News by Subject Social & Behavior

Every parent knows the frustration of responding to a baby's cries, wondering if it is hungry, wet, tired, in need of a hug, or perhaps even in pain. A group of researchers in USA has devised a new artificial intelligence method that can identify and distinguish between normal cry signals and abnormal ones. The method promises to be useful to parents at home as well as in healthcare settings.

What makes Beethoven sound like Beethoven? EPFL researchers have completed a first analysis of Beethoven's writing style, applying statistical techniques to unlock recurring patterns.

A new Portland State University study suggests that the likelihood of a child being classified with an educational disability depends on the characteristics of their school and how distinctive they are from their peers

A new study by Columbia University researchers found that infants at high risk for autism were less attuned to differences in speech patterns than low-risk infants. The findings suggest that interventions to improve language skills should begin during infancy for those at high risk for autism.

They've never seen animals like hippos and sharks but adults born blind have rich insight into what they look like, a new Johns Hopkins University study found.

A new study has found that court reporters transcribe speakers of African American English significantly below their required level of accuracy. The study 'Testifying while black: An experimental study of court reporter accuracy in transcription of African American English,' by Taylor Jones (University of Pennsylvania), Jessica Kalbfeld (New York University), Ryan Hancock (Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity), and Ryan Clark (University of Pennsylvania) will be published in the forthcoming June 2019 issue of the scholarly journal Language.

University of Washington researchers have defined for the first time what children mean when they say technology is 'creepy.'

Screaming is well-studied in animals, but much less is known about how human screams function in communication, or how similar or different human screams are from those of other species. To help unlock the secrets of human screaming, researchers at Emory University have studied human vocal sounds, representing a broad acoustical range and array of emotional contexts, and studied what makes a sound a scream or not.