PHD, Kent State University, 2015, College of Education, Health and Human Services / School of Lifespan Development and Educational Sciences

This study sought to understand how people satisfy needs by engaging in console-based video games and ultimately help counselors understand clients' need fulfillment by video games. Data has been collected on the players' experiences and thoughts on how console-based video games meet the four basic psychological needs of choice theory. After reviewing the participants' data, patterns and themes have been generated and reported from the dialog of the participants. These patterns and themes were used to inform professional counselor readers how to assist video game playing clients understand their basic psychological needs more efficiently.

Committee: Steve Rainey, Ph.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Betsy Page Ed.D. (Committee Co-Chair); Alicia R. Crowe Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Counseling Education; Counseling Psychology; Mental Health

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2019, Journalism (Communication)

Throughout the relatively nascent course of games media scholarship, representation of video games within popular mainstream media tends to suggest an antagonistic relationship between those familiar and unfamiliar with video games respectively. Yet, this outlook fails to acknowledge the content of popular gaming media that can be equally critical of the representation of games in reporting. For instance, within the past two years, reports pertaining to video game “loot boxes” have not only shown that reward systems in certain games can structurally mimic online gambling, but games and mainstream media can cohabitate in this reporting arena. Given our nascent understanding of gaming media from a mainstream perspective, this study examines how gaming and mainstream news outlets comparatively frame this “loot box” rewards practice. A content analysis of 274 articles containing the term “loot box(es)” revealed similarities wherein both types of media outlets framed “loot boxes” with political messages, references to gambling and cast some form of normative judgment. Traditional news writing provided fewer overall frames than more opinionated types of writing. Political intervention was the greatest predictor of frames assigned by both media. Overall, the internal regulation of “loot boxes” and games industry's opposition to government-assisted regulation are the strongest implications that warrant future study of this controversy.

Committee: Hans Meyer (Committee Chair); Aimee Edmondson (Committee Member); Michael Sweeney (Committee Member) Subjects: Communication; Journalism; Mass Communications; Mass Media

Master of Science (M.S.), University of Dayton, 2017, Mechanical Engineering

Future high-performance aircraft will require advances in the understanding of two-phase heat transfer in order to manage the ever-increasing airframe and engine heat loads. Two-phase liquid-vapor refrigerant systems are one solution for the heat removal from these systems. However, they require more study before implementation. This study examines the velocities of two-phase liquid-vapor flows with the use of high speed visualization. In flow channels where high speed visualization cannot be used, there are other noninvasive techniques for analyzing flow the flow, such as electrical capacitance tomography (ECT). In this thesis, capabilities of ECT sensors such as the location in the sensor where there is a detected change in permittivity as well as the sensor's ability of determining simple surfaces are explored to assist in future work. Four sensors were tested and static experiments were able to determine location along the length of the sensor where a change in permittivity was detected. Each sensor tested showed a detection of permittivity at a different location than expected when comparing with the physical location of the electrodes according to the dimensional drawings of the sensors. Experiments testing the sensor's ability to detect a surface showed that with a welldefined surface there was a noticeable change when the surface was rotated to different orientations. In fluid flow tests, high speed video analysis showed the velocities of 71 tracked points at varying level of qualities. These velocities were analyzed and the data from these experiments were compared with pressure drop correlations.

Committee: Jamie Ervin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Vinod Jain Ph.D. (Committee Member); Larry Byrd Ph.D. (Committee Member); Robert Wilkens Ph.D., P.E. (Other); Eddy Rojas Ph.D., M.A., P.E. (Other) Subjects: Mechanical Engineering

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2015, American Culture Studies

My dissertation focuses on intersections of gender, power, and emotion in different digital spaces, specifically video game-related spaces. I'm predominantly concerned with ways in which gender operates in the video gaming subculture in such a way that it can elicit a range of strong emotions that are often skirted or even neglected in academic studies of the medium. My primary focus is on a triangulation of visual and qualitative content analysis with participant observation to examine the different ways in which power and emotion manifest around the female body. Two of these areas include the different ways players, viewers, audiences, whatever one would call a person who comes into contact with the visual components of a video game, interact with playable- and non-playable video game characters. Additionally, I focus on digital non-gaming space interactions, such as those in discussion boards or popular media article comment sections. The entire dissertation is structured from a critical feminist perspective and uses the video game Dead Island (2011) as an anchor to ground the discussion.

