Comparisons made in two studies of 21 methods for finding prototypes upon which to base the nearest prototype classifier are discussed. The criteria used to compare the methods are by whether they: (i) select or extract point prototypes; (ii) employ preor post-supervision; and (iii) specify the number of prototypes a priori, or obtain this number “automatically”. Numerical experiments with 5 da...

Two models that predict perceived timbral brightness in terms of the centroid of the frequency spectrum were investigated. One model simply uses the centroid of the frequency spectrum, the other divides this same value by the fundamental frequency: the latter scales the centroid of the frequency spectrum with the fundamental frequency. Different single tone and pitch combinations, presented seq...

Example-based explanations are widely used in the effort to improve the interpretability of highly complex distributions. However, prototypes alone are rarely sufficient to represent the gist of the complexity. In order for users to construct better mental models and understand complex data distributions, we also need criticism to explain what are not captured by prototypes. Motivated by the Ba...

This acoustic study examines sound (vowel) change in apparent time across three successive generations of 123 adult female speakers ranging in age from 20 to 65 years old, representing three regional varieties of American English, typical of western North Carolina, central Ohio and southeastern Wisconsin. A set of acoustic measures characterized the dynamic nature of formant trajectories, the a...

This article concerns the classification of household sounds for the development of an application to help people with hearing disabilities to resolve everyday situations which may present them with serious problems: telephone calls, the sound of the door bell, an alarm clock, the completion of a domestic appliance programme, etc. It presents the study carried out in order to obtain the best ac...