Programming by Demonstration: a Machine Learning Approach

It is now generally accepted that several types of “risks” can be recognized for built facilities and environments: they are not limited to collapses and heavy damages but involve comfort and way of life (cf. e.g. Augusti et al., 2003). The most rational way of tackling such risks and their reduction is Performance-based Design PBD (or, better, Performance-based Engineering). This lecture will ...

We examined sensitivity of audiovisual temporal order in adolescents with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) using an audiovisual temporal order judgment (TOJ) task. In order to assess domain-specific impairments, the stimuli varied in social complexity from simple flash/beeps to videos of a handclap or a speaking face. Compared to typically-developing controls, individuals with ASD were generally ...

Fifteen children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and twenty-one children without ASD completed six perceptual tasks designed to characterize the nature of the audiovisual processing difficulties experienced by children with ASD. Children with ASD scored significantly lower than children without ASD on audiovisual tasks involving human faces and voices, but scored similarly to children with...

The effects of audiovisual versus auditory training for speech-in-noise identification were examined in 60 young participants. The training conditions were audiovisual training, auditory-only training, and no training (n = 20 each). In the training groups, gated consonants and words were presented at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio; stimuli were either audiovisual or auditory-only. The no-training g...

This study investigated the interaction between top-down attentional control and multisensory processing in humans. Using semantically congruent and incongruent audiovisual stimulus streams, we found target detection to be consistently improved in the setting of distributed audiovisual attention versus focused visual attention. This performance benefit was manifested as faster reaction times fo...

BACKGROUND Studies of perceptual learning have largely focused on unisensory stimuli. However, multisensory interactions are ubiquitous in perception, even at early processing stages, and thus can potentially play a role in learning. Here, we examine the effect of auditory-visual congruency on visual learning. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPLE FINDINGS Subjects were trained over five days on a visual mot...

Orienting responses to audiovisual events in the environment can benefit markedly by the integration of visual and auditory spatial information. However, logically, audiovisual integration would only be considered successful for stimuli that are spatially and temporally aligned, as these would be emitted by a single object in space-time. As humans do not have prior knowledge about whether novel...

BACKGROUND A prevailing view is that audiovisual integration requires temporally coincident signals. However, a recent study failed to find any evidence for audiovisual integration in visual search even when using synchronized audiovisual events. An important question is what information is critical to observe audiovisual integration. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Here we demonstrate that te...

Audiovisual resources are expanding rapidly these days. Large amounts of these complicated materials could lead to serious problems in resource descript ion, representat ion and organization. Supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China, the project entitled Innovative Study on Audiovisual Metadata and its Retrieval has been conducted since 2002. During the preparation phase, th...