Dominique Estival | Western Sydney University (original) (raw)

Papers by Dominique Estival

INTERSPEECH, 2021

Here we present AusKidTalk [1], an audiovisual (AV) corpus of Australian children's speech collec... more Here we present AusKidTalk [1], an audiovisual (AV) corpus of Australian children's speech collected to facilitate the development of speech based technological solutions for children. It builds upon the technology and expertise developed through the collection of an earlier corpus of Australian adult speech, AusTalk [2,3]. This multi-site initiative was established to remedy the dire shortage of children's speech corpora in Australia and around the world that are sufficiently sized to train accurate automated speech processing tools for children. We are collecting ~600 hours of speech from children aged 3-12 years that includes single word and sentence productions as well as narrative and emotional speech. In this paper, we discuss the key requirements for AusKidTalk and how we designed the recording setup and protocol to meet them. We also discuss key findings from our feasibility study of the recording protocol, recording tools, and user interface.

JMIR MENTAL HEALTH, 2021

Background: People living in rural and remote areas have poorer access to mental health services ... more Background: People living in rural and remote areas have poorer access to mental health services than those living in cities. They are also less likely to seek help because of self-stigma and entrenched stoic beliefs about help seeking as a sign of weakness. E-mental health services can span great distances to reach those in need and offer a degree of privacy and anonymity exceeding that of traditional face-to-face counseling and open up possibilities for identifying at-risk individuals for targeted intervention. Objective: This scoping review maps the research that has explored text-based e-mental health counseling services and studies that have used language use patterns to predict mental health status. In doing so, one of the aims was to determine whether text-based counseling services have the potential to circumvent the barriers faced by clients in rural and remote communities using technology and whether text-based communications, in particular, can be used to identify individuals at risk of psychological distress or self-harm. Methods: We conducted a comprehensive electronic literature search of PsycINFO, PubMed, ERIC, and Web of Science databases for articles published in English through November 2020. Results: Of the 9134 articles screened, 70 met the eligibility criteria and were included in the review. There is preliminary evidence to suggest that text-based, real-time communication with a qualified therapist is an effective form of e-mental health service delivery, particularly for individuals concerned with stigma and confidentiality. There is also converging evidence that text-based communications that have been analyzed using computational linguistic techniques can be used to accurately predict progress during treatment and identify individuals at risk of serious mental health conditions and suicide. Conclusions: This review reveals a clear need for intensified research into the extent to which text-based counseling (and predictive models using modern computational linguistics tools) may help deliver mental health treatments to underserved groups such as regional communities, identify at-risk individuals for targeted intervention, and predict progress during treatment. Such approaches have implications for policy development to improve intervention accessibility in at-risk and underserved populations.

JMIR FORMATIVE RESEARCH, 2022

Background: Australians living in rural and remote areas are at elevated risk of mental health pr... more Background: Australians living in rural and remote areas are at elevated risk of mental health problems and must overcome barriers to help seeking, such as poor access, stigma, and entrenched stoicism. e-Mental health services circumvent such barriers using technology, and text-based services are particularly well suited to clients concerned with privacy and self-presentation. They allow the client to reflect on the therapy session after it has ended as the chat log is stored on their device. The text also offers researchers an opportunity to analyze language use patterns and explore how these relate to mental health status. Objective: In this project, we investigated whether computational linguistic techniques can be applied to text-based communications with the goal of identifying a client's mental health status. Methods: Client-therapist text messages were analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count tool. We examined whether the resulting word counts related to the participants' presenting problems or their self-ratings of mental health at the completion of counseling. Results: The results confirmed that word use patterns could be used to differentiate whether a client had one of the top 3 presenting problems (depression, anxiety, or stress) and, prospectively, to predict their self-rated mental health after counseling had been completed. Conclusions: These findings suggest that language use patterns are useful for both researchers and clinicians trying to identify individuals at risk of mental health problems, with potential applications in screening and targeted intervention.

This chapter presents the results of the analysis of a set of flight simulator experiments design... more This chapter presents the results of the analysis of a set of flight simulator experiments designed to study the complex relations between language background (NES or EL2), flying experience and four conditions under which communication is expected to be more difficult. Following two preliminary studies completed via questionnaires distributed to pilots in the Sydney and Australian Capital Territory (ACT) regions (Estival and Molesworth 2009, 2012), in which we investigated the impact of English as second language on radio communication between native English speaker pilots (NES pilots) and pilots with English as a second language (EL2 pilots) and Air Traffic Controller (ATCs), these flight simulator experiments are part of a larger research programme whose overall goal is to better understand miscommunication in aviation as well as the conditions under which miscommunications and misunderstanding occur in the aviation environment. While the first aim is to investigate the determinants of communication problems specifically with respect to EL2 pilots, the second aim is to research solutions to mitigate the impact of such problems on air safety in order to obviate potentially dangerous situations, e.g. pilots misunderstanding a clearance given to another aircraft as being given to them. This is not a far-fetched scenario, as illustrated by an incident on 18 November 2011, when a China Eastern Airlines Airbus A330-200, with 245 people on board, took off without clearance from Osaka Kansai (Japan) for a flight to Shanghai (China). Following that incident, China Eastern Airlines announced they would improve the English language training of their pilots, prompting speculations about the causes of the misunderstanding

