In this article we consider two-way two-tape (alternating) automata accepting pairs of words and we study some closure properties of this model. Our main result is that such alternating automata are not closed under complementation for non-unary alphabets. This improves a similar result of Kari and Moore for picture languages. We also show that these deterministic, non-deterministic and alterna...

Decision trees are probably the most common way for generating models for phonemes in their phonetic context. In this paper we investigated several ways how speaking rate information can be integrated in the decision tree process. We basically focused on two approaches: on the one hand a speaking rate feature included in the decision tree itself and on the other hand a pruning approach for crea...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES This study sought to reconcile two lines of research. Previous studies have identified a prevalent and causal role of negative imagery in social phobia and public speaking anxiety; others have demonstrated that lateral eye movements during visualisation of imagery reduce its vividness, most likely by loading the visuospatial sketchpad of working memory. It was hypothes...

Traditional assessments of public speaking skills rely on human scoring. We report a n initial study on the development of an automated scoring model for public speaking performances using multimodal technologies. Task design, rubric development, and human rating were conducted according to standards in educational assessment. An initial corpus of 17 speakers with four speaking tasks was collec...

with the advent of computer technology and educational software, hypermedia language learning materi-als made their way in foreign and second language classrooms. today the role of hypermedia in improv-ing communication skills is by no means deniable. this research aimed at investigating the effect of hy-permedia on the oral performance as well as the motivation of iranian efl learners. a prete...

Purpose: Two of the major functions of the human vocal tract are feeding and speaking. As ontogenetically and phylogenetically feeding tasks precede speaking tasks, it has been hypothesised that the skilled movements of the orofacial articulators specific to speech may have evolved from feeding functions. Our objective is to bring evidence to support this hypothesis. Method: Vocal tract articul...

Abstract The current study examined the effects of task condition (TC; single vs. dual) and proficiency level (PL) on self-monitoring second language (L2) speakers. Data were collected from sixty-six female L2 learners English performing two speaking tasks under conditions. While performance in single-task involved only narrating a picture-based oral narrative, dual-task same narrative as well ...

The primary objective of this study is to identify the types errors made by Korean college students in an oral proficiency interview relation specific task topics, and examine how these affect their lexico-grammatical scores. Ninety-six two-minute-long audio clips 32 on three different topics were transcribed. Lexico-grammatical then coded for statistical analysis scores estimated using many-fa...

The human auditory cortex is the gateway to the most powerful and complex communication systems and yet relatively little is known about its functional organization as compared to the visual system. Several lines of evidence, predominantly from recent studies, indicate that sound recognition and sound localization are processed in two at least partially independent networks. Evidence from human...