Phonological effects on the development of inflectional morphology. This project investigates the mechanisms underlying typically developing children's variable omission of inflectional morphemes (for example, plural, past tense). The results will have significant implications for the evaluation and design of interventions for language-delayed populations where serious problems of communication persist.
The relationship between speech production and perception in Australian language speakers: implications for speech development and learning in Aboriginal children. Chronic ear infection blights the life of at least 50% of Aboriginal Australians. In a vicious cycle that extends from generation to generation, it leads to hearing loss, educational disadvantage, socio-economic disadvantage and environmental depredation, which once again leads to ear (and many other) infections. This is a unique atte ....The relationship between speech production and perception in Australian language speakers: implications for speech development and learning in Aboriginal children. Chronic ear infection blights the life of at least 50% of Aboriginal Australians. In a vicious cycle that extends from generation to generation, it leads to hearing loss, educational disadvantage, socio-economic disadvantage and environmental depredation, which once again leads to ear (and many other) infections. This is a unique attempt by researchers across academic disciplines to study the role of language in educational disadvantage and whether this disadvantage might be made worse for Aboriginal children by the early use of English at school. We ask whether, on purely acoustic or linguistic grounds, communicating in an Aboriginal language might offer improved educational and health outcomes for Aboriginal children in the early years.Read moreRead less
The effect of sound change on children's speech in community diversity. This project aims to explain how children's speech processing adapts to cultural and linguistic diversity and how such adaptation may seed sound change in language. Using acoustic and articulatory (ultrasound) methods, the project intends to explain how children rapidly and authentically acquire the intricately nuanced accents of their communities. The project aims to advance theories of language variation and change by prov ....The effect of sound change on children's speech in community diversity. This project aims to explain how children's speech processing adapts to cultural and linguistic diversity and how such adaptation may seed sound change in language. Using acoustic and articulatory (ultrasound) methods, the project intends to explain how children rapidly and authentically acquire the intricately nuanced accents of their communities. The project aims to advance theories of language variation and change by providing new insights into the forces that shape the sounds of language. An understanding of how children's speech patterns develop and ultimately converge to local norms has implications for the social integration of second language learning children and refugee/asylum seekers, and for clinical and speech technology applications for children.Read moreRead less
A more sound approach to the neurobiology of language. How does the brain attain spoken language? Current neurobiological models assume either implicitly or explicitly that there is no relationship between a word's sound and its meaning. Yet considerable evidence shows this strong assumption about the arbitrariness of language is invalid. This project will use a combination of behavioural, neuroimaging and computational studies to characterise how the brain processes statistical regularities in ....A more sound approach to the neurobiology of language. How does the brain attain spoken language? Current neurobiological models assume either implicitly or explicitly that there is no relationship between a word's sound and its meaning. Yet considerable evidence shows this strong assumption about the arbitrariness of language is invalid. This project will use a combination of behavioural, neuroimaging and computational studies to characterise how the brain processes statistical regularities in sound-to-meaning correspondences as probabilistic cues to attain spoken language. The outcome will be a better neural account of language comprehension and production. The benefit of this new account will be a stronger basis for assessment and treatment of developmental and acquired language impairments.Read moreRead less
Efficient causal discovery from observational data. Discovering cause-effect relationships is the ultimate goal for many applications. Randomised control trial is the gold standard for discovering causal relationships. However, conducting such trials is impossible in many cases due to cost and/or ethical concerns. In contrast, a large amount of data has been accumulated in all areas. It is desirable to infer causal relationships from data directly and automatically. This project aims to develop ....Efficient causal discovery from observational data. Discovering cause-effect relationships is the ultimate goal for many applications. Randomised control trial is the gold standard for discovering causal relationships. However, conducting such trials is impossible in many cases due to cost and/or ethical concerns. In contrast, a large amount of data has been accumulated in all areas. It is desirable to infer causal relationships from data directly and automatically. This project aims to develop fast and scalable data mining methods for identifying causal relationships from large and/or high dimensional data sets. The developed methods will mainly be evaluated in real world biological applications. The research outcomes will be useful in many areas for causal reasoning and decision making.Read moreRead less