As the title of this book is Aviation English: A lingua franca for pilots and air traffic control... more As the title of this book is Aviation English: A lingua franca for pilots and air traffic controllers, we will begin by explaining what we mean by ‘Aviation English’ and by ‘lingua franca’ in the aviation context. The focus of our discussions throughout this book is on communications that take place between air traffic controllers and pilots. Such communications are conducted primarily in a very restricted variety of English, namely Aviation English (AE) which has been designed for this specific purpose. We need to emphasize, however, that English is not the only language of communication between air traffic controllers and pilots, and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) policy regarding languages to be used in aviation radiotelephony is discussed at length in Chapter 3. Although our primary focus here is on Aviation English as the lingua franca (a working language) in communications between air controllers and pilots, this is not the only communication loop in the aviation context: important communications also take place between and among crew members in and beyond the cockpit: at air traffic control centres, controllers are often required to communicate with one another and with controllers at other centres; on the ground, aircraft maintenance staff must communicate among themselves and sometimes with the flight crew in the cockpit. A number of regulations and policies, either mandated (via the national Aeronautical Information Publications, or AIP) or internal to the various organisations (such as airlines, flight training schools or maintenance companies) define and constrain the language all these aviation personnel must use and how they must communicate. This makes Aviation English different from other varieties of English for specific purposes, in that it is mandated by law and heavily regulated

Safety Science, 2022

This study builds on previous research, which established that in flight simulator experiments th... more This study builds on previous research, which established that in flight simulator experiments the communication performance of pilots was impaired under certain applied conditions. The flight simulator data recording relating to the actions of the pilots were examined to determine the impact of the factors affecting pilots' communication (increased workload, increased demand on memory and, for some groups, increased ATC speech rate) on their flying performance. Using heading error as the dependent variable, no significant effects were found even for flights where pilots committed the most communication errors. Pilots are taught to prioritise tasks in order of operational safety importance, as per the adage "aviate, navigate, communicate". Thus, these results are encouraging as they show that the order of operational importance is adhered to, and that flying performance is maintained even when communication is affected.

As a result of investigations showing that communication problems can be a significant contributi... more As a result of investigations showing that communication problems can be a significant contributing factor to major aviation accidents, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has established a set of Language Proficiency Requirements. All pilots and air traffic controllers engaged in international aviation must be certified by their national civil aviation authorities as meeting the requirements by March 2011. This has created a demand for tests designed to assess the speaking and listening skills of aviation personnel, and language ...

Applied Linguistics Papers, 2023

In order to ensure safety, international aviation radio communication is conducted in a restricte... more In order to ensure safety, international aviation radio communication is conducted in a restricted language, based on English but with significant constraints and specific characteristics. Deviations from standard phraseology are tolerated to a certain extent and are to be expected in non-routine situations where no exact phraseology has been defined. Some relational language is also accepted as helping smooth interactions. But any additional word increases the length of the speech signal and may make it more difficult for the recipient to identify the important words that need to be attended to, so the use of relational language can also have a detrimental effect. Clarity and lack of ambiguity are particularly necessary when the interlocutors do not share the same language background. This paper analyses the communications during an incident at Narita (Japan) where a native English-speaking pilot used unnecessary words that are not part of the expected phraseology to communicate an emergency, making it difficult for the Japanese ATC to extract the crucial words 'vector back to Narita' from the pilot's transmission. Supported by a close linguistic study of the complete interaction in this incident and by interviews with aviation experts, the analysis employs the Community of Practice framework to investigate the series of misunderstandings. It shows how non-standard phraseology and unnecessary verbosity can be detrimental to successful aviation communication, even if the additional words are intended to build rapport and help the interaction.

This paper reports on the analysis of 12 Map Task dialogues from the AusTalk corpus, which were a... more This paper reports on the analysis of 12 Map Task dialogues from the AusTalk corpus, which were annotated for Dialogue Acts. We describe the annotation process, including the modifications to the SWBD-DAMSL coding scheme, and present the results of an analysis of the number, complexity, and function of turns across conversation role (Information Giver or Follower), gender, and gender dyad. Significant differences are found depending on the gender and role of the speakers and on the gender dyad. Overall, female speakers produce more turns than male speakers, and female-female dyads produce more multiple-label and mixed function turns.

