Taylor and Francis Acta Medica Okayama 1044-7318 36 16 2020 Estimating Level of Engagement from Ocular Landmarks 1527 1539 EN Zeynep Yucel Department of Computer Science, Division of Industrial Innovation Sciences, Okayama University Serina Koyama Department of Computer Science, Division of Industrial Innovation Sciences, Okayama University Akito Monden Department of Computer Science, Division of Industrial Innovation Sciences, Okayama University Mariko Sasakura Department of Computer Science, Division of Industrial Innovation Sciences, Okayama University E-learning offers many advantages like being economical, flexible and customizable, but also has challenging aspects such as lack of – social-interaction, which results in contemplation and sense of remoteness. To overcome these and sustain learners’ motivation, various stimuli can be incorporated. Nevertheless, such adjustments initially require an assessment of engagement level. In this respect, we propose estimating engagement level from facial landmarks exploiting the facts that (i) perceptual decoupling is promoted by blinking during mentally demanding tasks; (ii) eye strain increases blinking rate, which also scales with task disengagement; (iii) eye aspect ratio is in close connection with attentional state and (iv) users’ head position is correlated with their level of involvement. Building empirical models of these actions, we devise a probabilistic estimation framework. Our results indicate that high and low levels of engagement are identified with considerable accuracy, whereas medium levels are inherently more challenging, which is also confirmed by inter-rater agreement of expert coders. No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Acta Medica Okayama 2003 A three-dimensional visualization of communications in distributed program environments 132 137 EN Mariko Sasakura Susumu Yamasaki In order to understand the behaviour of distributed program environments, we describe a three-dimensional visualization of communications. Most previous visualizations presented communications by means of the two dimensions of time and process, however, three dimensions are required to represent a message intermediary with visualization functions. We make use of a semantic configuration of messages, which is constructed by the quantities for three parametric factors: (i) time sequence, (ii) identifications of processors, and (iii) message exchanges. No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Acta Medica Okayama 2005 Visualization for management of electronics product composition 194 199 EN Iwata Kenichi Mariko Sasakura Susumu Yamasaki There are some systems called supply chain management system or value chain management system that manages production. It is a powerful tool in normal cases, but in a problem such that some parts are out of stock, it can solve the problem only by simple solutions, like postponing shipping of the product because it does not have enough information about production and functions to use the various information. Our research is concerned with a system to integrate information about production and show a solution to help users to judge which way is better to solve the problem. We implemented a prototype system. It takes inputs of some information that were not integrated in one place in former systems, but distributed among systems, people, or sections. It shows a solution for a problem making use of the information integrated in the system. The solution comes as process of reasoning to help user to judge what is the best to do in the case. We also implemented the user interface to show the process of reasoning. No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Acta Medica Okayama 2001 A visualization method for knowledge represented by general logic programs 135 140 EN Mariko Sasakura We describe a visualization method for general logic clauses as the first step of a visualization of logic programs. Since we think inclusion is essential to represent an outline of knowledge, we propose a method based on Euler diagrams to visualize inference rules represented as a set of general logic clauses which consist of literals with no variable. We develop a prototype system and show that complex rules which are hard to understand in text are easy to understand by diagrams No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Acta Medica Okayama 2006 An interactive environment for generating sequential information EN Mariko Sasakura Kenichi Iwata Susumu Yamasaki We propose an interactive environment in which we can generate sequential information. Sequential information is a sequence of movements which makes changes of situations. The system allows a user to construct an environment for generating sequential information. We provide interactions and visualization for sequential information generation based on theoretical grounds. No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Acta Medica Okayama 2004 Visualization with hierarchically structured trees for an explanation reasoning system 893 898 EN Mariko Sasakura Susumu Yamasaki This work is concerned with an application of drawing hierarchically structured trees. The tree drawing is applied to an explanation reasoning system. The reasoning is based on synthetic abduction (hypothesis) that gets a case from a rule and a result. In other words, the system searches a proper environment to get a desired result. In order that the system may be reliably related to the amount of rules which are used to get the answer, we visualize a process of reasoning to show how rules have concern with the process. Since the process of reasoning in the system makes a hierarchically structured tree, the visualization of reasoning is a drawing of a hierarchically structured tree. We propose a method of visualization that is applicable to the explanation reasoning system. No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.