Patrick D Houghton

Title: The Innovative Contributions of Patrick D. Houghton

Introduction

Patrick D. Houghton is a notable inventor based in Titusville, NJ (US). He has made significant strides in the field of automated scoring of non-cognitive, behavioral performance tasks. His work is particularly relevant in educational and testing environments, where accurate assessments are crucial.

Latest Patents

Houghton holds a patent for "NLP-guided video thin-slicing for automated scoring of non-cognitive, behavioral performance tasks." This innovative patent involves a process where data is received that encapsulates a video of a subject performing a task. The video is utilized to generate a transcript using an automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. A plurality of text segments is generated from the transcript and subsequently tokenized. A textual representation of each segment is extracted by a transformer model using the tokenized text segment. Thereafter, for each segment, a fused representation derived from the textual representations and corresponding visual and audio features from the video is generated. A sparse attention machine learning model then selects an optimal slice of the video based on the fused representations. The optimal slice can then be input into one or more machine learning models trained to characterize the performance of the task by the subject.

Career Highlights

Houghton is currently associated with Educational Testing Service, where he applies his expertise in developing innovative assessment tools. His work focuses on enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of evaluating non-cognitive skills through advanced technology.

Collaborations

Houghton has collaborated with notable colleagues such as Chee Wee Leong and Xianyang Chen. Their combined efforts contribute to the advancement of educational assessment methodologies.

Conclusion

Patrick D. Houghton exemplifies the spirit of innovation in the field of educational assessment through his groundbreaking patent and collaborative efforts. His contributions are paving the way for more effective evaluation methods in various performance tasks.