Committee: Radhika Gajjala (Advisor); Lara Lengel (Other); Sandra Faulkner (Committee Member); Kristine Blair (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Communication; Gender; Gender Studies; Technology; Womens Studies

MS, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Engineering and Applied Science: Computer Science

Most video summarization studies have focused on extracting key frames, estimating shot scores by averaging frame scores within video shots, and generating video summaries based on these shot scores. Recent research has raised doubts about these popular video summarization pipelines by generating video summaries using randomly selected keyframes and comparing them to state-of-the-art (SOTA) summaries. This thesis proposes a shot-based video summarization model that directly predicts shot scores. Our novel shot representation method effectively captures both the motion and static features of a shot. A relation-aware attention model fuses 2D and 3D shot features to predict the shot score directly. Video summaries are then generated based on these predicted shot scores and key-shot selection methods. We evaluate the performance of our model and compare it with SOTA models using three publicly available datasets: TvSum, SumMe, and CoSum.

Committee: Mehdi Norouzi Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Wen-Ben Jone Ph.D. (Committee Member); Shu-Ming Tseng Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jillian Aurisano Ph.D. (Committee Member); Xuefu Zhou Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Music

Video game developers aim to create immersive experiences, generally described as those which deeply engage an audience member so much that they feel like they are part of the virtual world. Many factors contribute to successful immersion in video games, though this dissertation focuses primarily on the audible domain with references to visual elements when relevant. The core of this dissertation is a taxonomy of Immersive Audio Techniques (IATs) that categorizes twenty-three unique techniques into five categories based on their incorporation into a game's sound design and its resulting immersive effect. Some techniques rely more on a player's subconscious processing of audio information, while others assist immersion through their interpreted meaning. Video games are perhaps the most common form of interactive multimedia, meaning that they afford some level of agency to the player and respond to their input. In video games, sensory stimuli relay information to the player, influencing their further actions, which in turn affects the continued sensory feedback. This results in a continual feedback loop that is crucial to gameplay. While still maintaining a degree of indeterminacy, interactive multimedia design is highly intentional and the resulting experiences can be analyzed to understand what techniques are involved in the design process. Principally, I examine how audio is used by itself or in combination with audio streams within the broader sound design of a game to deeply immerse a player. I pull primarily from literature in ludomusicology and music theory, with references also from film studies, ludology, and psychology. Most theories regarding cross-modal synchronization come from film studies, usually focused on audio-visual interaction, and it is well-known that game developers have historically been inspired by cinematic design. Concepts such as the “magic circle” and the “immersive fallacy” originate in ludology and consider an individual's own agency (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Anna Gawboy (Advisor); Scott Swearingen (Committee Member); Jeremy Smith (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, Germanic Languages and Literatures

This thesis uses the approach of conversation analysis (CA) to examine the use of three question types in a video-mediated conversation-for-learning activity between a native (L1) speaker of German and a beginning (L2) learner of German. In addressing questions to L2 speakers, L1 speakers must design their turn in a way that makes it understandable and maintains intersubjectivity, either through the type of question asked, or through additional linguistic scaffolding. The analysis focuses on the usage of yes/no, WH and reciprocal und du? (and you?) type questions in their respective interactional environments to demonstrate how the L1 speakers strategically deploy these linguistic resources to maintain progressivity and manage the talk in their interaction with L2 learners of German. In these conversations, the L1 speaker must constantly orient themselves to their L2 co-participant's limited range of linguistic resources and design their yes/no and reciprocal questions around previous turns at talk and what they perceive to be shared communicative resources. When the L1 speakers choose to introduce a new topic or ask a “telling” type WH question that warrants an extended response (Fox & Thompson, 2010), they must then do additional work to decompose (Svennevig, 2018) or provide candidate answers for the L2 speaker. These findings suggest that both the types and frequency of questions asked by L1 speakers in these conversation-for-learning type activities are directly influenced by the input provided by the L2 speaker.

