Search Results (158)

This pilot study examines how experimentally induced emotional states interact with the visual properties of urban environments to shape comfort perception. A controlled laboratory experiment was conducted with 17 participants assigned to one of four emotional conditions (Fear, Anger, Sad, Happy) through audio-visual induction. Participants evaluated 73 building façade and 42 pedestrian streetscape stimuli from three urban areas in Kitakyushu, Japan (Wakamatsu, Tobata, Mojiko) using a multi-method framework combining fractal analysis (D, Λ), six pedestrian visual metrics, webcam-based eye-tracking (Visual Attention Score, VAS), and self-reported comfort votes. Emotion induction was effective for Fear and Anger groups and partial for Sad and Happy groups, with the latter attributable to experimental fatigue. Cross-method correlation analysis revealed that fractal dimension D significantly predicted comfort vote consensus (Spearman r = 0.369, p = 0.013), while VAS showed no significant relationship with comfort votes (r = 0.097, ns) or with fractal dimension (r = 0.015, ns), confirming that visual attention and comfort preference are independent dimensions. For building façades, the ‘Complex but Organized’ fractal profile (D ≥ 1.70, Λ < 0.60) was the consistent comfort driver across all emotion groups. For pedestrian streetscapes, low spatial enclosure and spatially integrated tree canopy were the primary comfort predictors. Multi-method synthesis identified five empirical paradoxes and three design principles: (1) target D ≥ 1.70 with Λ < 0.60; (2) prioritize spatially integrated canopy over visible greenery quantity; and (3) leverage civic legibility as an independent comfort pathway. These findings support the development of emotion-independent frameworks for urban comfort evaluation. Replication with larger, more diverse samples is recommended. Full article

This article presents ELA Tutor, a generative AI-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) built on a Multi-Agent System (MAS) architecture and implemented using the n8n platform to support personalized learning processes in higher education. The proposal integrates adaptive, ethical, and pedagogical components within a technology-enhanced learning environment. The architecture consists of specialized agents (pedagogical, technical, performance analysis, adaptive empathy, and ethical–pedagogical), coordinated through an intelligent decision router that distributes user queries according to their type, complexity, and learning profile. This approach enables automated information flow management and supports context-aware response generation. In addition, it facilitates integration with learning management systems such as Moodle. An exploratory qualitative study was conducted with 20 university instructors from the State Polytechnic University of Carchi (UPEC) to evaluate usability, adaptability, personalization, perceived reliability, and potential for institutional adoption. The evaluation was carried out in a controlled testing environment prior to deployment with students. Additionally, a preliminary validation was conducted with students from the Multimedia and Audiovisual Production program, who interacted with the system in a pilot context. The results indicate that ELA Tutor is perceived as easy to use and capable of providing responses that align with students’ learning processes. Instructor feedback highlights the system’s potential to extend tutoring through asynchronous interactions and supports its integration within institutional platforms. The proposal represents an initial validation of the system and identifies key areas for improvement, including content generation based on teaching guidelines and integration with academic data sources. Future work will focus on quantitative evaluation, including learning outcomes and system performance metrics, in real educational environments. Full article

Urban waterfronts are vital public spaces that contribute to urban sustainability by providing residents with opportunities for recreation, social interaction, and nature experiences. Understanding user perceptions in these environments is essential for evidence-based design. Taking Taiyuan Fenhe Park in China as a case with local residents as respondents, this study investigated how objective audiovisual characteristics are associated with tourist loyalty through perceptual dimensions, while also examining interactive associations between visual and auditory elements. Data were collected at 539 spatial samples spaced at five-minute walking intervals. Methods included on-site acoustic measurements, panoramic imaging, computer-based visual and auditory quantification, and questionnaire surveys, yielding a total of 1768 valid responses. Visual features were quantified using semantic segmentation, object detection, and depth prediction, whereas the auditory environment was characterized by physical acoustic and psychoacoustic indicators. Three perceptual dimensions—environmental restorativeness (ERS), spatial vitality (SVS), and environmental controllability (ECS)—were extracted and tested as mediators within the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) framework. Results indicated that ERS, SVS, and ECS function as three parallel mediating constructs in the statistical model, with SVS showing the strongest statistical association with tourist loyalty. In addition, fluctuation strength exhibited a significant direct effect on tourist loyalty independent of these three perceptual dimensions. A total of 17 significant audiovisual interactions were identified, revealing both synergistic and antagonistic effects. These findings contribute to theoretical frameworks of multisensory integration and provide practical guidance for sustainable waterfront design. Specifically, zoning strategies and carefully selected audiovisual combinations are relevant to enhanced user experience and may contribute to long-term social well-being. Full article

