from the Sky by Jon Klassen Deborah Stevenson, Editor Klassen, Jon The Rock from the Sky; written and illus. by Jon Klassen. Candlewick, 2021 [96p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781536215625 $18.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781536222685 $18.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R* Gr. 1-3 In this spare, humorous early chapter book of five slim chapters, the irresistible force looks set to meet the immovable object as a huge boulder plunges from the sky, hurtling toward an oblivious turtle, who muses happily about standing in its favorite spot. A groundhog-like critter has a “bad feeling” about that spot, and eventually, in the name of togetherness, the turtle moves to join the groundhog and its friend the snake—in the nick of time. Other chapters involve the turtle’s falling off of the now-landed rock (“Do you need help?” “No. . . . I never need help”), the animals’ dreaming of the future, a not-quite-shared sunset watching experience, and a terrapin sulk about the cozy nap the other two enjoy (“I see. I see how it is. Just enough room for two”). There’s rich humor in the clipped dialogue (differentiated by font color, but in main text rather than speech bubbles and a cool gray vs. black usage that’s a world away from Elephant & Piggie) that reveals our starring turtle in a few master strokes as a stubborn reptilian Eeyore type, and the comedy of terse dialogue leans magisterially into Beckett as performed by Buster Keaton. The brilliant coup de grâce that will slay audiences is the silent arrival of a huge weird creature that looks like a pony-sized six-legged spider with an eyeball for a body, which proves to be able to zap foliage into ashes, and which plays an abrupt and hilarious role in the book’s conclusion. The art is fascinatingly cinematic in a flip-book kind of way, using the static nature of the simple scenes and repeated compositions to set off the drama of small gestures, changes of position, and eye shifts; of course, this being Klassen, all three animals sport natty headgear, ranging from bijou bowlers to a lovely little beret for the snake. The sly humor and touch of sci-fi will make this a winner for reluctant later-stage readers as well as beginning readers developing their stamina, and it’ll be a great conspiratorial co-read with adults or sibs. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Describing recovery from drugs and alcohol: how ‘small’ practices of care matter

This article mobilises Heather Love’s writings on description to provide a novel analysis of recovery from drugs and alcohol. It discusses thin descriptions deriving from the presence of the researcher in the recovery space, and the service-users’ thick descriptions of their recovery experiences, produced through one-to-one interviews and photovoice. Thin and thick descriptions of recovery are brought together with the Deleuzo-Guattarian assemblage, for the provision of an insight into the practice of recovery that focuses on its daily crafting through small practices of care. Observing and describing how phone calls and text messages, assessment forms, doorways and art materials inform the generation of caring practices, recovery is reconfigured as an amalgam of small gestures that gradually expand life possibilities. This epistemological and methodological shift has the potential to unsettle the way we understand and do policy, and to re-think it as a practice emerging organically inside the recovery assemblage.

Side-Crossing Menus

Supporting many gestures on small surfaces allows users to interact remotely with complex environments such as smart homes, large remote displays, or virtual reality environments, and switching between them (e.g., AR setup in a smart home). Providing eyes-free gestures in these contexts is important as this avoids disrupting the user's visual attention. However, very few techniques enable large sets of commands on small wearable devices supporting the user's mobility and even less provide eyes-free interaction. We present Side-Crossing Menus (SCM), a gestural technique enabling large sets of gestures on %small interactive surfaces like a smartwatch. Contrary to most gestural techniques, SCM relies on broad and shallow menus that favor small and rapid gestures. We demonstrate with a first experiment that users can efficiently perform these gestures eyes-free aided with tactile cues; 95% accuracy after training 20 minutes on a representative set of 30 gestures among 172. In a second experiment, we focus on the learning of SCM gestures and do not observe significant differences with conventional Multi-stroke Marking Menus in gesture accuracy and recall rate. As both techniques utilize contrasting menu structures, our results indicate that SCM is a compelling alternative for enhancing the input capabilities of small surfaces.

Calming Effects of Touch in Human, Animal, and Robotic Interaction-Scientific State-of-the-Art and Technical Advances.

Small everyday gestures such as a tap on the shoulder can affect the way humans feel and act. Touch can have a calming effect and alter the way stress is handled, thereby promoting mental and physical health. Due to current technical advances and the growing role of intelligent robots in households and healthcare, recent research also addressed the potential of robotic touch for stress reduction. In addition, touch by non-human agents such as animals or inanimate objects may have a calming effect. This conceptual article will review a selection of the most relevant studies reporting the physiological, hormonal, neural, and subjective effects of touch on stress, arousal, and negative affect. Robotic systems capable of non-social touch will be assessed together with control strategies and sensor technologies. Parallels and differences of human-to-human touch and human-to-non-human touch will be discussed. We propose that, under appropriate conditions, touch can act as (social) signal for safety, even when the interaction partner is an animal or a machine. We will also outline potential directions for future research and clinical relevance. Thereby, this review can provide a foundation for further investigations into the beneficial contribution of touch by different agents to regulate negative affect and arousal in humans.