Committee: Leslie Moore (Committee Member); Carmen Taleghani-Nikazm (Advisor) Subjects: Germanic Literature; Linguistics; Pedagogy

BA, Kent State University, 2021, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Sociology and Criminology

"Dazed and Confused and Triumphant" is often the experience of both readers and writers of ergodic literature, whose struggle to understand it becomes a meaningful accomplishment after they do. Ergodic literature, as defined by its founder Espen Aarseth in his book 'Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature', is literature in which "nontrivial effort is required to allow the reader to traverse the text". "Nontrivial effort" encompasses anything beyond reading a text from front to back, such as nonlinearity, space subversion, and multiple endings to choose from. In this thesis, I use the syllabus of a Fall 2012 NEOMFA Craft & Theory course to design the hypothetical 16 week class "Dazed and Confused and Triumphant" as a way to teach myself ergodic literature and grow as an experimental writer. The syllabus requires students to read and experience a comprehensive list of ergodic literature all throughout time (ex: the 'I Ching', the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' series, and the video game 'Undertale'), write weekly essays analyzing ergodic techniques in these readings, and create original ergodic literature based on what they've learned. All of these assignments and more are completed and included in this thesis. The thesis itself is arguably ergodic in its creation, format, and puzzle for its readers to solve.

Committee: Lauren Vachon MFA (Advisor); Carol Robinson Ph.D. (Committee Member); Molly Merryman Ph.D. (Committee Member); Suzy D'Enbeau Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Curriculum Development; Fine Arts; Language Arts; Literature; Web Studies

Doctor of Musical Arts, The Ohio State University, 2021, Music

Electronic music has experienced rapid and tumultuous incorporation into the canon of musical practice. Throughout the past century, this genre's identity has remained fluid, fallible, and ripe for reconstruction. Creating new works using electronic mediums differs from acoustic realms in both utilitarian objectivity and resultant affect. Performing these works invokes additional challenges: What if no performance score exists and the work itself only exists as a recorded audio file? How does a musician replicate seemingly endless abstractions of timbre, pitch, and spectral content? Finally, preserving electronic music is crucial for the survival of the idiom. As many works do not exist within discernible scores, how will new musical content be documented? Although recordings remain at the crux of electronic dissemination, issues such as data degradation muddy the conservation process. Specifically, acousmatic experiences have utterly inundated many individual's daily lives; millions of recorded songs are available at the tap of a button, scores accompany the films, television shows, and video games consumers interact with, and artistic ventures entail the inclusion of previously instantiated music. When Pierre Schaeffer formulated ideals on acousmatic listening and an adumbration of musical objects during the mid-20th century, today's technological perplexities were not predicated by reality; such expeditious alterations to musical practice were likely unexpected. Thus, it is time to situate the framework Schaeffer stipulated within contemporary mise-en-scene. Through the composition of my new work, Acousmatic Symphony, I experimented with alternative notational styles and systems of symbology. Following Schaeffer's assertations that two versions of a “score” are needed for adequate description of musical content-one essential and one operational-I created variations of each and applied my own version of an acousmatic notational system. Ad (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Thomas Wells (Advisor); Jan Radzynski (Committee Member); Daniel Shanahan (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 0, Instructional Technology (Education)

At a time when the world is facing a range of significant challenges, including a rise in air temperature, rapidly evolving droughts in some areas, and floods, new technology in education can help inform people of current issues that may not be close to them but, nevertheless, can have a significant impact in the future. Our planet has been warming steadily for over a century, and the preponderance of evidence has pointed at human action as the main contributor to the change (Hansen et al., 2010). The evolution of technology has brought tremendous change. Virtual Reality (VR), 360-degree video, has the potential to bring the environment to the students since it can provide a close to a real-life situation. The use of VR for educational purposes has been quite unknown to most school systems. There are many gaps that need to be investigated prior to the effective implementation of VR-learning, such as the factors that influence students' intention to use it. This study fulfilled some of these gaps by focusing on the potential of using VR for future education and raising awareness of the climate change occurring in remote areas, specifically tropical regions. The findings of this study will hopefully encourage students to play a more responsible role in the development and implementation of VR education worldwide and help enhance the academic quality of courses for instructors and students. This study examined students' behavioral intentions towards using VR in their learning about climate change utilizing the Technology Acceptance Model of Davis (1989), combined with the spatial presence experience scale (Hartmann et al., 2015). Phase 1 was created in order to understand students' salient beliefs about the use of VR for educational purposes and learning about climate change. Furthermore, 65 students participated in this phase and reported that VR can be beneficial for educational purposes to learn about global climate change, and 95.2% of participants fully agreed. Ph (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Greg Kessler (Advisor); Gordon Brooks (Advisor) Subjects: Climate Change; Educational Technology; Environmental Education

PHD, Kent State University, 2019, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

