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Papers by Vered Silber-Varod

In this paper we present a proof-of-concept study which aims to model a conceptual framework to a... more In this paper we present a proof-of-concept study which aims to model a conceptual framework to analyze structures of dialogues. We demonstrate our approach on a specific research question – how speaker’s role is realized along the dialogue? To this end, we use a unified set of Map Task dialogues that are unique in the sense that each speaker participated twice – once as a follower and once as a leader, with the same interlocutor playing the other role. This pairwise setting enables to compare prosodic differences in three facets: Role, Speaker, and Session. For this POC, we analyze a basic set of prosodic features: Talk proportions, pitch, and intensity. To create comparable methodological framework for dialogues, we created three plots of the three prosodic features, in ten equal sized intervals along the session. We used a simple distance measure between the resulting ten-dimensional vectors of each facet for each feature. The prosodic plots of these dialogues reveal the interact...

It has been well-documented for several languages that human interlocutors tend to adapt their li... more It has been well-documented for several languages that human interlocutors tend to adapt their linguistic productions to become more similar to each other. This behavior, known as entrainment, affects lexical choice as well, both with regard to specific words, such as referring expressions, and overall style. We offer what we believe to be the first investigation of such lexical entrainment in Hebrew. Using two existing measures, we analyze Hebrew speakers interacting in a Map Task, a popular experimental setup, and find rich evidence of lexical entrainment. Analyzing speaker pairs by the combination of their genders as well as speakers by their individual gender, we find no clear pattern of differences. We do, however, find that speakers in a position of less power entrain more than those with greater power, which matches theoretical accounts. Overall, our results mostly accord with those for American English, with a lack of entrainment on hedge words being the main difference.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Jun 30, 2023

Social Science Research Network, Jun 21, 2017

Interaction Studies, Dec 31, 2021

The concept of vocal charisma has changed in the past decades from something that people have to ... more The concept of vocal charisma has changed in the past decades from something that people have to something that people do, thereby stimulating research on how vocal charisma can be created and improved. Broadening the perspective on vocal charisma beyond the speaker’s performance itself to the context of the speech, we conducted acoustic-prosodic analyses of public speeches of two prominent Israelian politicians – Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz. The speech material consisted of 311–516 prosodic phrases per politician from the election campaigns 2019–2020 and, crucially, was balanced so as to include an equal number of pre- and post-election speeches. Results show a superiority of Netanyahu over Gantz in almost all facets of vocal charisma, although Gantz caught up over time. Moreover, unlike Gantz, Netanyahu showed a strong adaptation of his vocal charisma patterns to before- and after-election contexts. Scrutinizing this versatility difference, an additional perception experiment with 42 listeners and excerpts from the two politicians’ speeches was carried out. Results show that Netanyahu’s speech excerpts were, unlike those of Gantz, mainly rated as more charismatic in those contexts in which they were performed. Gantz’ post-election speech excerpts, by contrast, were primarily rated as not fitting into that context, i.e., as unfolding their charisma better in a pre-election context. Moreover, listeners also rated Netanyahu as overall more charismatic than Gantz. The combined production and perception evidence suggests the relevance of context in the evaluation and interpretation of vocal charisma signals.

Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS) Workshop 2023

Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics

This study investigates the realization of the two most common word-level stress patterns in Hebr... more This study investigates the realization of the two most common word-level stress patterns in Hebrew, final and penultimate, at utterance-final position. Twenty-six disyllabic words that form minimal pairs, which differ only in their stress pattern, were embedded in 52 sentences. The mean values of three acoustic parameters—duration, F0, and intensity—were measured for vowels of the target words. Findings show that duration is significantly longer at stressed vowels, similar to previous findings on words at utterance-mid position. Lower intensity is assigned to the utterance-final vowels regardless of the stress pattern, but the degree of lowering does depend on the stress pattern. Finally, lower F0 values are found in the utterance-final vowels, but the degree of lowering is similar to both stress patterns. We conclude that duration is the main cue at the prosodic word level, while F0 is used by Hebrew speakers to cue higher prosodic units.

Interdisciplinary journal of e-skills and lifelong learning, 2014

The sixth issue of Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO) special ... more The sixth issue of Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO) special series includes a selection of best papers presented at the 9 th Chais Conference for the Study of Innovation and Learning Technologies: Learning in the Technological Era.

Language & Communication

Int. J. Big Data Intell., 2020

The British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET ), 2019

Recently, learning technologies have become a pivotal constituent of teaching–learning processes.... more Recently, learning technologies have become a pivotal constituent of teaching–learning processes. Contemporary studies indicate that in order to effectively utilize these technologies, instructors and learners alike must master a range of cognitive and socio-emotional competencies, commonly termed “digital literacy competencies” or “21st century skills.” This study employs a content analysis methodology to trace trends of change in the research of core digital literacy competencies as reflected in the educational academic literature of the past 37 years (1980–2016). Based on well-established frameworks of digital literacy competencies, this research examined seven skills: Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Critical thinking, Information literacy, Problem-solving and Socio-emotional skills. Data were collected through advanced search queries of peer-reviewed publications in the Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database. Findings reveal that among the examined terms, Communication is the most prominent digital literacy skill, followed by Problem Solving and Collaboration. Furthermore, within the context of Skills, the most prominent terms are Information Literacy and Critical thinking; Technology and Collaboration are least mentioned. Our findings suggest that awareness of digital learning competencies in educational research literature is marginal, implying that educational research seems to lag behind the need to understand the ever-changing digital competencies that instructors and learners need.

