Auditory attention model based on Chirplet for cross-corpus speech emotion recognition

To solve the problem of mismatching features in an experimental database, which is a key technique in the field of cross-corpus speech emotion recognition, an auditory attention model based on Chirplet is proposed for feature extraction.First, in order to extract the spectra features, the auditory attention model is employed for variational emotion features detection. Then, the selective attention mechanism model is proposed to extract the salient gist features which showtheir relation to the expected performance in cross-corpus testing.Furthermore, the Chirplet time-frequency atoms are introduced to the model. By forming a complete atom database, the Chirplet can improve the spectrum feature extraction including the amount of information. Samples from multiple databases have the characteristics of multiple components. Hereby, the Chirplet expands the scale of the feature vector in the timefrequency domain. Experimental results show that, compared to the traditional feature model, the proposed feature extraction approach with the prototypical classifier has significant improvement in cross-corpus speech recognition. In addition, the proposed method has better robustness to the inconsistent sources of the training set and the testing set.

Transformer-like model with linear attention for speech emotion recognition

Because of the excellent performance of Transformer in sequence learning tasks,such as natural language processing,an improved Transformer-like model is proposed that is suitable for speech emotion recognition tasks.To alleviate the prohibitive time consumption and memory footprint caused by softmax inside the multihead attention unit in Transformer,a new linear self-attention algorithm is proposed.The original exponential function is replaced by a Taylor series expansion formula.On the basis of the associative property of matrix products,the time and space complexity of softmax operation regarding the input's length is reduced from O(N2)to O(N),where N is the sequence length.Experimental results on the emotional corpora of two languages show that the proposed linear attention algorithm can achieve similar performance to the original scaled dot product attention,while the training time and memory cost are reduced by half.Furthermore,the improved model obtains more robust performance on speech emotion recognition compared with the original Transformer.

The Joumey of the Magi： A Lyric Monologue for First and Second Voices and Three-in-One Character（s）

Although T. S. Eliot＇s ＂The Journey of the Magi＂ is a religious poem in the profoundest sense, the title of my paper is intended to give only a sly wink at Trinitarianism. My real object is to explain how Eliot contrived to manufacture a poem which, at fu＇st glance, resembles a dramatic monologue （generally understood as a poem for one voice----that of a historical/fictional/mythological character addressing a silent listener, group of listeners or reader）, yet which is slowly revealed as a lyrical monologue （for the poet＇s own voice） which yet--and this quite intentionally----contains considerably more than mere echoes of another two speakers： namely a Magus and the biblical translator and, most famously, sermon writer Archbishop Launcelot Andrewes （1555-1626） court preacher to James 1 and Charles 1 of England. I wish to show how Eliot, in writing what is ultimately confessional verse, goes out of his way to hoodwink the reader by allowing the first two of his ＂{The} Three Voices of Poetry＂ （1957） to overlap with and then incorporate the third. His own descriptions of these voices are （i） lyric, defined as ＂the poet talking to himself＂, （ii） that of the single speakerwho gives a （dramatic） monologuel ＂addressing an {imaginary} audience in an assumed voice＂ and （iii） that of the verse dramatist ＂who attempts to create a dramatic character speaking in verse when he {i.e. the author} is saying.., only what he can say within the limits of one imaginary character addressing another imaginary character＂ yet adding ＂some bit of himself that the author gives to a character may be the germ from which that character starts＂ （Eliot, 1957, pp. 38, 40）. The basis of my argument is that such an act of＂giving of the self＇ as the raw material for the creation of a dramatic monologue persona as well as a character designed for the stage had been part and parcel of Eliot＇s modus operandi up to and including ＂Prufrock＂ and The Waste Land; further, that in ＂The Journey of the Magi＂ and his later commentary upon it he fmally comes out and admits the fact, and in far clearer a manner than he does when defining the Objective Correlative in his essays on Hamlet. Far from attempting to erase the sense of selfhood from his poetry, I believe that Eliot, consciously or not, ended up by demonstrating to those who worshipped the Romantics and their cult of personality just how difficult it was to express the purely subjective self in poetry.

The Effects of Phonological Awareness Training on the Reading Performance by Child EFL Learners in China

The present study explores the effects of phonological awareness training of child EFL learners in China on their reading performances. Eighty grade one Chinese children from two intact primary school classes participated in the study. The treatment class received a 10-week English phonological awareness training, while the contrast class did not receive any training. Both pre-test and post-test were administered to all participants, including English assessment, phonological awareness measures and English reading measures. The results show that the treatment class outperformed the contrast class in the post-test in reading measures and phonological awareness measures; phonological awareness positively correlated with children＇s early reading performance; phoneme tasks were strong predictors of Child EFL learners＇ early reading performance.