Conditional selection with CNN augmented transformer for multimodal affective analysis

Attention mechanism has been a successful method for multimodal affective analysis in recent years. Despite the advances, several significant challenges remain in fusing language and its nonverbal context information. One is to generate sparse attention coefficients associated with acoustic and visual modalities, which helps locate critical emotional se-mantics. The other is fusing complementary cross‐modal representation to construct optimal salient feature combinations of multiple modalities. A Conditional Transformer Fusion Network is proposed to handle these problems. Firstly, the authors equip the transformer module with CNN layers to enhance the detection of subtle signal patterns in nonverbal sequences. Secondly, sentiment words are utilised as context conditions to guide the computation of cross‐modal attention. As a result, the located nonverbal fea-tures are not only salient but also complementary to sentiment words directly. Experi-mental results show that the authors’ method achieves state‐of‐the‐art performance on several multimodal affective analysis datasets.

Better understanding of c-reactive protein and leukocytes in psychiatric inpatients with affective disorders:A biopsychosocial approach

BACKGROUND Affective disorders(AD)have been linked to inflammatory processes,although the underlying mechanisms of this relationship are still not fully elucidated.It is hypothesized that demographic,somatic,lifestyle,and personality variables predict inflammatory parameters in AD.AIM To identify biopsychosocial factors contributing to inflammation in AD measured with two parameters,C-reactive protein(CRP)and leukocytes.METHODS This observational study investigated 186 hospital inpatients diagnosed with AD using demographic parameters,serum inflammatory markers,somatic variables,psychological questionnaires,and lifestyle parameters.Hierarchical regression analyses were used to predict inflammatory markers from demographic,somatic,lifestyle,and personality variables.RESULTS Analyses showed that 33.8%of the variance of CRP was explained by body mass index and other somatic medication(e.g.anti-diabetics),age and education,and age of affective disorder diagnosis.For leukocytes,20.1%of the variance was explained by smoking,diet,metabolic syndrome(MetS),and anti-inflammatory medication(e.g.non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs).Other psychiatric or behavioural variables did not reach significance.CONCLUSION Metabolic components seem important,with mounting evidence for a metabolic affective disorder subtype.Lifestyle modifications and psychoeducation should be employed to prevent or treat MetS in AD.

Impaired implicit emotion regulation in patients with panic disorder:An event-related potential study on affect labeling

BACKGROUND Panic disorder(PD)involves emotion dysregulation,but its underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.Previous research suggests that implicit emotion regulation may play a central role in PD-related emotion dysregulation and symptom maintenance.However,there is a lack of studies exploring the neural mechanisms of implicit emotion regulation in PD using neurophysiological indicators.AIM To study the neural mechanisms of implicit emotion regulation in PD with eventrelated potentials(ERP).METHODS A total of 25 PD patients and 20 healthy controls(HC)underwent clinical evaluations.The study utilized a case-control design with random sampling,selecting participants for the case group from March to December 2018.Participants performed an affect labeling task,using affect labeling as the experimental condition and gender labeling as the control condition.ERP and behavioral data were recorded to compare the late positive potential(LPP)within and between the groups.RESULTS Both PD and HC groups showed longer reaction times and decreased accuracy under the affect labeling.In the HC group,late LPP amplitudes exhibited a dynamic pattern of initial increase followed by decrease.Importantly,a significant group×condition interaction effect was observed.Simple effect analysis revealed a reduction in the differences of late LPP amplitudes between the affect labeling and gender labeling conditions in the PD group compared to the HC group.Furthermore,among PD patients under the affect labeling,the late LPP was negatively correlated with disease severity,symptom frequency,and intensity.CONCLUSION PD patients demonstrate abnormalities in implicit emotion regulation,hampering their ability to mobilize cognitive resources for downregulating negative emotions.The late LPP amplitude in response to affect labeling may serve as a potentially valuable clinical indicator of PD severity.

