Re: [huml] Walk Like An Egyptian

[cognizor@cognizor.com]

True, that environment affects cognition and its timing every moment.
Back-straightening, amount of elbow abduction, eye-focus direction and
many other things are used as subtle cues.

It is often smaller postural/gestural components that one uses to
identify oneself to others as a group member.  They range in duration
from characteristic (e.g., earrings, hairstyle -- Len had some
examples in the huml strawman) to almost ephemeral (height of a 
shoulder shrug, amount of eyelid shown, pause before a smile 
response, voicing and syllable duration, amount of mouth opening
or lip tension, and often quite significant, angle of wrist 
rotation and hand tension during gait).

More overtly communicative are eye-contact components.  These, like
whether the hand is free to swing alongside during gaits,  or is
pre-occupied with holding something, integrate with other focus 
tasks, like watching where you're walking on a busy sidewalk
or where it's muddy or rocky.  

Fun stuff.

And there is data on such things even in the Price-Waterhouse manuals,
those prepared for people going in to various regions, ethnology field
manuals, fiction/nonfiction, photos, film -- or video tapes....  

Connecting the Significance of how-much-of-this-component is the trick
for us, though, isn't it?  But it has the nice property of being
approachable by measurement.

SC


On Fri, 24 Oct 2003 16:08:23 -0500
"Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <clbullar@ingr.com> wrote:

> That's good feedback.  On the other hand, it may be that if one can 
> create models which are recognizable across cultures, that is, given 
> a sample distribution, most identify the state correctly most of the 
> time, the model is good.  That is why I focus on simulations.  BTW, 
> the 'variety of factors' is why we have an abstract set of categories 
> in the schema.  It enables one to derive multiple theories and relate 
> them according to the types.  A weak ontology for describing factors 
> related to communication.   One of the plagues of HumanML as a 
> project was its overselling as a predictive model or as a complete 
> and accurate description of the human condition.
>  
> The fundamental problem of HumanML, reiterated from time to time 
> since we started, is that the best it can do is model.  It is weakly 
> predictive for any given instance.  The amount of data required for 
> statistically significant results is overwhelming and potentially, 
> non-linear dynamic (multiple feedback paths).
>  
> ln
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: James Landrum [mailto:james.landrum@ndsu.nodak.edu]
> Sent: Friday, October 24, 2003 3:35 PM
> To: Bullard, Claude L (Len)
> Cc: 'Rex Brooks'; 'huml@lists.oasis-open.org'
> Subject: Re: [huml] Walk Like An Egyptian
> 
> 
> I just had a short chat with Charles Musiba, our Biological Anthropologist,
> and he has some reservations about the gait item:
> 1.  It is difficult at best to model cross-culturally the gait and emotional
> states of individuals and more difficult to develop a prediction model for
> determining emotional states based on gait, especially regarding cross
> cultural aspects of human behavior, without a significant range of data, and
> this includes accounting for a variety of  factors, not the least of which
> include:
> 2. Gait is determined greatly by natural environment, e.g., the substrate
> (ground surface) conditions, e.g., smooth level sidewalk versus rocky
> inclined or uneven ground
> 3. the cultural environment, e.g., people in heavily populated urban areas
> walk much differently than people who reside in suburban or rural areas 
> 
> Charles, in collaboration with other researchers at U. Chicago, conducted a
> study on gait in 1995 and will send me a copy of the article, which I will
> forward to the list when I receive it.
> 
> Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> 
> 
> If one could obtain the modeling tool used and get that 
> 
> to output H-anim, one could then create the cultural 
> 
> libraries that cross-index to the emotional vocabularies. 
> 
> Because X3D enables attachable behaviors, one then has 
> 
> the base sets for many kinds of simulations and games.
> 
> 
> 
> Likely, they know that too as do the Aussie research 
> 
> groups.
> 
> 
> 
> BTW: See Tim Bray's blog
> 
> 
> 
> http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/10/21/HumanUniversals
> <http://tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/10/21/HumanUniversals> 
> 
> 
> 
> where he is studying Pinker.
> 
> 
> 
> len
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> From: Rex Brooks [ mailto:rexb@starbourne.com <mailto:rexb@starbourne.com> ]
> 
> 
> 
> Indeed, this is interesting and interesting too to check cultural 
> 
> factors with follow up  experiments.
> 
> 
> 
> At 1:05 PM -0500 10/24/03, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
> 
>   
> 
> Now here is a neat application.  Note the use of controls based
> 
> on emotional state to adjust the behavioral presentation.
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.bml.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Demos/BMLwalker.html
> <http://www.bml.psy.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/Demos/BMLwalker.html> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thanks to George Birblis on the VRMLBigList for finding this one.
> 
> 
> 
> It would be interesting to see how these were derived and if
> 
> they are cross-cultural.
> 
>     
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> 
> 
>   
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> From the desk of James [Jim] E. Landrum III
> 
> Database Manager, Archaeology Technologies Laboratory (ATL)
> 
> North Dakota State University (NDSU)
> 
> Ph. 701-231-7115
> 
> FAX: 701-231-1047
> 
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> 
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> 
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> 
> 


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 ;););) blessed are the geeks -- for they shall inherit the source code :):):)