Acquisition Of Multi-Media Storage and Processing for Research in Situated Communication

在国家科学基金会的支持下，芝加哥大学认知和传播委员会将购买：一个数字化PowerMac 9500/132的视频，4个Silicon Graphics Indigo2个ZX工作站，3个数字线性磁带20 GB备份系统和一个Young Minds CD-ROM刻录机。该设备将允许该小组将通信情况的多媒体记录数字化，并对每个数字化记录的各种特性进行编码和分析。它还将为建立一个关于通信情况的大型多媒体数据库奠定基础。该数据库将包含关于每一种通信情况的编码和测量信息。它将包括由研究人员对手势进行定性的分类，语音的声学测量，以及使用图像处理工具测量手势运动。本研究的目的是探讨在会话互动、话语产生和理解中中介加工的认知机制。要充分理解言语交际，必须在自然的交际语境中研究语言的使用，如对话、争论、叙述、情感事件的回忆和亲子互动。自然交际语境包含丰富的信息来源，这些信息以在标准实验室情景中观察不到的方式支配着语言处理的动态。芝加哥小组将采用的分析系统将允许进行这种类型的研究。该仪器系统还将用于教学场合，并向研究生和本科生开放。

With support from the National Science Foundation, the University of Chicago Committee on Cognition and Communication will purchase: a video digitizing PowerMac 9500/132, 4 Silicon Graphics Indigo2 ZX workstations, 3 DigitalLinear Tape 20 GB backup systems and a Young Minds CD-ROM recorder. This equipment will permit the group to digitize multimedia recordings of communication situations and to code and analyze various properties of each digitized recording. It will also establish the groundwork for the creation of a large multimedia database of communication situations. The database will contain coded and measured information about each communicative situation. It will include classifications of gestures made qualitatively by researchers acoustical measurements of speech, and measurements of gesture movement using image processing tools. The goal of this research is to investigate the cognitive mechanisms that mediate processing in conversational interaction, and utterance production and comprehension. To fully understand verbal communication, language use must be studied in natural communicative contexts such as conversations, arguments, narratives, recall of emotional events and parent-child interaction. Natural communicative contexts contain rich sources of information that govern the dynamics of language processing in ways that cannot be observed in standard laboratory situations. The analysis system which the Chicago group will employ, will allow studies of this type to be conducted. The instrumentation system will also be used in teaching situations and be available to graduate and undergraduate students.