Rights Risks of Using Affective Computing Technology in Public Governance and Their Regulation

As the frontier of intelligent computing technology,affective computing has been used in border inspection,case investigation,crime assessment,public opinion management,traffic management and other scenarios of public governance.However,there are still public risks associated with its failure to meet the basic requirements of modern public governance,and these risks are rooted in its technical characteristics.The technical characteristics of turning emotions into signals can give rise to such problems as degrading the right to informed consent,de-governance,and undermining human dignity when applied in public governance,and consequently can lead to social rights anxiety.Additionally,the affective modeling characteristics of affective computing tend to incur the rights risks of insufficient algorithm accuracy,algorithmic discrimination,and algorithmic black boxes.To avoid these risks,it is necessary to adopt the dynamic consent model as the premise for applying affective computing in public governance,and to regulate the auxiliary application of affective computing in public governance in a hierarchical manner,to achieve a balance between the application of affective computing technology and the protection of citizens'rights and the maintenance of public ethics.

Different Approaches to Reduce Salinity in Salt-Affected Soils and Enhancing Salt Stress Tolerance in Plants

Salt stress is one of the most harmful environmental stresses in recent times and represents a significant threat to food security. Soil salinization is caused by spontaneous natural processes of mineral dissolution and human activities such as inappropriate irrigation practices. Natural geological progressions like weathering of rocks, arid climate, and higher evaporation, as well as anthropogenic activities, including the use of brackish water for irrigation, and poor tillage operations, are the foremost causes of soil salinization. Typical characteristics of saline soils are salt stress, high pH, and lack of organic carbon, as well as low availability of nutrients. Disruption of precipitation patterns as well as high average annual temperatures due to climate change additionally negatively affects the process of soil salinization. Productivity and ability to support crop growth are reduced on saline soil. Salinity-induced stress reduces plant growth by modulating the antioxidative system and nutrient orchestration. The aim of this work is to show that the mentioned problems can be alleviated in several ways such as the addition of biochar, exogenous application of several elicitors, seed priming, etc. Research has shown that the addition of biochar can significantly improve the recovery of saline soil. The addition of biochar has no significant effect on soil pH, while the cation exchange capacity of the soil increased by 17%, and the electrical conductivity of the saturated paste extract decreased by 13.2% (depends on the initial salinity and the type of biochar raw material). Moreover, biochar enriched with silicon increases the resistance of bananas to salt stress. In addition, exogenous application of several elicitors helps plants to alleviate stress by inducing stress-related physicochemical and molecular changes (selenium, sulfur, silicon, salicylic acid). Finally, seed priming showed positive effects on metabolomics, proteomics and growth of plants subjected to abiotic stress. Priming usually involves immersing the seed in a solution for a period of time to induce physiological and metabolic progression prior to germination.

Affective Factors in English Teaching

Affective factors and cognitive factors are two important parts of English learning, However, English teaching in recent years have taken into special consideration the necessity of knowledge and intelligence and comparatively ignored the development of affection. It may greatly reduce students＇ English learning capacity and limit the whole development of students. This paper will discuss the definition and the importance of affection and some main affective factors, and illustrate some implications of how to implement practical affective activities.

The Impact of Positive Affect on Language Learning Efficiency

To generate a further understanding of the impact of positive affective variables on foreign language learning efficiency, a theoretical analysis was conducted, from second language acquisition and cognitive psychology perspectives. Second language acquisition process is inevitably influenced by individual affective variables residing within the learner. To improve language learning efficiency, positive and facilitative affect should be enhanced in language learning.

Available Contents of Trace Nutrient Element and Factors Affecting Their Availability in Western Jilin

Based on the assay of the total content and available content of the trace nutrient elements and the soil pH and organic matter of the soil samples,the characteristic of the available content of the trace nutrient elements and their affecting factors are studied. The results show that the available B in western Jilin is in a middle level,the content in Nong'an is higher than that in the others; the available Mn is extremely abundant; the available Cu in Nong'an is obviously higher than other areas,and the content in Da'an differs greatly; the available Zn is in a middle level; the severe shortage of available Mo differs between different areas; and the available Fe is extremely abundant. The available Mn,Cu and Fe have significantly positive correlation with their total content; the available B has significantly positive correlation with pH,and Zn has obviously negative correlation with pH; the available Mn and Fe had significantly positive correlation with soil organic matter.