The postindustrial cities that comprise the Rust Belt are faced with the challenge of reinventing the city while addressing the ongoing issues of urban blight stemming from economic decline. As a result, a variety of strategies are utilized to improve the built environment of neighborhoods and the overall condition of the city. The issue then becomes how does a city track the effectiveness of those measures? Furthermore, how can a city develop a baseline of condition for a neighborhood from which strategy effectiveness can be measured? This dissertation develops methodologies for capturing fine-scale changes in neighborhoods. Collected spatial video data of Youngstown, Ohio were coded in a GIS using three newly developed coding systems; the condition coding, blight severity classification (BSC), and the modified blight variant. The condition coding and the BSC capture the condition and degree of blight at the parcel-level of a neighborhood. This allows for the occupancy status, parcel use (urban garden, maintained green space, unsecured vacant lot, etc.), and whether a parcel exhibits signs of blight that qualify it for a BSC rating of slightly, moderately, or severely blighted to be recorded. The modified blight variant joins those two coding systems to create a comprehensive system that assigns a scale-rating to a parcel based on its condition and blight. The coding systems were applied to two neighborhoods, Idora and Cottage Grove, that represent opposite ends of the spectrum of neighborhood conditions for Youngstown. The condition coding and BSC reveal that a singular blight-fighting measure, such as creatively painting window scenes on the plywood of boarded homes in Idora, does not have an impact on the aesthetics of a neighborhood, and therefore does not increase order within the built environment. Rather, utilizing multiple measures, especially those that create a nexus for community gathering, improve the visual condition by creating the appearan (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrew Curtis (Advisor) Subjects: Geographic Information Science; Geography

PHD, Kent State University, 2019, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Geography

Mobile geospatial technologies have opened many exciting research opportunities in previously data-poor environments. In addition, these new approaches allow us to contextualize spatial data so that process as well as pattern can be identified. Spatial Video (SV) and Spatial Video Geonarratives (SVG), which are Global Positioning System (GPS) enriched video, and, in the case of the later, environmentally-cued narratives to capture “lived experiences”, are two such techniques. These methods are now being utilized by researchers in various domains including public health, crime, and disaster management, to gain previously unavailable spatial and social insights. One drawback which has so far limited a more widespread use of these approaches is a lack of software that would both fully leverage data collected, and provide a standardized framework that would allow for cross-site comparisons. This dissertation, presents an ensemble of five different software methodologies, that can be used to advance spatial contextual information extraction through novel exploratory and statistical techniques. “Camera Player” can be used to integrate SVs generated from a variety of data sources as well as facilitating basic mapping without the need of a geographic information system (GIS). “Spatial Video Player” (SVP), a cloud-based SV visualization software, has been developed to address data transferability and GPS signal correction which is a major problem in many overseas study locations. “Spatial Video Library (SVL)”, has been developed to spatio-temporally mine SV archives, allowing for multiple period investigations of the same mapped space. “Wordmapper” has been developed to map SVG data, as well as supporting qualitative analysis through spatial and textual exploration of the environmentally-cued data. To further support statistical analysis on typical spatial data output generated from the previous software, “GeoCluster”, which identifies statistically significant clusters thr (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrew Curtis Dr. (Committee Chair); Jacqueline Curtis Dr. (Committee Member); Eric Jefferis Dr. (Committee Member); Michael Leitner Dr. (Committee Member); Ye Zhao Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Geographic Information Science

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2018, Journalism (Communication)

Films are something everyone should be able to enjoy either independently or with others. For the blind and visually impaired, enjoying films without Descriptive Video Service (DVS), is much more difficult, if not impossible. DVS provides an audio description of the film's visual images so they are accessible to the blind and visually impaired. The number of films with DVS is increasing after many years when the technique was available, but it is not widely used by movie producers. This thesis traces the history and development of DVS into what it is today. The researcher conducted a content analysis of films with DVS to study the films' defining characteristics, and relate those characteristics to the box office of the films. Of the 250 films in the sample size, 93 did not break even. In the final regression, only production cost, cumulative U.S. gross, sequel, and blindness were statistically significant. DVS is not affecting box office so much as high production costs. Films that did not break even had a higher box office mean difference of $65 million, but also a higher production cost of $80 million (mean = 81.30). The production cost between films that did and did not break even showed a negative difference of $22.86 million. The research shows that there are several more components to be studied, including a deeper look at film characteristics, economic inflation, disability and how it is classified in the United States, and a much deeper look at the laws surrounding DVS.

