Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Western Sydney, 2009. / A thesis presented to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Humanities and Languages, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosphy. Includes bibliographies.

The goal of this research is to develop Animated Pedagogical Agents (APA) that can convey clearly perceivable emotions through speech, facial expressions and body gestures. In particular, the two studies reported in the thesis investigated the extent to which modifications to the range of movement of 3 beat gestures, e.g., both arms synchronous outward gesture, both arms synchronous forward gesture, and upper body lean, and the agent ‘s gender have significant effects on viewer’s perception of the agent’s emotion in terms of valence and arousal. For each gesture the range of movement was varied at 2 discrete levels. The stimuli of the studies were 8 12-seconds animation clips generated using a fractional factorial design; in each clip an animated agent who speaks and gestures, gives a lecture segment on binomial probability. 4 clips featured a female agent and 4 clips featured a male agent. In the first study, which used a within-subject design and metric conjoint analysis, 120 subjects were asked to watch the 8 stimuli clips and rank them according to perceived valence and arousal (from highest to lowest). In the second study, which used a between-subject design, 300 participants were assigned to two groups of 150 subjects each. One group watched the 4 clips featuring the male agent and one group watched the 4 clips featuring the female agent. Each participant was asked to rate perceived valence and arousal for each clip using a 7-point Likert scale. Results indicated that extending the arms outwards and forwards as well as modifying the agent’s gender from male to female increased perceived valence and arousal, whereas rotating the body backwards increased only perceived valence.

" We designed an interactive 3D user interface system to perform object modeling in virtual environments. Expanding on existing 3D user interface techniques, we integrate low-cost human gesture recognition that endows the user with powerful abilities to perform complex virtual object modeling tasks in an immersive game setting. Much research has been done to explore the possibilities of developing biosensors for Virtual Reality (VR) use. In the game industry, even though full body interaction techniques are involved in modern game consoles, most of the utilizations, in terms of game control, are still simple. In this project, we extended the use of motion tracking and gesture recognition techniques to create a new 3D UI system to support immersive gaming. We set a goal for the usability, which is virtual object modeling, and finally developed a game application to test its performance. "

The thesis La gestuelle en FLE concerns itself with non-verbal communication and usage of gestures in the French language teaching process. It consists of two main parts, theoretical and practical. Theoretical part is focused primarily on non-verbal communication, its types and function, verbal communication will also be mentioned for better understanding of the connection between the two types. In chapter focused on gesture we'll focus on body language, its position concerning the environment (proxemics), we will discuss facial expressions and movement of individual body parts (gestures). Important aspect is the voice, which is considered the middleman between verbal and non-verbal communication. In the chapter dedicated to pedagogical gesture we will focus on its types and function. Last chapter of the theoretical part concerns itself with the body and voice of the teacher, as those are indispensable in the language teaching process. During teaching, the teacher of a foreign language uses all means of communication, spoken word is accompanied or completely substituted by a specific gesture, which leads to better understanding on the side of student and also to elimination of student's mother tongue. Practical part is focused on observation and analysis of two French classes. The subject of...

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:23:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Claudia Simone Godoy Cotes.pdf: 3435531 bytes, checksum: cd716501a220c432b5cb5729a961971b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-05-16 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / This recearch aims to analyse the relation between vocal and body gestures in the speech of TV newscasters, as well as to investigate the changes, in stylistic terms, that have taken place in this genre, by interpreting it in light of the specificities of its social-historic moment. Three historic moments will be considered: the initial moment of TV newscasting (1968), the intermediary moment (1980) and the present moment (2005). The term vocal gesture is used herewith to define the elements of vocal dynamics and vocal quality, that is, those elements which constitute the prosody of the languages and their interaction with the phonic segments. The term body gesture is used to refer to the bodily movements connected to vocal expression. The analysis of vocal gestures is anchored in Experimental Phonetics and the analysis of body gestures is based on communicative approaches of kinesthetic nature. The methodological procedures of data analysis involve the extraction of the acoustic parameters of duration and f0 of phonic segments, syllables and GNPC. The analysis of body gestures involved capturing vídeo images which show sequences of postural movements of the hands and face. The presence or absence of concomitant vocal and body gestures is analysed in relation to the placement of prominence and pauses by TV newscasters. This study points to stylistic changes in the format of TV newscasting over the last decades. Such evolution reflects the tendency towards shifting from a reading style heavily influenced by the spelling of words and minimized bodily gestuality to a more expressive style of oral narration of facts. This tendency may be interpreted as a reflex of the media´s effort to establish a connection with its viewers / Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar, nas narrações dos apresentadores de telejornais, a relação entre os gestos vocais e corporais, além de investigar a evolução ocorrida, em termos estilísticos, nesse tipo de gênero, interpretando-a em função das especificidades do momento histórico-social. Serão considerados três momentos históricos: o momento inicial do telejornalismo (1968), o momento intermediário (1980) e o momento atual (2005). O termo gesto vocal é aqui utilizado para designar os elementos da dinâmica e da qualidade vocais, ou seja, os que constituem a prosódia das línguas em sua interação com os segmentos fônicos. O termo gesto corporal é usado para indicar os movimentos do corpo que acompanham a expressão vocal. A análise dos gestos vocais é ancorada na Fonética Experimental e a dos gestos corporais nas abordagens comunicativas de natureza cinésica. Os procedimentos metodológicos de análise dos dados englobam a extração dos valores dos parâmetros acústicos de duração e freqüência fundamental de segmentos fônicos, sílabas e unidades vogal-vogal (V-V). A análise dos gestos corporais consistiu na captura de imagens de vídeo que demonstram seqüências de movimentos posturais, das mãos e da face. A presença ou ausência de co-ocorrência entre gestos vocais e corporais é abordada em relação à atribuição das ênfases e pausas dadas pelos apresentadores de telejornal. Por meio dessa análise, constatam-se alterações estilísticas na forma de apresentação dos telejornais ao longo das décadas. Essa evolução reflete uma tendência de afastamento do estilo de leitura, influenciada pela escrita das palavras e gestualidade corporal minimizada para um estilo de narração oral dos fatos, tendência essa interpretada como reflexo do esforço da mídia no estabelecimento de interlocução com o público