Fairness aware data mining for discrimination free decision-making. This project aims to develop data mining methods to detect algorithmic discriminations and to build fair decision models. It expects to provide techniques for regulatory organisations to detect discriminations in algorithmic decisions, and for various companies and organisations to build fair decision systems. Expected outcomes are novel and accurate methods for discrimination detection, practical and versatile techniques for fa ....Fairness aware data mining for discrimination free decision-making. This project aims to develop data mining methods to detect algorithmic discriminations and to build fair decision models. It expects to provide techniques for regulatory organisations to detect discriminations in algorithmic decisions, and for various companies and organisations to build fair decision systems. Expected outcomes are novel and accurate methods for discrimination detection, practical and versatile techniques for fair decision model building, and improved understanding of the relationships between privacy preservation and discrimination prevention to enable new techniques to achieve both goals. The developed techniques enable society to tackle ethical challenges in the big data era where many decisions are analytics based. Read moreRead less
Developing novel data mining methods to reveal complex group relationships from heterogeneous data. This project aims to develop novel and effective data mining methods that will enable us to unravel the relationships between multiple, rather than individual, components of complex systems (such as genes, gene regulators and cancer), which is crucial to understanding how such systems work. Potential applications for such methods are extensive.
Online Learning for Large Scale Structured Data in Complex Situations. Online Learning (OL) is the process of predicting answers for a sequence of questions. OL has enjoyed much attention in recent years due to its natural ability of processing large scale non-structured data and adapting to a changing environment. However, OL has three weaknesses: it does not scale for structured data; it often assumes that all of the data are equally important; it often considers that all of the data are compl ....Online Learning for Large Scale Structured Data in Complex Situations. Online Learning (OL) is the process of predicting answers for a sequence of questions. OL has enjoyed much attention in recent years due to its natural ability of processing large scale non-structured data and adapting to a changing environment. However, OL has three weaknesses: it does not scale for structured data; it often assumes that all of the data are equally important; it often considers that all of the data are complete and noise-free. These weaknesses limit its utility, because real data such as those that must be analysed in processing social networks, fraud detection do not satisfy the restrictions. The aim of this project is to develop theoretical and practical advances in OL that overcome the existing weaknesses.Read moreRead less
Probabilistic Graphical Models For Interventional Queries. The project intends to develop methods to suggest how to optimally intervene so that the future state of the system will best suit our interests. The power of probabilistic graphical models to model complex relationships and interactions among a large number of variables facilitates many applications. However, such models only aim to understand the underlying environment. What is ultimately needed in many real-world applications is to su ....Probabilistic Graphical Models For Interventional Queries. The project intends to develop methods to suggest how to optimally intervene so that the future state of the system will best suit our interests. The power of probabilistic graphical models to model complex relationships and interactions among a large number of variables facilitates many applications. However, such models only aim to understand the underlying environment. What is ultimately needed in many real-world applications is to suggest how we ought to intervene or act, so as to alter the environment to best suit our interests. The proposed project aims to achieve this using probabilistic graphical models on massive real-world data sets, thus facilitating a variety of applications from health care to commerce and the environment.Read moreRead less
Understanding and Modelling Insect Motion Vision. The interdisciplinary project proposed will offer a stimulating environment for research/training into computational neuroscience, an attractive area for aspiring scientists. We have already demonstrated the feasibility of transferring physiology into applications, and expect this project to deliver functional motion vision models and devices. Our proposed work will have an impact beyond the advancement of neuro-physiology as knowledge gained is ....Understanding and Modelling Insect Motion Vision. The interdisciplinary project proposed will offer a stimulating environment for research/training into computational neuroscience, an attractive area for aspiring scientists. We have already demonstrated the feasibility of transferring physiology into applications, and expect this project to deliver functional motion vision models and devices. Our proposed work will have an impact beyond the advancement of neuro-physiology as knowledge gained is applicable in a range of areas, with applications in miniature unmanned vehicles and collision avoidance detectors in defence and civilian roles. Our project could also assist in the development of artificial intelligence and as a basis for designing implantable artificial eyes.Read moreRead less