In historic districts, the audiovisual environment plays an important role in shaping both cultural expression and spatial experience. However, the influence of acoustic and visual environmental factors on perceived street vitality remains insufficiently understood. Taking the Shangxiahang Historic District in Fuzhou as a case study, this paper employs on-site sound pressure level measurements, panoramic visual data collection, questionnaire surveys, principal component analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple regression analysis to systematically examine the effects of acoustic and visual environmental factors on perceived street vitality. The results indicate that traditional cultural sounds and natural sounds have a significant positive impact on perceived street vitality, while construction noise and tour guide’s horn sound exhibit negative effects. Regarding the visual environment, street and alley spaces, traditional architecture, greenery, and the sky are all important factors in promoting perceived street vitality. Further regression analysis reveals that the perception rate of street and alley spaces has the strongest influence, followed by the perception rate of traditional architecture, the perceived frequency of folk activity sounds, preference for greenery, and the perception rate of the sky. These findings demonstrate that perceived street vitality in historic districts does not depend on a single environmental factor but rather arises from synergistic interaction between culturally meaningful acoustic cues and legible spatial forms. These results offer practical implications for multisensory design and vitality-oriented regeneration in historic districts. Full article

Fine-grained bird identification is crucial for ecosystem monitoring, species conservation, and habitat assessment. However, in real-world environments, there are challenges such as imbalances in modality quality and interference from background noise. To improve fine-grained audio-visual bird classification under heterogeneous modality conditions, we propose an audio-visual feature fusion framework named CABIF-Net. This framework introduces a confidence-based Top-K mean pooling module to select key frames to optimize the visual representations at the video level. Through a Confidence Calibration module, it dynamically assesses the reliability of the visual and audio modalities and integrates a Bidirectional Inter-modulation Fusion module to achieve controllable cross-modal information interaction. Experiments were conducted on the publicly available SSW60 dataset, characterized by severe noise and imbalance in modality quality, and the self-built Birds21 dataset with balanced modality quality. The experimental results show that the classification accuracies were 85.76% and 96.67%, respectively, outperforming existing unimodal methods and several mainstream fusion strategies. Weight distribution and visualization analyses further indicate that the proposed method can adaptively adjust the modality contributions based on discriminative evidence at the sample level. This study provides an effective framework for fine-grained audio-visual bird species recognition. Full article

Background: Attractiveness plays an important role in social interactions. However, it remains unclear whether presenting attractiveness information across multiple sensory modalities facilitates attractiveness evaluation, and how cross-modal congruency modulates this process. Methods: The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate these questions. Participants judged the attractiveness of voices presented alone or paired with faces that were congruent or incongruent in attractiveness. Results: Significant differences were found between unimodal and audiovisual conditions, as well as between congruent and incongruent pairs, during both early perceptual (N1) and later evaluative (P3) stages. Both audiovisual conditions elicited larger N1 amplitudes than the auditory-only condition, and congruent pairs produced larger N1 amplitudes than incongruent pairs. At a later stage, the auditory-only condition produced larger P3 amplitudes than the audiovisual conditions. Furthermore, the interaction between voice attractiveness and visual context on P3 amplitudes was significant. Audiovisual incongruent pairs elicited larger P3 amplitudes than congruent pairs, but only when the voice was unattractive. Conclusions: The results demonstrate that redundant visual cues of attractiveness both accelerate and alter the perception of auditory attractiveness. These audiovisual integration effects occur across different processing stages and may reflect enhanced processing efficiency in multisensory social perception. Full article

As public demand for health and well-being continues to rise, rural landscapes are increasingly valued as settings for stress reduction and psycho-physiological restoration. Drawing on five “Beautiful Villages” in Jiangning District, Nanjing (China), this study categorizes rural landscapes into three types—farmland production landscapes, rural settlement landscapes, and rural mountain–water landscapes—based on the proportional dominance of key landscape elements. Audio-visual stimuli were developed from on-site photography and field recordings to construct controlled rural audio-visual environments. Using a combination of physiological indicators and self-reported psychological assessments, we systematically compare restorative responses across modalities (visual, auditory, and audio-visual) and across landscape types, and examine how specific landscape elements relate to restorative outcomes. Results show that (1) auditory stimuli generally produce stronger restorative responses than visual stimuli, and audio-visual interactions are evident; (2) restorative benefits vary significantly across the three rural landscape types; and (3) visually natural and structurally rich elements are associated with greater restoration, while auditory cues can direct visual attention and natural sounds are positively linked to restorative outcomes. These findings advance understanding of multi-sensory restorative processes in rural landscapes and provide evidence for sustainable rural landscape planning and design by supporting healthier, more restorative, and more human-centered rural environments. Full article