An Affective-Motivational Interface for a Pedagogical Agent

This research is framed within the affective computing, which explains the importance of emotions in human cognition (decision making, perception, interaction and human intelligence). Applying this approach to a pedagogical agent is an essential part to enhance the effectiveness of the teaching-learning process of an intelligent learning system. This work focuses on the design of the inference engine that will give life to the interface, where the latter is represented by a pedagogical agent. The inference engine is based on an affective-motivational model. This model is implemented by using artificial intelligence technique called fuzzy cognitive maps.

On Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension

In English teaching and learning,listening ability is an important part of communicative competence,is a very practical integrated skill.It has been a difficult skill in second language acquisition for many students.Many Chinese students are skilled in reading,but often they tend to neglect the listening.However,owing to the higher requirements of many English tests and the great importance in communication,students begin to pay attention to develop their English listening skills.But there are many factors affecting listening,the paper mainly focuses on linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors that affect listening,to provide a theoretical basis to help exploring ways of improving listening and comprehension skills.

Adjustment to affective factors in English learning by using Internet English Curriculum Resource

The new curriculum standard points out that affection is one of the most important goals of fundamental education. The non-target language environment is easier to cause the affective change of middle school students who are changeable in their affective state. Based on the affective filter hypothesis, this paper deals with the adjustment to affective factors in English learning by using Internet English Curriculum Resource, such as attitude and motivation, anxiety and inhibition, self-esteem and self-confidence. At last, some suggestions are offered to judge Internet English Curriculum Resource.

Residual Stresses and Micro-Hardness Testing in Evaluating the Heat Affected Zone’s Width of Ferritic Ductile Iron Arc Welds

Shielded Metal Arc Welding (SMAW) in Ductile Irons (DI) is often required by foundries for practical manufacturing reasons. The mechanical properties of the welded structures are strongly dependent on their HAZ’s width. A model based on the behaviour of the ferritic matrix of high-Si DIs in order to make an approach in measuring their HAZ’s width is developed in this study. A series of thermal treatments on 3.35 and 3.75 wt% Si as-cast DIs and spot SMAWs is applied on these materials. The applied SMAWs are done on non-preheated and preheated samples (150℃ - 300℃). For welding we modify the amperage (100 - 140A). The micro-hardness Vickers changes in the ferrite of the as-cast samples and inside the HAZ of the welded ones can be attributed to the existence of residual stresses (RS) in the ferritic matrix and assist in estimating the HAZ’s width.

Affective Factors in Vocational College Students'English Learning

This paper focuses on the vocational college students' experiences in English learning, classroom activities, attitudes to their English learning and achievements. It aims to find out how to make use of their positive personal factors to improve their English achievement so that both vocational college teachers and students may gain some enlightenment from the study.

On Affective Strategies use in College Students' Autonomous English Learning

Autonomous study emphasizes the learner's initiative,enthusiasm and creativity.In all fields of education,there is growing emphasis on "learner-centered" teaching methods and the ability of learner autonomy.Many experts and scholars have found that learning strategies plays an important role in English language learning,but the importance of affective strategy use in English learning is often ignored by people.Therefore,this paper focuses on the frequencies of affective strategies use in English learning and their relationships so as to enable college students to use positive affective strategies effectively to improve their autonomous learning ability.

Multimodal spontaneous affect recognition using neural networks learned with hints

A multimodal fusion classifier is presented based on neural networks （NNs） learned with hints for automatic spontaneous affect recognition. In case that different channels can provide com- plementary information, features are utilized from four behavioral cues： frontal-view facial expres- sion, profile-view facial expression, shoulder movement, and vocalization （audio）. NNs are used in both single cue processing and multimodal fusion. Coarse categories and quadrants in the activation- evaluation dimensional space are utilized respectively as the heuristic information （hints） of NNs during training, aiming at recognition of basic emotions. With the aid of hints, the weights in NNs could learn optimal feature groupings and the subtlety and complexity of spontaneous affective states could be better modeled. The proposed method requires low computation effort and reaches high recognition accuracy, even if the training data is insufficient. Experiment results on the Semaine nat- uralistic dataset demonstrate that our method is effective and promising.

Affective Factors——Key Factors Influencing College Learners'Classroom

Foreign language teaching has shifted from teacher-centered teaching method to student-centered in recent years.Affective factors should be paid enough attention in teacher-learner interaction in.This paper aims to make an exploration into the effects of affective factors in college learners'classroom.