Life is not chess: Towards a dynamic theory on altruism

Economic theory propagates a model of the human being commonly known as homoeconomicus; an individual with a rational orientation directed towards maximizing his/her preferences. However, our everyday lives involve many altruistic acts. These can range from small gestures of kindness such as holding a door open for another person, to heroic feats such as risking one's life to save a child from drowning. During our lives we also meet certain people that instantly induce our kindness. Our nicety in these moments is not based on a pursuit to optimize our material desires. Rather, we allow our feelings and intuitions to guide the course of our actions. How do we reconcile these experiences against the economic conception of human nature as inherently selfish? Addressing this contradiction, the paper will deconstruct the economic view and repositioning it as the product of an epistemological stance that distorts our view of altruism. An alternative model on altruism will then be developed by merging anthropological theories on value with insights from cultural psychology and grounded cognition. Through this process, a passage will be shown from static and universalizing perspective towards an emergent and dynamic theory on altruism.

Potência spinoziana: resistência ao controle sobre o modo de morrer

Resumo Este ensaio discute a tomada de decisão no fim da vida considerando o pensamento de Foucault e Spinoza. São tomados como referência dois pressupostos. O primeiro é o reconhecimento de tecnologia de gestão da vida que busca exercer poder sobre os corpos (biopoder) por meio de sistema disciplinar que prescreve modos de viver (biopolítica). O segundo pressuposto considera o conceito de corpo e a teoria dos afetos de Spinoza. Pôde-se concluir que, apesar dos obstáculos à tomada de decisão autônoma por parte dos pacientes, os indivíduos têm potência absoluta que lhes dá protagonismo. Seus pequenos gestos, no entanto, muitas vezes são invisíveis ao olhar dos profissionais de saúde.

Drug Overdoses Surge Due to Pandemic, Early Reports Show

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article ProfessionalFull AccessDrug Overdoses Surge Due to Pandemic, Early Reports ShowKatie O'ConnorKatie O'ConnorSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:30 Jul 2020https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2020.8a13AbstractThough it will take months to finalize the data, preliminary reports show that drug overdoses have increased since the pandemic began.Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, substance use disorder (SUD) experts have warned that individuals with SUDs are likely to struggle even more as they face isolation and disruptions in access to care. Though it can take months to finalize data on fatal and nonfatal drug overdoses, preliminary reports are proving those experts right.The Washington Post reported last month that state and local offices across the country are reporting spikes in drug overdoses.A May report by the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program (ODMAP), a federal overdose tracking initiative, focused on six unnamed states with reliable overdose data. In two of those states, ODMAP found that there was a statistically significant rise in overdoses since the pandemic began. From January to April nationally, there was a 16.6% increase in suspected overdoses compared with the same period last year. “A comparison of raw numbers yields an increase of 11.39% for fatal overdoses and an increase of 18.64% for nonfatal overdoses during that same time period,” the report stated.According to Politico, James Carroll, director of National Drug Control Policy in the Executive Office of the President, said that experts expect the death count to continue to rise, especially as not all states have reported their data yet.The pandemic is like a perfect storm for people with substance use disorders and those in recovery, says Elie Aoun, M.D. “All the things that could go wrong have gone wrong during this pandemic.”“These trends are very concerning, but they’re also not surprising,” said Elie Aoun, M.D., a general addictions and forensic psychiatrist at Columbia University and a member of APA’s Council on Addiction Psychiatry. “I’ve seen relapses in my practice, and many people I’ve spoken to have seen similar issues.”Feelings of isolation and depression can push people in recovery to use drugs again, he explained. “Someone with an addiction is going to say, ‘The way I’m feeling now, during the pandemic, in terms of social isolation and lack of support feels exactly how I felt when I used drugs,’ ” he said.Yet their access to SUD treatment may also be complicated by the pandemic and the associated inadequate public health response.Between April 27 and May 8, the Addiction Policy Forum conducted an anonymous survey of its nationwide network of patients with SUDs, those in recovery, and family members of people with SUDs. Of the 1,079 respondents, 34% reported changes or disruptions in accessing treatment or recovery support services.Kaiser Health News reported that some drug rehabilitation centers around the country have experienced COVID-19–related difficulties, such as outbreaks of the virus or associated financial difficulties that have forced them to close or halt admissions.The people who may be hurt most by the pandemic are those who are still using drugs or seeking treatment, Aoun explained. “It takes a lot of effort to take that first step and say, ‘Drugs are not working for me anymore, and I need to do something about it,’ ” he said. The pandemic makes that first step even harder.Simultaneously, there have been some disruptions in the drug supply. Dealers who may have been considered reliable in the past may be unavailable, causing people to turn to new and unfa.miliar dealers and substances, Aoun explained, which may increase the risk of overdose.When the pandemic first began, some people began to stockpile drugs out of fear that there would be supply chain disruptions, Aoun said. “We know people with addictions are not known for appreciating future rewards,” he said. “They focus on the immediate rewards, and if these drugs are available, they’re going to use them, and this definitely promotes overdoses.”He added that, despite the challenges that people with SUDs are experiencing, he has seen communities come together in unprecedented ways.“Because of the pandemic, people struggled with finding purpose in their life, and a lot of them ended up serving others,” he said. “They found purpose in creating support systems for the elderly and people with addictions, reaching out to them. These small gestures of hope have brought us together.” ■“ ‘Cries for Help’: Drug Overdoses Are Soaring During the Coronavirus Pandemic” is posted here.“Pandemic Unleashes a Spike in Overdose Deaths” is posted here.“Survey: COVID-19 Affecting Access to Addiction Treatment and Key Services” is posted here. ISSUES NewArchived