This paper proposes a human–system coupling framework for understanding interactive environments in which embodied human activity is continuously translated into perceptual feedback through computational systems. Rather than conceptualizing interaction as a sequence of discrete commands, the framework interprets interactive systems as perceptual mediation environments linking bodily action, computational interpretation, and perceptual response. The framework is illustrated through the EchoCycle installation, which converts mechanical energy generated by cycling into real-time audiovisual feedback. Observations from the installation suggest that participants initially engage in exploratory behavior and gradually develop more stable activity patterns as they adapt to the feedback provided by the system. In shared interaction contexts, the perceptual environment reflects collective activity, creating conditions under which behavioral alignment among participants may emerge. By framing interactive systems as continuous perception–action loops, this study highlights how computational mediation can shape both individual adaptation and collective interaction dynamics. The proposed framework contributes to human–computer interaction and interactive system design by offering an integrated perspective on embodied action, perceptual feedback, and responsive environments. Full article

Although many studies have demonstrated the positive effects of natural visual and auditory stimuli on human physiological and psychological states, there is limited empirical evidence on the effects on subjective comfort under different thermal environments. This study used a climatic chamber experiment to evaluate the impact of three types of natural stimuli (visual, auditory, and combined audio-visual) on physiological and psychological responses under three operative temperature conditions (26 °C, 28 °C, and 32 °C). In total, 24 participants were recruited. Physiological indicators, including heart rate variability, skin conductance level (SCL), skin temperature (ST), and blood pressure, as well as psychological indicators including thermal sensation (TSV), thermal comfort (TCV), visual comfort (VCV), and acoustic comfort (ACV), were collected. The results show that TCV was significantly and positively correlated with both VCV and ACV. The visual stimuli produced the most significant decrease in TSV and the greatest increase in TCV, while combined audio-visual stimuli had the most significant impact on physiological responses. At 26 °C, the combined audio-visual stimuli group reduced heart rate by 6.08%. However, at 32 °C, most physiological and psychological restoration indicators showed no significant changes. These findings provide theoretical references for health-oriented multisensory environmental design in urban areas. Full article

(1) Background: This article explores the qualitative dimensions of bisexual identity through the lived experiences of bisexual individuals. (2) Methods: Drawing on an online questionnaire completed by 226 participants from a Spanish-speaking sample, the study uses a grounded theory-based analysis of participant narratives. (3) Results: The analysis identifies key components of bisexual identity, such as self-recognition, fluidity, and community belonging, as well as recurrent experiences of invalidation, promiscuity stereotypes, and intracommunity discrimination. The findings highlight the processes by which participants navigate and define their bisexuality, emphasizing the interaction between personal introspection, contact with audiovisual media, societal perceptions, and external validation in identity formation. (4) Conclusions: These results provide a nuanced exploration of how bisexual identities are constructed amid persistent challenges of invalidation, erasure, and limited community recognition. Full article

This paper introduces a biomimetic framework and novel brain-inspired AI (BIAI) models based on spiking neural networks (SNNs) for emotional state recognition from audio (speech), visual (face), and integrated multimodal audio–visual data. The developed framework, named eXCube2, uses a three-dimensional SNN architecture NeuCube that is spatially structured according to a human brain template. The BIAI models developed in eXCube2 are trainable on spatio- and spectro-temporal data using brain-inspired learning rules. Such models are explainable in terms of revealing patterns in data and are adaptable to new data. The eXCube2 models are implemented as software systems and tested on speech and video data of subjects expressing emotional states. The use of a brain template for the SNN structure enables brain-inspired tonotopic and stereo mapping of audio inputs, topographic mapping of visual data, and the combined use of both modalities. This novel approach brings AI-based emotional state recognition closer to human perception, provides a better explainability and adaptability than existing AI systems. It also results in a higher or competitive accuracy, even though this was not the main goal here. This is demonstrated through experiments on benchmark datasets, achieving classification accuracy above 80% on single-modality data and 88.9% when multimodal audio–visual data are used, and a “don’t know” output is introduced. The paper further discusses possible applications of the proposed eXCube2 framework to other audio, visual, and audio–visual data for solving challenging problems, such as recognizing emotional states of people from different origins; brain state diagnosis (e.g., Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD, dementia); measuring response to treatment over time; evaluating satisfaction responses from online clients; cognitive robotics; human–robot interaction; chatbots; and interactive computer games. The SNN-based implementation of BIAI also enables the use of neuromorphic chips and platforms, leading to reduced power consumption, smaller device size, higher performance accuracy, and improved adaptability and explainability. This research shows a step toward building brain-inspired AI systems. Full article