Command and Control Research Program, 2003

ABSTRACT We describe the Language Translation Interface (LTI), a tool developed at DSTO which pro... more ABSTRACT We describe the Language Translation Interface (LTI), a tool developed at DSTO which provides an easy-to-use interface to perform translation between languages. The LTI allows users to rapidly access a number of automated translation systems, either locally or over a network. It provides a uniform method for entering and preediting input to all the various systems, and for retrieving and editing output translations. One of the main advantages is the ability to view a number of output translations for each input segment and to choose and edit the most suitable. The LTI was designed to be used in a range of situations in which rapid translation is required, and it can be used more specifically in coalition exercises and operations, in cases where communication across languages is necessary but where either human translators are not available or there is not enough time for human translation. Added functionalities such as language translation memories and an acronym manager can be used to ensure the quality of output, especially in the case of spoken input.

Proceeedings of the Workshop on NLP and XML (NLPXML-2004): RDF/RDFS and OWL in Language Technology on - NLPXML '04, 2004

Proceedings of the fifth conference on European chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics -, 1991

Collaborative planning in command and control contexts is carried out primarily by talk in the fo... more Collaborative planning in command and control contexts is carried out primarily by talk in the form ofround table planning'. The talk is focused towards a variety of pragmatic goals such as planning some action, assimilating and acting on intelligence and dealing with the logistics of assigning resources. Talk in collaborative planning is fast moving and complex, with planners engaged in putting forward suggestions, accepting, rejecting and modifying proposals, agreeing, disagreeing and carrying out many more types of task in ...

We describe the Language Translation Interface (LTI), a tool developed at DSTO which provides an ... more We describe the Language Translation Interface (LTI), a tool developed at DSTO which provides an easy-to-use interface to perform translation between languages. The LTI allows users to rapidly access a number of automated translation systems, either locally or over a network. It provides a uniform method for entering and preediting input to all the various systems, and for retrieving and editing output translations. One of the main advantages is the ability to view a number of output translations for each input segment ...

Defence Experimentation Symposium, 2004

In this paper we report on a feasibility experiment we conducted during EX TENDI WALK at HQAST. T... more In this paper we report on a feasibility experiment we conducted during EX TENDI WALK at HQAST. The purpose of the experiment was to assess the potential use of current speech recognition technology in the context of operation planning and to identify the limitations that will need to be addressed before such technology can be installed and used operationally, eg in the new Collocated Headquarters. The technical limitations of the current set-up did not prevent us from collecting data which can now be used for an ...

IUI 2006 Workshop on Effective Multimodal Dialogue Interfaces, Jan 29, 2006

This paper describes the implementation of an intelligent Multimedia Presentation Planner (MPP) i... more This paper describes the implementation of an intelligent Multimedia Presentation Planner (MPP) in a multimodal dialogue system. Following the development of an architecture based on the Standard Reference Model, designed specifically for FOCAL, this implementation has been integrated with an earlier spoken dialogue system. The design now ensures that the framework is portable to other multimodal environments.

Proc. SimTecT 2005, 2005

Abstract. The Future Operations Centre Analysis Laboratory (FOCAL) at Australia's Defence Sc... more Abstract. The Future Operations Centre Analysis Laboratory (FOCAL) at Australia's Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) is aimed at exploring new paradigms for situation awareness (SA) and command and control (C2) in military command centres, making use of new technologies developed for simulation, virtual reality, and real-time 3D animation. Recent work includes the development of a multimodal user interface to aid natural interaction with a virtual geospatial display using the combination of spoken ...

Conversation Characters Workshop, Human Factors 2002, 2002

This paper presents the current dialogue capabilities of a Virtual Conversational Character (VCC)... more This paper presents the current dialogue capabilities of a Virtual Conversational Character (VCC) named Franco, which is an integral part of the Future Operation Centre and Analysis Laboratory (FOCAL). The VCC is used in a “Virtual Adviser”(VA) role to present multimedia information from pre-generated marked up scripts, and to engage in unscripted conversation with human users. The Virtual Adviser can run and control other applications within the virtual environment, allowing a “natural” interface between the user and ...

Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on theoretical and methodological issues in MT of NLs (TMI-90), Austin, Texas, Jun 1, 1990

The field of Machine Translation can benefit from the techniques of computational linguistics in ... more The field of Machine Translation can benefit from the techniques of computational linguistics in the search for a formal basis for discussing MT problems and their solutions. However, there has been a regrettable lack of formal description in the MT literature; too often, both the problems and their solutions lie embedded inside programs in procedural statements. In particular, in contrast with well-known methods for analysis and generation, transfer in MT is still treated as a black box. No formal description of a transfer component with a clean ...