“Hold infinity in the palm of your hand.” A functional description of time expressions through fingers based on Chinese Sign Language naturalistic data

This paper investigates the relationship between fingers and time representations in naturalistic Chinese Sign Language (CSL). Based on a CSL Corpus (Shanghai Variant, 2016–), we offer a thorough description of finger configurations for time expressions from 63 deaf signers, including three main types: digital, numeral incorporation, and points-to-fingers. The former two were further divided into vertical and horizontal fingers according to the orientation of fingertips. The results showed that there were interconnections between finger representations, numbers, ordering, and time in CSL. Vertical fingers were mainly used to quantify time units, whereas horizontal fingers were mostly used for sequencing or ordering events, and their forms could be influenced by Chinese number characters and the vertical writing direction. Furthermore, the use of points-to-fingers (e.g., pointing to the thumb, index, or little finger) formed temporal connectives in CSL and could be patterned to put a conversation in order. Additionally, CSL adopted similar linguistic forms in sequential time and adverbs of reason (e.g., cause and effect: events that happened earlier and events that happen later). Such a cause-and-effect relationship was a special type of temporal sequence. In conclusion, fingers are essential for time representation in CSL and their forms are biologically and culturally shaped.

TARA-Net: A Fusion Network for Detecting Takeaway Rider Accidents

In the emerging business of food delivery, rider traffic accidents raise financial cost and social traffic burden. Although there has been much effort on traffic accident forecasting using temporal-spatial prediction models, none of the existing work studies the problem of detecting the takeaway rider accidents based on food delivery trajectory data. In this article, we aim to detect whether a takeaway rider meets an accident on a certain time period based on trajectories of food delivery and riders’ contextual information. The food delivery data has a heterogeneous information structure and carries contextual information such as weather and delivery history, and trajectory data are collected as a spatial-temporal sequence. In this article, we propose a TakeAway Rider Accident detection fusion network TARA-Net to jointly model these heterogeneous and spatial-temporal sequence data. We utilize the residual network to extract basic contextual information features and take advantage of a transformer encoder to capture trajectory features. These embedding features are concatenated into a pyramidal feed-forward neural network. We jointly train the above three components to combine the benefits of spatial-temporal trajectory data and sparse basic contextual data for early detecting traffic accidents. Furthermore, although traffic accidents rarely happen in food delivery, we propose a sampling mechanism to alleviate the imbalance of samples when training the model. We evaluate the model on a transportation mode classification dataset Geolife and a real-world Ele.me dataset with over 3 million riders. The experimental results show that the proposed model is superior to the state-of-the-art.

The discourse marker ale in Bislama oral narratives

This study takes us to the South Pacific and concentrates on Bislama, one of the dialects of Melanesian pidgin (Siegel 2008: 4) and one of the official languages of Vanuatu. We take a discourse analysis perspective to map out the functions of ale, a conspicuous discourse marker in conversations and narratives. Using Labov & Waletzky (1967) model, we analyze the use of ale in narratives from the book Big Wok: Storian blong Wol Wo Tu long Vanuatu (Lindstrom & Gwero 1998) and determine that ale is a discourse marker which indicates temporal sequence and consequence, frames speech reports and closes a digression. We conclude our study by considering a possible historical development of ale. We map out how French allez could have become Bislama ale using imposition and functional transfer (Siegel 2008; Winford 2013a) of vernacular discourse markers (such as go in Nguna).

Time Synthesis in Organization of Sensorimotor Action

Time synthesis of sensorimotor action is reviewed as a process of a coherence setting action duration (expected duration), time sequence of required operations and significant changes in conditions. Aim: to experimentally set up the connection of time synthesis success and efficiency of realization sensorimotor action in changeable conditions. Hypothesis: successful time synthesis of the setting duration and the temporal sequence of operations in the mental organization of sensorimotor action in changing conditions is realized in accordance with the corresponding operational meaning and is allowed by anticipatory effects and an increase in the effectiveness of the action, materials and methods. An experimental study involved 152 male and female students. Participants of the investigation solved experimental tasks, implemented in a computer version, according to schemes of a simple visual-motor reaction and a choice reaction (separately and in combination), according to a scheme of sensorimotor action with a warning signal when the apperceptive scheme, setting duration and sequence of required operations were changed promptly. Results were reviewed in the aspect of disclosing the features of the subject's elimination of the uncertainty of the moment of achieving the goal in the future and the construction of a sequence of operations of sensorimotor actions in a connection with changes in external conditions, typical for the time deficit regime. The conditionality of the time synthesis of sensorimotor action by the actual operational meaning was established revealing that the successful temporal synthesis of sensorimotor action in changing conditions is associated with the fastest acceptance of an adequate apperceptive scheme, with effective anticipation of the moment of achieving the goal and the formation of a detailed setting duration of action, with the formation of a temporal sequence of required operations. Conclusions. The levels of success of the time synthesis of sensorimotor action in changing conditions are highlighted: “quite successful; moderately successful; unsuccessful.”

EXPRESS: Using Relative-Speed-of-Processing to Explain the Shielding Function of Task Rules

In choice reaction tests, applying task rules instead of responding associatively can help participants shield against interference from distractors. However, the mechanism of such shielding functions remains unclear. Through four experiments, we show how the shielding function can be explained by the Relative-Speed-of-Processing theory. Experiment 1A demonstrated that applying task rules can reduce the relative processing advantage of the distractor by facilitating the target processing speed, thereby eliminating the interference effect. In Experiments 1B, and 1C, we manipulated the relative processing advantage between targets and distractors by adjusting the temporal sequence of the presence of the targets and distractors: stimuli appearing first would gain more relative processing advantage. The results showed that when the relative processing advantage of a distractor was large enough, applying task rules cannot help participants shield against the interference. Contrarily, when the relative processing advantage of the distractor was small, even without applying task rules, participants did not experience the interference. In Experiment 2, we directly manipulated the processing speed of the targets and the distractor, so that participants who responded associatively would facilitate target processing speed, but participants who applied task rules would not. Contrary to previous studies but in line with our prediction, in Experiment 2, only participants who applied task rules had interference effects. Our results suggested that applying the task rule might not help us shield against the interference directly. Instead, applying task rules improves target-processing speed, which in turn reduces the relative processing advantage of the distractor and eliminates the interference.

Quantifying the Generation Process of Multi-Level Tactile Sensations via ERP Component Investigation

Humans obtain characteristic information such as texture and weight of external objects, relying on the brain’s integration and classification of tactile information; however, the decoding mechanism of multi-level tactile information is relatively elusive from the temporal sequence. In this paper, nonvariant frequency, along with the variant pulse width of electrotactile stimulus, was performed to generate multi-level pressure sensation. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured to investigate the mechanism of whole temporal tactile processing. Five ERP components, containing P100–N140–P200–N200–P300, were observed. By establishing the relationship between stimulation parameters and ERP component amplitudes, we found the following: (1) P200 is the most significant component for distinguishing multi-level tactile sensations; (2) P300 is correlated well with the subjective judgment of tactile sensation. The temporal sequence of brain topographies was implemented to clarify the spatiotemporal characteristics of the tactile process, which conformed to the serial processing model in neurophysiology and cortical network response area described by fMRI. Our results can help further clarify the mechanism of tactile sequential processing, which can be applied to improve the tactile BCI performance, sensory enhancement, and clinical diagnosis for doctors to evaluate the tactile process disorders by examining the temporal ERP components.