Journal of Computer Information Systems, 2016

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) may increase access to spoken information captured in videos. ... more Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) may increase access to spoken information captured in videos. ASR is needed, especially for online academic video lectures that gradually replace class lectures and traditional textbooks. This conceptual article examines how technological barriers to ASR in under-resourced languages impair accessibility to video content and demonstrates it with the empirical findings of Hebrew ASR evaluations. We compare ASR with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) as facilitating access to textual and speech content and show their current performance in under-resourced languages. We target ASR of under-resourced languages as the main barrier to searching academic video lectures. We further show that information retrieval technologies, such as smart video players that combine both ASR and OCR capacities, must come to the fore once ASR technologies have matured. Therefore, suggesting that the current state of information retrieval from video lectures in under-resourced languages is equivalent to a knowledge dam.

In this paper we examine a certain aspect of prosodysyntax interface, that of hesitation disfluen... more In this paper we examine a certain aspect of prosodysyntax interface, that of hesitation disfluencies (HD) that occur intra-phrases or intra-morphemes. Such cases were found in two spontaneous corpora of two syntactically distinct languages-Israeli Hebrew (IH) and Japanese. It was found that intra-phrasal hesitations in the two languages calls for different explanations, since in Japanese the noun (e.g., in NP) precedes the case marking particle while in IH the preposition (e.g., in PP) precedes the noun. In this paper we will present qualitative findings and suggest a unified view of the phenomenon of intra-phrasal HDs.

A recent production study found that duration is the main cue in realization of lexical stress in... more A recent production study found that duration is the main cue in realization of lexical stress in Hebrew. In order to examine this perceptually, two minimal pairs of bisyllabic words differing only in their stress patterns were uttered within a carrier sentence. Target words were then extracted and their vowel durations were manipulated in eight steps, either downward or upward, to form smooth transitions from original penultimate duration patterns to ultimate, and vice versa. These stimuli were then presented to 15 listeners. Results show that for most listeners, the changes in duration were sufficient to cause a categorical change in perception of the stress pattern.

Understanding speech depends on its segmentation into units, and prosody – the tone, intonation a... more Understanding speech depends on its segmentation into units, and prosody – the tone, intonation and rhythm of speech – is a crucial tool used by speakers for this purpose. This book provides a comprehensive description of the prosodic boundary patterns of spoken Israeli Hebrew (IH), by examining how Hebrew-speakers express sequences of utterances using a defined set of prosodic boundary tones. The study specifically focuses on the relationship between the syntagmatic and prosodic layers of spoken IH, thereby clarifying our understanding of the relationship between prosodic form and its linguistic function. This interface is modeled as the "speeCHain perspective", which demonstrates the chaining of speech units and the subsequent systematic linkage of syntactic units. The research was carried out on authentic IH everyday conversations, thus providing a unique contribution to present-day research. The analysis sheds light on the overall study of prosodic patterning in speech...

Prepositions in Israeli Hebrew, as in other languages, are clitics. They are often regarded as pr... more Prepositions in Israeli Hebrew, as in other languages, are clitics. They are often regarded as proclitics, cliticizing to their object, probably because they both introduce this object (conceptually) and select for it (morpho-syntactically). In this paper, we make the opposite claim, namely that these prosodically-dependent items are in fact entclitic: they cliticize to the preceding word, mainly the sentence predicate. This claim is first supported by the analysis of evidence from natural speech prosodic segmentation. Then, it is shown that within the morpho-syntactic theory of Distributed Morphology, this segmentation is in fact predicted. The morpho-syntactic analysis is confirmed by its capacity to account for the distribution of non-radical [h] in the verbal system of Israeli Hebrew, hitherto considered an arbitrary trait. Finally, the analysis is shown to correctly predict the encliticization of definite articles preceding prepositions. Finally, the analysis is shown to correc...

Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management, 2018

Currently, via the mediation of audio mining technology and conversational user interfaces, and a... more Currently, via the mediation of audio mining technology and conversational user interfaces, and after years of constant improvements of Automatic Speech Recognition technology, conversation intelligence is an emerging concept, significant to the understanding of human-human communication in its most natural and primitive channel – our voice. This paper introduces the concept of Conversation Intelligence (CI), which is becoming crucial to the study of humanhuman speech interaction and communication management and is part of the field of speech analytics. CI is demonstrated on two established discourse terms – power relations and convergence. Finally, this paper highlights the importance of visualization for large-scale speech analytics.

Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Lifelong Learning, 2009

This Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO) inaugural issue of spe... more This Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects (IJELLO) inaugural issue of special series is based on selected best papers presented in the

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Jun 30, 2023

Social Science Research Network, Jun 21, 2017

Interaction Studies, Dec 31, 2021

Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS) Workshop 2023

Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics

Interdisciplinary journal of e-skills and lifelong learning, 2014

Language & Communication

Int. J. Big Data Intell., 2020

The British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET ), 2019

Journal of Computer Information Systems, 2016

Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management, 2018

Interdisciplinary Journal of e-Skills and Lifelong Learning, 2009

Transforming Learning with Meaningful Technologies – 14th European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2019, Delft, NL, September 16-19, 2019, Proceedings, 2019

Learners join MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) with a variety of intentions. The fulfillment o... more Learners join MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) with a variety of intentions. The fulfillment of these initial intentions is an important success criterion in self-paced and open courses. Using post course self-reported data enabled us to divide the participants to those who fulfilled the initial intentions (high-IF) and those who did not fulfill their initial intentions (low-IF). We used methods adapted from natural language processing (NLP) to analyze the learning paths of 462 MOOC participants and to identify activities and activity sequences of participants in the two groups. Specifically, we used n-gram analysis to identify learning activity sequences and keyness analysis to identify prominent learning activities. These measures enable us to identify the differences between the two groups. Differences can be seen at the level of single activities, but major differences were found when longer n-grams were used. The high-IF group showed more consistency and less divergent learning behavior. High-IF was associated , among other things, with study patterns of sequentially watching video lectures. Theoretical and practical suggestions are introduced in order to help MOOC developers and participants to fulfill the participants' learning intentions.

KM Conference 2019: Knowledge Management, Learning, Information Technology, 2019

Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are critiqued for their high dropout rates and low percentage... more Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) are critiqued for their high dropout rates and low percentage of certificate earners (Reich et al., 2019). Henderikx et al. (2017) and Rabin et al. (2018) questioned the validity of these criteria for evaluating the success of this new form of lifelong learning. They claim that the success of lifelong learning in MOOCs should be evaluated not through traditional instructor-focused assessments, but rather through non-formal learner-centered assessments, such as the learner's self-evaluation. Perceived achievement (PA) is a self-evaluation measure in which learners themselves estimate their level of achievement following a knowledge construction process. It was found to be a reliable and valid self-assessment measure of learning outcomes (Ross, 2006). The goal of this study was to predict the learner-centered outcome measure, namely PA, by analyzing the learning process of the participants. We focus on ten main activities harvested from log files of 445 participants in a MOOC on English for academic purposes. A self-report post-course questionnaire was used to identify the learners' level of PA with a single item ranging from 0 to 10. Each participant was assigned into one of two groups – High PA or Low PA. We then used two natural language processing techniques: keyness and n-gram analyses, to examine the differences between the activities' saliency and sequential characteristics of the two groups. The results suggest that the learning processes of the high-PA group are more predictable and with less dispersion compared to the low-PA group. Those results can help to develop personalized learning environments encouraging students to learn according to their personal knowledge construction.

Keywords:
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), perceived achievements, keyness analysis, n-gram analysis, learning process.

References:
Henderikx, M. A., Kreijns, K., & Kalz, M. (2017). Refining success and dropout in massive open online courses based on the intention–behavior gap. Distance Education, 38(3), 353-368.
Rabin, E., Kalman, Y. M., & Kalz, M. (2018). Predicting learner-centered MOOC outcomes: Satisfaction and intention-fulfillment. In Proceedings of the 13th Chais Conference for the Study of Innovation and Learning Technologies: Learning in the Technological Era (pp. 158–166), Raanana: The Open University of Israel.
Reich, J., & Ruipérez-Valiente, J. A. (2019). The MOOC pivot. Science, 363(6423), 130-131. Ross J. A. (2006). The reliability, validity, and utility of self-assessment. Practical Assessment Research & Evaluation, 11(10). Available at: http://pareonline.net/pdf/v11n10.pdf

Zutot - Perspectives on Jewish Culture , 2019

The second half of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of several Hebrew newspapers in E... more The second half of the nineteenth century saw the establishment of several Hebrew newspapers in Eastern Europe and Palestine that provided a platform for a lively political discourse reflecting varied ideological approaches. This work focuses on one decade, 1874-1883, in the relatively long lifespan of the Hebrew weekly HaTzfira, which was founded in Warsaw in 1862. Applying computational tools to the study of the early Hebrew press requires a unique effort. The Hebrew language in general is distinct in its characters, morphological structure, and word order. The contribution of this proof-of-concept study is two-folds: First, computational analysis provides a long-term indication of trends in the discourse that cannot be attained through qualitative study. The second contribution is on the micro level: Computational analysis can potentially shed light, in a diachronic perspective, on the use of a specific term or the discussion of a specific geographical location.