Talking Head Generation (THG) is a rapidly advancing field at the intersection of computer vision, deep learning, and speech synthesis, enabling the creation of animated human-like heads that can produce speech and express emotions with high visual realism. The core objective of THG systems is to synthesize coherent and natural audio–visual outputs by modeling the intricate relationship between speech signals, facial dynamics, and emotional cues. These systems find widespread applications in virtual assistants, interactive avatars, video dubbing for multilingual content, educational technologies, and immersive virtual and augmented reality environments. Moreover, the development of THG has significant implications for accessibility technologies, cultural preservation, and remote healthcare interfaces. This survey paper presents a comprehensive and systematic overview of the technological landscape of Talking Head Generation. We begin by outlining the foundational methodologies that underpin the synthesis process, including generative adversarial networks (GANs), motion-aware recurrent architectures, and attention-based models. A taxonomy is introduced to organize the diverse approaches based on the nature of input modalities and generation goals. We further examine the contributions of various domains such as computer vision, speech processing, and human–robot interaction, each of which plays a critical role in advancing the capabilities of THG systems. The paper also provides a detailed review of datasets used for training and evaluating THG models, highlighting their coverage, structure, and relevance. In parallel, we analyze widely adopted evaluation metrics, categorized by their focus on image quality, motion accuracy, synchronization, and semantic fidelity. Operating parameters such as latency, frame rate, resolution, and real-time capability are also discussed to assess deployment feasibility. Special emphasis is placed on the integration of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which has significantly enhanced the adaptability and realism of talking head systems through more powerful and generalizable learning frameworks. Full article

Tourism is increasingly shaped by visual experiences of place mediated through television series and audiovisual fiction. Although film-induced tourism research has widely examined how media representations influence destination image and tourist responses, limited attention has been given to the perceptual and cognitive processes through which mediated landscapes are visually attended to and mentally organised, particularly from a neuroaesthetic perspective focused on early perceptual and attentional mechanisms in fictional contexts where tourism is not explicit. Addressing this gap, this study adopts a process-oriented neuroaesthetic approach to examine how landscapes in the television series Killing Eve are visually attended to and cognitively processed as destination imagery. An exploratory mixed-methods design combined qualitative content analysis of free recall responses (n = 260) with simulated visual attention modelling based on low-level visual features. The findings reveal a two-stage process of mediated landscape experience: visual attention initially guided by perceptual salience, followed by the selective cognitive stabilisation of certain elements as destination imagery through recall, imagination and narrative association. The study demonstrates that mediated landscapes are not processed as holistic destination images, but as selectively organised and emotionally inflected elements emerging from the interaction between visual attention and imagery processes. Full article

Background: Smoking remains a major global public health challenge. As smoking often begins in early adolescence, early preventive programs are essential, yet research focusing exclusively on elementary school students is limited. This study measured smoking prevalence, smoking-related knowledge and attitudes, and the impact of a school-based intervention on these outcomes among 12–13-year-old students in Larissa, Greece. Methods: A total of 769 students participated (response rate: 75%). Knowledge, attitudes, and smoking prevalence were assessed at baseline. The intervention group (n = 316) was exposed to audiovisual and printed materials, and both groups were followed up at three- and twelve months post-intervention. Multivariable linear mixed-effects models and generalized estimating equations were used to evaluate intervention effects. Results: Baseline characteristics were balanced between groups. A statistically significant stage × group interaction was observed, indicating improvements in smoking-related knowledge and attitudes (p < 0.001) and a reduced likelihood of smoking initiation (p = 0.011) in the intervention group. Conclusions: This school-based intervention demonstrated significant improvements in knowledge and attitudes toward smoking and reduced the likelihood of smoking initiation. These findings support integrating early prevention programs into school curricula as a potentially effective approach to improving smoking-related outcomes. Full article

Expressway traffic noise poses a critical threat to public health in developed high-density cities, causing chronic environmental stress in adjacent residential areas. While physical noise barriers are commonly used, the potential of audiovisual interactions in mitigating the adverse effects of traffic noise remains under-explored. Using immersive virtual reality (VR), this study examined the efficacy of visual greenery and auditory masking (birdsong) in promoting stress recovery, and tested whether audiovisual perception mediates the environment–restoration link. Following an acute stressor, 100 participants were randomly assigned to a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment manipulating Green View Index (high vs. low) and soundscape composition (traffic noise vs. traffic noise plus birdsong), with 25 participants in each group. Restorative outcomes were assessed using self-reported measures and continuous physiological monitoring (heart rate variability [HRV] and electrodermal activity [EDA]). Results demonstrated that high-intensity visual greenery and natural sounds effectively enhance psychological restoration in noise-affected environments. Structural equation modeling revealed that audiovisual perception fully mediated the relationship between environmental features and restorative outcomes. The physiological outcome showed a distinct tiered restoration pattern, indicating that immediate psychological buffering can be achieved through natural sounds, while consistent visual reinforcement remained essential for deep physiological recovery. Consequently, soundscape planning in expressway-adjacent zones should integrate visual greening strategies to optimize the perceptual masking of traffic noise and enhance the environmental quality. Full article