Committee: Hugh Martin Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Michael Sweeney Ph.D. (Committee Member); JW Smith Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Economics; Film Studies; Law; Mass Media; Motion Pictures; Statistics

Master of Science (MS), Wright State University, 2017, Computer Science

We present the results of analyzing gait motion in-person video taken from a commercially available wearable camera embedded in a pair of glasses. The video is analyzed with three different computer vision methods to extract motion vectors from different gait sequences from four individuals for comparison against a manually annotated ground truth dataset. Using a combination of signal processing and computer vision techniques, gait features are extracted to identify the walking pace of the individual wearing the camera and are validated using the ground truth dataset. We perform an additional data collection with both the camera and a body-worn accelerometer to understand the correlation between our vision-based data and a more traditional set of accelerometer data. Our results indicate that the extraction of activity from the video in a controlled setting shows strong promise of being utilized in different activity monitoring applications such as in the eldercare environment, as well as for monitoring chronic healthcare conditions.

Committee: Tanvi Banerjee Ph.D. (Advisor); Yong Pei Ph.D. (Committee Member); Thomas Wischgoll Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Computer Science

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2017, Educational Studies

This study examined the effects of a video modeling training video on early childhood education staff members' implementation of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) Phase 1A. Quality of the implementation was determined by participants following a task analysis of 10 steps wherein a confederate acting as the student exchanges a PECS picture of an item to receive access to that item. After baseline data collection, participants were instructed to watch the researcher's training video of PECS Phase 1A being modeled. The video was uploaded to YouTube so participants had access to the training video and was viewable on their own time. After viewing the video, participants were assessed on their performance again using the 10 step task analysis. A multiple-baseline across participants design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. Findings indicated the number of steps completed correctly improved as a result of the training intervention.

Committee: Shelia Morgan (Advisor); Helen Malone (Committee Member) Subjects: Behavioral Sciences

Master of Science, University of Toledo, 2016, Electrical Engineering

The purpose of this research is to design a computational decision support system (DSS) for compounded sterile preparations (CSP). Error-free compounding is dependent on the proper selection of components and adherence to procedure during compounding. A material selection system (MSS) based on a graphical user interface (GUI), coupled with a barcode scanner and back-end database, has been developed and tested for proper selection of items involving three different medication orders (MO). A video processing system (VPS) has been implemented in MATLAB that evaluates the live video feed from the compounding hood to monitor the compounding procedure when compounding the MO's. Surf detection is used to detect and locate compounding items placed in the hood. Various algorithms have been developed and tested to enhance the accuracy and robustness of the VPS. The Decision Support System (DSS) is further improved with integration of another digital camera to ensure that correct volume of medicine with appropriate syringe is performed during the whole compounding process. The template matching and SURF object detection application on the digital image of the syringe, along with minimum distance classifier and artificial neural networks (ANNs) on the previously collected data from several experimental observations, were explored in classification and volume measurement of a syringe. The MSS was tested for all items used in compounding the MO's and performed error-free. The VPS evolved to VPS.03 from VPS.01 and VPS.02. The greatest accuracy and ability for real-time realization were seen in VPS.03. All deliberate mistakes made when compounding the tested medication orders were captured by VPS.03. Leur-lock syringes of different sizes from 1 mL to 30 mL were tested, and an accuracy of 95+ % was obtained with very high precision. The new computational decision support system facilitates error-free selection of components and is able to monitor and evaluate the compounding proce (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Vijay Devabhaktuni Dr. (Committee Chair); Jerry Nesamony Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Devinder Kaur Dr. (Committee Member); Ezzatollah Salari Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering

Master of Science in Engineering (MSEgr), Wright State University, 2014, Electrical Engineering

Due to the many advantages of passive radar and ubiquity of commercial broadcast transmitters, interest in passive bistatic radar (PBR) applications has continued to grow. More specifically, sources studying commercial orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) waveforms for passive bistatic synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging have become more common. This work evaluates and applies long term evolution (LTE), digital video broadcast (DVB), and digital audio broadcast (DAB) signals of opportunity for passive bistatic SAR imaging. First, implications of the structure and properties of each of the signal of opportunity's transmitted waveform are characterized by examining the waveform's self- and cross-ambiguity functions (AFs). In addition to deriving waveform properties, link budget analysis is completed using pessimistic values intrinsic to LTE, DVB, and DAB transmissions for predicting performance of potential passive bistatic SAR imaging scenarios. Small-scale, passive bistatic SAR imaging experiments are carried out using signals structured similarly to LTE, DVB, and DAB signals, demonstrating the merits of the considered processing schemes for passive bistatic SAR image generation.