Affect regulation in psychoanalytic treatments of patients with a borderline personality disorder–psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychotherapy–a comparison

BACKGROUND A recent meta-analysis has confirmed that the effects of psychotherapy on patients with borderline personality disorders(BPD)are still insufficiently understood.Evidence of differences between different types of therapies has been questioned.AIM To study repetitive interaction patterns in patients with BPD undergoing either psychoanalysis or psychodynamic therapy.METHODS Psychoanalysis(PSA)or psychodynamic psychotherapy(PDT)was administered to 10 patients each,the two groups were matched.Therapy regimens were applied according to care as usual/manualized including quality control and supervision as usual.Randomization to one of the groups was done after baseline assessment.During classical PSA(n=10)and PDT(n=10),semiannually,recordings(audio or video)of five consecutive therapy sessions were taken over three years for an ex-post analysis.The patients'characteristics,such as affect parameters[Affect regulation and experience Q-sort(AREQ)],quality of object relations(quality of object relations scale)and personality traits[Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure(SWAP-200)]were analyzed retrospectively by independent raters.Therapeutic action(psychotherapy process Q-sort)and affective(re)actions of the patients(AREQ)were then analyzed in relation to changes found in the patients'characteristics.RESULTS During the first year of therapy(PSA:n=10;PDT:n=9),the therapeutic method PSA was associated with significant improvements in the variable"SWAP Borderline",while in PDT change was not significantly different to baseline(PSA:P=0.04;PDT:P=0.33).Long-term results and follow up was available for seven participants in PSA and for five in PDT after three years;change in SWAP borderline for the whole sample was not significant at this time point when confronting to baseline(P=0.545).However,differences between PSA and PDT were significant when analyzing the“mean change”in the SWAP Borderline variable after one year of therapy(P=0.024):PSA led to slightly increased BPD symptoms,while PDT to a decrease;for the long run,variance of observed change was higher in PSA than in PDT(SDPSA±9.29 vs SDPDT±7.94).Our assumption that transference interpretations,closely followed by affective changes in the patient,could be useful modes of interaction was reproducible in our findings,especially when looking at the descriptive findings in the long-term data.The analysis of repetitive interaction structures demonstrated a very specific"time-lag"between therapeutic intervention and a corresponding increase in positive affect in successful therapy cases.CONCLUSION Exploring the change processes in the patients'characteristics and linking these changes to specific treatment strategies is of clinical importance when starting treatment and for its long-term progress.

Study of the affective interaction in college English teaching

Affect plays a significant role in college English teaching and learning, in which teachers, learners, tasks and contexts or environments interact with each other, developing a system of affective interaction. In the system, the teacher is a facilitator and mediator and the learner is the subject of English learning. In a harmonious and friendly classroom environment, with the knowledge transmission blending in well with the cultivation of affect, attitudes and values, students＇ cognitive and emotional development can be promoted. The experimental results of the present study indicated that students in the affective college English classroom did significantly better （p〈 .05） in cognition than before. Furthermore, the analyses of the two surveys showed that attention to affective interaction in college English teaching helped students enhance their interest in college English learning, cross-cultural awareness, self-confidence, interpersonal intelligence, and so forth. Therefore, our conclusion is that attention to affective interaction in college English classroom teaching is conducive to students＇ personal growth and a more holistic development.

Violence in Online Games:How Does It Affect Teenagers in China?

Nowadays many teenagers play online games.Too much violence in online games deeply affects the teenagers' life,makes them act in a violent manner.Actions should be brought for change to protest.

The Influences of Affective Variables on and Implications for English Teaching and Learning

Admittedly cognitive variables such as intelligence and aptitude exert great impact on English learning. Affective variables, however, are of intense importance in determining English learning as well, because affect is a starting machine that sets the learning mechanism in motion and learning will run into difficulty if affect does not work properly. Besides, there is mounting interest in exploring the affective domain. Therefore, this paper focuses upon the analyses of four affective variables(attitude, motivation, self-esteem and anxiety) that have bearings on English learning and sets forth Implications for English teaching.