There is increasing interest in building systems that can automatically interpret hand-drawn sketches. However, many challenges remain in terms of recognition accuracy, robustness to different drawing styles, and ability to generalize across multiple domains. To address these challenges, we propose a new approach to sketched symbol recognition that focuses on the visual appearance of the symbol...

The authors critically reviewed experiments in which transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and repetitive TMS (rTMS) of the higher visual pathway were used. Topics include basic mechanisms of neural excitation by TMS and their relevance to the visual pathway (excitatory and inhibitory effects), TMS and rTMS of calcarine cortex (suppression, unmasking, and phosphenes), TMS of V5 (suppression),...

Children who require augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) systems while they are in the process of acquiring language face unique challenges because they use graphic symbols for communication. In contrast to the situation of typically developing children, they use different modalities for comprehension (auditory) and expression (visual). This study explored the ability of three- and...

We present an automatic approach to tree annotation in which basic nonterminal symbols are alternately split and merged to maximize the likelihood of a training treebank. Starting with a simple Xbar grammar, we learn a new grammar whose nonterminals are subsymbols of the original nonterminals. In contrast with previous work, we are able to split various terminals to different degrees, as approp...

How the human brain distinguishes between linguistic symbols (i.e., letters and characters) and scribbles is not entirely understood. Some experimental evidence indicates the existence of a specialized visuo-motor network (comprising the left premotor cortex) that serves the perception of written language symbols as well as their production (e.g., Anderson et al., 1990; Starrfelt, 2007). Damage...

Visual-spatial attention involves modulations of activity in human visual cortex as indexed by electrophysiological and functional neuroimaging measures. Prior studies investigating the time course and functional anatomy of spatial attention mechanisms in visual cortex have used higher-order discrimination tasks with complex stimuli (e.g. symbol matching in bilateral stimulus arrays, or letter ...

Process modeling notations are visual languages that use symbols to represent their main concepts. This study investigates the quality of such symbols from users’ perspective. The design of a symbol influences whether it is easy to spot in a model and is correctly associated with the concept it represents. In an empirical study with 188 participants, the normative ratings of process model symbo...

This article concerned with the translation of Quranic verses to Braille symbols, by using Visual basic program. The system has the ability to translate the special vibration for the Quran. This study limited for the (Noun + Scoon) vibrations. It builds on an existing translation system that combines a finite state machine with left and right context matching and a set of translation rules. Thi...

A group often non-verbal aphasic patients who had not achieved any functional communication after a minimum of three months of conventional speech therapy were introduced to the Blissymbolic System. Based on their ability to learn and use this visual communication system, the subjects were divided into two groups effective versus ineffective symbol users. Both groups were characterized by their...