In this paper we present the results of a trial in which two participants collaborated on a puzzle-solving task in networked virtual environments. The task was a Rubik's cube type puzzle, and this meant that the two participants had to interact with the space and with each other very intensivelyFand they did this successfully despite the limitation of the networked situation. We compare collaboration in networked immersive projection technology (IPT's) systems with previous results concerning collaboration in an IPT system linked with a desktop computer, and also with collaboration on the same task in the real world. Our findings show that the task performance in networked IPT's and in the real scenario are very similar to each otherFwhereas IPT-to-desktop performance is much poorer. Results about participants' experience of 'presence', 'co-presence' and collaboration shed further light on these findings. r

In this study we compared collaboration on a puzzle-solving task carried out by two persons in a virtual and a real environment. The task, putting together a cube consisting of different colored blocks in a "Rubiks" cube-type puzzle, was performed both in a shared virtual environment (VE) setting, using a Cave-type virtual reality (VR) system networked with a desktop VR system, and with cardboard colored blocks in an equivalent real setting. The aims of the study were to investigate presence, co-presence, collaboration, leadership, and performance in the two settings. We found that the participants contributed unequally to the task in the VE, and also found differences in collaboration between the virtual and the real setting.

Please cite this article as: AbelinÅ. Phonaesthemes and sound symbolism in Swedish brand names. Ampersand (2015), http://dx.

In this study we compared collaboration on a puzzlesolving task carried out by two persons in a virtual and a real environment. The task, putting together a cube consisting of different coloured blocks in a 'Rubiks' cubetype puzzle, was performed both in a shared virtual environment (VE) setting, using a Cave-type virtual reality (VR) system networked with a desktop VR system, and with cardboard coloured blocks in an equivalent real setting. The aims of the study were to investigate collaboration, leadership and performance in the two settings. We found that the participants contributed unequally to the task in the VE, and also differences in collaboration between the virtual and the real setting.

Purpose This study aimed to investigate the intelligibility of children's atypical speech in relation to listeners' language background. Method Forty-eight participants listened to and transcribed isolated words repeated by children with speech sound disorders. Participants were divided into, on the one hand, a multilingual group ( n = 29) that was further divided into subgroups based on age of acquisition (early, 0–3 years; intermediate, 4–12 years; and late, > 12 years) and, on the other hand, a monolingual comparison group ( n = 19). Results The monolingual listeners obtained higher intelligibility scores than the multilingual listeners; this difference was statistically significant. Participants who acquired Swedish at an older age (> 4 years) were found to have lower scores than other listeners. The later the age of acquisition, the less of the atypical speech was decoded correctly. A further analysis of the transcriptions also revealed a higher level of nonwords among the incorrect transcriptions of the multilinguals than that of the monolinguals who used more real words, whereas both groups were equally prone to using blanks when they did not perceive a word. Conclusions This indicates a higher risk of communicative problems between late acquirers of Swedish and children with speech sound disorders. Clinical implications, such as involving communication partners in the intervention process, are discussed as well as possible linguistic explanations to the findings. This study could be seen as a starting point in the field of research regarding the relations between the language background of the listener and the ability to perceive atypical speech.

This study was conducted to investigate whether the listeners' culture and mother language influence the perception of emotions through speech and which acoustic cues listeners use in this process. Swedish and Brazilian listeners were presented with authentic emotional speech samples of Brazilian Portuguese and Swedish. They judged on 5-point Likert scales the expression of basic emotions as described by eight adjectives in the utterances in Brazilian Portuguese and the expression of five emotional dimensions in the utterances in Swedish. The PCA technique revealed that two components explain more than 94% of the variance of the judges' responses in both experiments. These components were predicted through multiple linear regressions from twelve acoustic parameters automatically computed from the utterances. The results point to a similar perception of the emotions between both cultures.

The article puts forward very intriguing ideas on charisma and charismatic speech. A basic assumption in the article is that we can actually acquire charisma or charismatic expression; it isn‟t meant for just a few selected persons. From the examples of Jobs and Zuckerberg, the question might however arise whether the great charisma of Jobs is due to wording and the content of what is said, or if it is really a result of prosodic expression. Still, there is reason to believe that there are voices more charismatic than others.

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