Committee: Julie Jackson Ph.D. (Advisor); Brian Rigling Ph.D. (Advisor); Zhiqiang Wu Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Electrical Engineering

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2013, Computer Science (Engineering and Technology)

The growth of real-time, streaming media application traffic in the Internet presents a number of challenges because the real-time constraints and interactive nature of these applications render the use of TCP ineffective. These streaming media application flows are usually high bandwidth and long duration, which means they should utilize network congestion control to avoid congestion collapse and ensure fairness. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP) to provide congestion control for these types of real-time applications. A major factor behind this effort was the desire to eliminate the duplication of effort and potential for error resulting from each application implementing its own congestion control. In this research, we examine the difference in network performance and video quality for a typical application, a high bandwidth video telephony client, when using DCCP instead of the default transport protocol. We discuss several challenges to porting an application to DCCP and then examine the impact of DCCP on network and application performance in both testbed and Internet environments. We show that DCCP responds to changing network conditions within a few round trip times and provides better fairness to other network traffic than typical real-time, streaming media congestion control methods. Given fair bandwidth allocation, DCCP provides equivalent or better video quality, as measured by Peak Signal to Noise Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity (SSIM).

Committee: Shawn Ostermann (Advisor) Subjects: Computer Science

EdD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Education : Special Education

This study described the communication and spoken language development of a Japanese girl with profound hearing loss who used a cochlear implant from 19 months of age. The girl, Akiko, was born in Belgium where her family was living at that time. After she was identified as deaf at birth, she and her parents were provided with support services. The family relocated to Japan when Akiko was 1 year 5 months of age. When she was 1 year 6 months of age Akiko underwent cochlear implantation. The cochlear implant device was activated when Akiko was 1 year 7 months of age. The parents routinely made video recordings of Akiko interacting with family members and teachers at home and at school. The video recordings taken by the parents used as the data for this study contained scenes of Akiko from the time she was 3 months of age until she was 4 years 11 months of age. Micro-ethnographic methods were used to analyze the dynamics and development of selected communicative interactions over this age span of fifty-six months. The original pool of video recordings provided for my dissertation study contained 213 scenes, as well as email exchanges with Akiko's mother, the webpage created by Akiko's mother, and an informal discussion with Akiko's parents during a joint viewing session of the 29 scenes, which were chosen for in depth analysis. As a result of video viewing and editing, Akiko's communication development was found to follow expected patterns of development as described by other child language researchers of children with normal hearing, such as, Elizabeth Bates and colleagues (e.g., Bates, 1974; Bates, Camaioni, Volterra, 1975) who applied, J.L. Austin's “speech act theory” as the foundation for their descriptions of “early communication development” of children. There were seven demarcations that represent Akiko's communication and spoken language development: 1) perlocutionary, 2) transition of perlocutionary to illocutionary, 3) illocutionary, 4) transition of illocu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Kretschmer EdD (Committee Chair); Laura Kretschmer PhD (Committee Member); Jo-Ann Prendeville EdD (Committee Member); Roberta Truax PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Education

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2003, Electrical Engineering

The omnipresent multimedia data calls for efficient and flexible methodologies to annotate, organize, store, and access video resources. Video annotation data, or video meta-data, plays an important role in the future annotation-driven video systems. Although the importance of the video annotation data is widely recognized and a considerable amount of research has been conducted on its various aspects, there is no consistent framework on which to structure video annotation data. In this dissertation, we propose a hierarchical structure for video semantic annotation. Not only do users think in terms of semantic concepts, they also think and operate video systems in a hierarchical fashion. Moreover, hierarchical structures are being used to store and transmit video production data. Consequently, a hierarchical structure for video annotation data is needed. The hierarchical structure is so important that it is likely to affect almost every aspect of multimedia computing. We anticipate that numerous research activities in various aspects of video will be tailored toward this hierarchical structure. Second, various techniques are investigated in terms of how to hierarchically extract video annotations, from low- to mid- to high-levels. The lower the level of the video annotation in the hierarchy, the more applicable automatic approaches are likely to be. Different semantic levels call for different techniques to extract video annotations. For example, high-level video annotations tend to describe high-level video events that are present in the video data. High-level video events are highly structural and the traditional statistical pattern analysis is insufficient. As a result, structural pattern analysis methods such as the syntactic approach are needed to extract high-level video annotations. In this dissertation, we have studied the techniques to hierarchically extract video annotations, from low-, to mid-, and to high-level. In particular, one of the key contribution (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stanley Ahalt (Advisor) Subjects: