Positive Emotional Language in the Final Words Spoken Directly Before Execution.

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Hirschmüller, Sarah; Egloff, Boris

2015-01-01

How do individuals emotionally cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality? DeWall and Baumeister as well as Kashdan and colleagues previously provided support that an increased use of positive emotion words serves as a way to protect and defend against mortality salience of one's own contemplated death. Although these studies provide important insights into the psychological dynamics of mortality salience, it remains an open question how individuals cope with the immense threat of mortality prior to their imminent actual death. In the present research, we therefore analyzed positivity in the final words spoken immediately before execution by 407 death row inmates in Texas. By using computerized quantitative text analysis as an objective measure of emotional language use, our results showed that the final words contained a significantly higher proportion of positive than negative emotion words. This emotional positivity was significantly higher than (a) positive emotion word usage base rates in spoken and written materials and (b) positive emotional language use with regard to contemplated death and attempted or actual suicide. Additional analyses showed that emotional positivity in final statements was associated with a greater frequency of language use that was indicative of self-references, social orientation, and present-oriented time focus as well as with fewer instances of cognitive-processing, past-oriented, and death-related word use. Taken together, our findings offer new insights into how individuals cope with the imminent real-world salience of mortality.

Spoken Word Recognition of Chinese Words in Continuous Speech

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Yip, Michael C. W.

2015-01-01

The present study examined the role of positional probability of syllables played in recognition of spoken word in continuous Cantonese speech. Because some sounds occur more frequently at the beginning position or ending position of Cantonese syllables than the others, so these kinds of probabilistic information of syllables may cue the locations…

Interference Effects on the Recall of Pictures, Printed Words, and Spoken Words.

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Burton, John K.; Bruning, Roger H.

1982-01-01

Nouns were presented in triads as pictures, printed words, or spoken words and followed by various types of interference. Measures of short- and long-term memory were obtained. In short-term memory, pictorial superiority occurred with acoustic, and visual and acoustic, but not visual interference. Long-term memory showed superior recall for…

Cognitive Predictors of Spoken Word Recognition in Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorders.

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Evans, Julia L; Gillam, Ronald B; Montgomery, James W

2018-05-10

This study examined the influence of cognitive factors on spoken word recognition in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and typically developing (TD) children. Participants included 234 children (aged 7;0-11;11 years;months), 117 with DLD and 117 TD children, propensity matched for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and maternal education. Children completed a series of standardized assessment measures, a forward gating task, a rapid automatic naming task, and a series of tasks designed to examine cognitive factors hypothesized to influence spoken word recognition including phonological working memory, updating, attention shifting, and interference inhibition. Spoken word recognition for both initial and final accept gate points did not differ for children with DLD and TD controls after controlling target word knowledge in both groups. The 2 groups also did not differ on measures of updating, attention switching, and interference inhibition. Despite the lack of difference on these measures, for children with DLD, attention shifting and interference inhibition were significant predictors of spoken word recognition, whereas updating and receptive vocabulary were significant predictors of speed of spoken word recognition for the children in the TD group. Contrary to expectations, after controlling for target word knowledge, spoken word recognition did not differ for children with DLD and TD controls; however, the cognitive processing factors that influenced children's ability to recognize the target word in a stream of speech differed qualitatively for children with and without DLDs.

Toddlers' sensitivity to within-word coarticulation during spoken word recognition: Developmental differences in lexical competition.

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Zamuner, Tania S; Moore, Charlotte; Desmeules-Trudel, Félix

2016-12-01

To understand speech, listeners need to be able to decode the speech stream into meaningful units. However, coarticulation causes phonemes to differ based on their context. Because coarticulation is an ever-present component of the speech stream, it follows that listeners may exploit this source of information for cues to the identity of the words being spoken. This research investigates the development of listeners' sensitivity to coarticulation cues below the level of the phoneme in spoken word recognition. Using a looking-while-listening paradigm, adults and 2- and 3-year-old children were tested on coarticulation cues that either matched or mismatched the target. Both adults and children predicted upcoming phonemes based on anticipatory coarticulation to make decisions about word identity. The overall results demonstrate that coarticulation cues are a fundamental component of children's spoken word recognition system. However, children did not show the same resolution as adults of the mismatching coarticulation cues and competitor inhibition, indicating that children's processing systems are still developing. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Syllable frequency and word frequency effects in spoken and written word production in a non-alphabetic script

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Qingfang eZhang

2014-02-01

Full Text Available The effects of word frequency and syllable frequency are well-established phenomena in domain such as spoken production in alphabetic languages. Chinese, as a non-alphabetic language, presents unique lexical and phonological properties in speech production. For example, the proximate unit of phonological encoding is syllable in Chinese but segments in Dutch, French or English. The present study investigated the effects of word frequency and syllable frequency, and their interaction in Chinese written and spoken production. Significant facilitatory word frequency and syllable frequency effects were observed in spoken as well as in written production. The syllable frequency effect in writing indicated that phonological properties (i.e., syllabic frequency constrain orthographic output via a lexical route, at least, in Chinese written production. However, the syllable frequency effect over repetitions was divergent in both modalities: it was significant in the former two repetitions in spoken whereas it was significant in the second repetition only in written. Due to the fragility of the syllable frequency effect in writing, we suggest that the phonological influence in handwritten production is not mandatory and universal, and it is modulated by experimental manipulations. This provides evidence for the orthographic autonomy hypothesis, rather than the phonological mediation hypothesis. The absence of an interaction between word frequency and syllable frequency showed that the syllable frequency effect is independent of the word frequency effect in spoken and written output modalities. The implications of these results on written production models are discussed.

Allophones, not phonemes in spoken-word recognition

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Mitterer, H.A.; Reinisch, E.; McQueen, J.M.

2018-01-01

What are the phonological representations that listeners use to map information about the segmental content of speech onto the mental lexicon during spoken-word recognition? Recent evidence from perceptual-learning paradigms seems to support (context-dependent) allophones as the basic

Orthographic consistency affects spoken word recognition at different grain-sizes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dich, Nadya

2014-01-01

A number of previous studies found that the consistency of sound-to-spelling mappings (feedback consistency) affects spoken word recognition. In auditory lexical decision experiments, words that can only be spelled one way are recognized faster than words with multiple potential spellings. Previo...

Extrinsic Cognitive Load Impairs Spoken Word Recognition in High- and Low-Predictability Sentences.

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Hunter, Cynthia R; Pisoni, David B

Listening effort (LE) induced by speech degradation reduces performance on concurrent cognitive tasks. However, a converse effect of extrinsic cognitive load on recognition of spoken words in sentences has not been shown. The aims of the present study were to (a) examine the impact of extrinsic cognitive load on spoken word recognition in a sentence recognition task and (b) determine whether cognitive load and/or LE needed to understand spectrally degraded speech would differentially affect word recognition in high- and low-predictability sentences. Downstream effects of speech degradation and sentence predictability on the cognitive load task were also examined. One hundred twenty young adults identified sentence-final spoken words in high- and low-predictability Speech Perception in Noise sentences. Cognitive load consisted of a preload of short (low-load) or long (high-load) sequences of digits, presented visually before each spoken sentence and reported either before or after identification of the sentence-final word. LE was varied by spectrally degrading sentences with four-, six-, or eight-channel noise vocoding. Level of spectral degradation and order of report (digits first or words first) were between-participants variables. Effects of cognitive load, sentence predictability, and speech degradation on accuracy of sentence-final word identification as well as recall of preload digit sequences were examined. In addition to anticipated main effects of sentence predictability and spectral degradation on word recognition, we found an effect of cognitive load, such that words were identified more accurately under low load than high load. However, load differentially affected word identification in high- and low-predictability sentences depending on the level of sentence degradation. Under severe spectral degradation (four-channel vocoding), the effect of cognitive load on word identification was present for high-predictability sentences but not for low

"Poetry Does Really Educate": An Interview with Spoken Word Poet Luka Lesson

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Xerri, Daniel

2016-01-01

Spoken word poetry is a means of engaging young people with a genre that has often been much maligned in classrooms all over the world. This interview with the Australian spoken word poet Luka Lesson explores issues that are of pressing concern to poetry education. These include the idea that engagement with poetry in schools can be enhanced by…

Towards Affordable Disclosure of Spoken Word Archives

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; Heeren, W.F.L.; Huijbregts, M.A.H.; Hiemstra, Djoerd; de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Larson, M; Fernie, K; Oomen, J; Cigarran, J.

2008-01-01

This paper presents and discusses ongoing work aiming at affordable disclosure of real-world spoken word archives in general, and in particular of a collection of recorded interviews with Dutch survivors of World War II concentration camp Buchenwald. Given such collections, the least we want to be

Orthographic Consistency Affects Spoken Word Recognition at Different Grain-Sizes

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Dich, Nadya

2014-01-01

A number of previous studies found that the consistency of sound-to-spelling mappings (feedback consistency) affects spoken word recognition. In auditory lexical decision experiments, words that can only be spelled one way are recognized faster than words with multiple potential spellings. Previous studies demonstrated this by manipulating…

Semantic and phonological schema influence spoken word learning and overnight consolidation.

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Havas, Viktória; Taylor, Jsh; Vaquero, Lucía; de Diego-Balaguer, Ruth; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Davis, Matthew H

2018-06-01

We studied the initial acquisition and overnight consolidation of new spoken words that resemble words in the native language (L1) or in an unfamiliar, non-native language (L2). Spanish-speaking participants learned the spoken forms of novel words in their native language (Spanish) or in a different language (Hungarian), which were paired with pictures of familiar or unfamiliar objects, or no picture. We thereby assessed, in a factorial way, the impact of existing knowledge (schema) on word learning by manipulating both semantic (familiar vs unfamiliar objects) and phonological (L1- vs L2-like novel words) familiarity. Participants were trained and tested with a 12-hr intervening period that included overnight sleep or daytime awake. Our results showed (1) benefits of sleep to recognition memory that were greater for words with L2-like phonology and (2) that learned associations with familiar but not unfamiliar pictures enhanced recognition memory for novel words. Implications for complementary systems accounts of word learning are discussed.

"Poetry Is Not a Special Club": How Has an Introduction to the Secondary Discourse of Spoken Word Made Poetry a Memorable Learning Experience for Young People?

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Dymoke, Sue

2017-01-01

This paper explores the impact of a Spoken Word Education Programme (SWEP hereafter) on young people's engagement with poetry in a group of schools in London, UK. It does so with reference to the secondary Discourses of school-based learning and the Spoken Word community, an artistic "community of practice" into which they were being…

Syllable Frequency and Spoken Word Recognition: An Inhibitory Effect.

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González-Alvarez, Julio; Palomar-García, María-Angeles

2016-08-01

Research has shown that syllables play a relevant role in lexical access in Spanish, a shallow language with a transparent syllabic structure. Syllable frequency has been shown to have an inhibitory effect on visual word recognition in Spanish. However, no study has examined the syllable frequency effect on spoken word recognition. The present study tested the effect of the frequency of the first syllable on recognition of spoken Spanish words. A sample of 45 young adults (33 women, 12 men; M = 20.4, SD = 2.8; college students) performed an auditory lexical decision on 128 Spanish disyllabic words and 128 disyllabic nonwords. Words were selected so that lexical and first syllable frequency were manipulated in a within-subject 2 × 2 design, and six additional independent variables were controlled: token positional frequency of the second syllable, number of phonemes, position of lexical stress, number of phonological neighbors, number of phonological neighbors that have higher frequencies than the word, and acoustical durations measured in milliseconds. Decision latencies and error rates were submitted to linear mixed models analysis. Results showed a typical facilitatory effect of the lexical frequency and, importantly, an inhibitory effect of the first syllable frequency on reaction times and error rates. © The Author(s) 2016.

The Slow Developmental Time Course of Real-Time Spoken Word Recognition

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Rigler, Hannah; Farris-Trimble, Ashley; Greiner, Lea; Walker, Jessica; Tomblin, J. Bruce; McMurray, Bob

2015-01-01

This study investigated the developmental time course of spoken word recognition in older children using eye tracking to assess how the real-time processing dynamics of word recognition change over development. We found that 9-year-olds were slower to activate the target words and showed more early competition from competitor words than…

A word by any other intonation: fMRI evidence for implicit memory traces for pitch contours of spoken words in adult brains.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Michael Inspector

Full Text Available OBJECTIVES: Intonation may serve as a cue for facilitated recognition and processing of spoken words and it has been suggested that the pitch contour of spoken words is implicitly remembered. Thus, using the repetition suppression (RS effect of BOLD-fMRI signals, we tested whether the same spoken words are differentially processed in language and auditory brain areas depending on whether or not they retain an arbitrary intonation pattern. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: Words were presented repeatedly in three blocks for passive and active listening tasks. There were three prosodic conditions in each of which a different set of words was used and specific task-irrelevant intonation changes were applied: (i All words presented in a set flat monotonous pitch contour (ii Each word had an arbitrary pitch contour that was set throughout the three repetitions. (iii Each word had a different arbitrary pitch contour in each of its repetition. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The repeated presentations of words with a set pitch contour, resulted in robust behavioral priming effects as well as in significant RS of the BOLD signals in primary auditory cortex (BA 41, temporal areas (BA 21 22 bilaterally and in Broca's area. However, changing the intonation of the same words on each successive repetition resulted in reduced behavioral priming and the abolition of RS effects. CONCLUSIONS: Intonation patterns are retained in memory even when the intonation is task-irrelevant. Implicit memory traces for the pitch contour of spoken words were reflected in facilitated neuronal processing in auditory and language associated areas. Thus, the results lend support for the notion that prosody and specifically pitch contour is strongly associated with the memory representation of spoken words.

Attentional Capture of Objects Referred to by Spoken Language

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Salverda, Anne Pier; Altmann, Gerry T. M.

2011-01-01

Participants saw a small number of objects in a visual display and performed a visual detection or visual-discrimination task in the context of task-irrelevant spoken distractors. In each experiment, a visual cue was presented 400 ms after the onset of a spoken word. In experiments 1 and 2, the cue was an isoluminant color change and participants…

Recognition Memory for Braille or Spoken Words: An fMRI study in Early Blind

OpenAIRE

Burton, Harold; Sinclair, Robert J.; Agato, Alvin

2011-01-01

We examined cortical activity in early blind during word recognition memory. Nine participants were blind at birth and one by 1.5 yrs. In an event-related design, we studied blood oxygen level-dependent responses to studied (“old”) compared to novel (“new”) words. Presentation mode was in Braille or spoken. Responses were larger for identified “new” words read with Braille in bilateral lower and higher tier visual areas and primary somatosensory cortex. Responses to spoken “new” words were la...

Individual Differences in Online Spoken Word Recognition: Implications for SLI

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McMurray, Bob; Samelson, Vicki M.; Lee, Sung Hee; Tomblin, J. Bruce

2010-01-01

Thirty years of research has uncovered the broad principles that characterize spoken word processing across listeners. However, there have been few systematic investigations of individual differences. Such an investigation could help refine models of word recognition by indicating which processing parameters are likely to vary, and could also have…

Talker and background noise specificity in spoken word recognition memory

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Angela Cooper

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Prior research has demonstrated that listeners are sensitive to changes in the indexical (talker-specific characteristics of speech input, suggesting that these signal-intrinsic features are integrally encoded in memory for spoken words. Given that listeners frequently must contend with concurrent environmental noise, to what extent do they also encode signal-extrinsic details? Native English listeners’ explicit memory for spoken English monosyllabic and disyllabic words was assessed as a function of consistency versus variation in the talker’s voice (talker condition and background noise (noise condition using a delayed recognition memory paradigm. The speech and noise signals were spectrally-separated, such that changes in a simultaneously presented non-speech signal (background noise from exposure to test would not be accompanied by concomitant changes in the target speech signal. The results revealed that listeners can encode both signal-intrinsic talker and signal-extrinsic noise information into integrated cognitive representations, critically even when the two auditory streams are spectrally non-overlapping. However, the extent to which extra-linguistic episodic information is encoded alongside linguistic information appears to be modulated by syllabic characteristics, with specificity effects found only for monosyllabic items. These findings suggest that encoding and retrieval of episodic information during spoken word processing may be modulated by lexical characteristics.

Sizing up the competition: quantifying the influence of the mental lexicon on auditory and visual spoken word recognition.

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Strand, Julia F; Sommers, Mitchell S

2011-09-01

Much research has explored how spoken word recognition is influenced by the architecture and dynamics of the mental lexicon (e.g., Luce and Pisoni, 1998; McClelland and Elman, 1986). A more recent question is whether the processes underlying word recognition are unique to the auditory domain, or whether visually perceived (lipread) speech may also be sensitive to the structure of the mental lexicon (Auer, 2002; Mattys, Bernstein, and Auer, 2002). The current research was designed to test the hypothesis that both aurally and visually perceived spoken words are isolated in the mental lexicon as a function of their modality-specific perceptual similarity to other words. Lexical competition (the extent to which perceptually similar words influence recognition of a stimulus word) was quantified using metrics that are well-established in the literature, as well as a statistical method for calculating perceptual confusability based on the phi-square statistic. Both auditory and visual spoken word recognition were influenced by modality-specific lexical competition as well as stimulus word frequency. These findings extend the scope of activation-competition models of spoken word recognition and reinforce the hypothesis (Auer, 2002; Mattys et al., 2002) that perceptual and cognitive properties underlying spoken word recognition are not specific to the auditory domain. In addition, the results support the use of the phi-square statistic as a better predictor of lexical competition than metrics currently used in models of spoken word recognition. © 2011 Acoustical Society of America

Word reading skill predicts anticipation of upcoming spoken language input: a study of children developing proficiency in reading.

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Mani, Nivedita; Huettig, Falk

2014-10-01

Despite the efficiency with which language users typically process spoken language, a growing body of research finds substantial individual differences in both the speed and accuracy of spoken language processing potentially attributable to participants' literacy skills. Against this background, the current study took a look at the role of word reading skill in listeners' anticipation of upcoming spoken language input in children at the cusp of learning to read; if reading skills affect predictive language processing, then children at this stage of literacy acquisition should be most susceptible to the effects of reading skills on spoken language processing. We tested 8-year-olds on their prediction of upcoming spoken language input in an eye-tracking task. Although children, like in previous studies to date, were successfully able to anticipate upcoming spoken language input, there was a strong positive correlation between children's word reading skills (but not their pseudo-word reading and meta-phonological awareness or their spoken word recognition skills) and their prediction skills. We suggest that these findings are most compatible with the notion that the process of learning orthographic representations during reading acquisition sharpens pre-existing lexical representations, which in turn also supports anticipation of upcoming spoken words. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

"A Unified Poet Alliance": The Personal and Social Outcomes of Youth Spoken Word Poetry Programming

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Weinstein, Susan

2010-01-01

This article places youth spoken word (YSW) poetry programming within the larger framework of arts education. Drawing primarily on transcripts of interviews with teen poets and adult teaching artists and program administrators, the article identifies specific benefits that participants ascribe to youth spoken word, including the development of…

The time course of spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: a unimodal ERP study.

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Huang, Xianjun; Yang, Jin-Chen; Zhang, Qin; Guo, Chunyan

2014-10-01

In the present study, two experiments were carried out to investigate the time course of spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese using both event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral measures. To address the hypothesis that there is an early phonological processing stage independent of semantics during spoken word recognition, a unimodal word-matching paradigm was employed, in which both prime and target words were presented auditorily. Experiment 1 manipulated the phonological relations between disyllabic primes and targets, and found an enhanced P2 (200-270 ms post-target onset) as well as a smaller early N400 to word-initial phonological mismatches over fronto-central scalp sites. Experiment 2 manipulated both phonological and semantic relations between monosyllabic primes and targets, and replicated the phonological mismatch-associated P2, which was not modulated by semantic relations. Overall, these results suggest that P2 is a sensitive electrophysiological index of early phonological processing independent of semantics in Mandarin Chinese spoken word recognition. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Alpha and theta brain oscillations index dissociable processes in spoken word recognition.

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Strauß, Antje; Kotz, Sonja A; Scharinger, Mathias; Obleser, Jonas

2014-08-15

Slow neural oscillations (~1-15 Hz) are thought to orchestrate the neural processes of spoken language comprehension. However, functional subdivisions within this broad range of frequencies are disputed, with most studies hypothesizing only about single frequency bands. The present study utilizes an established paradigm of spoken word recognition (lexical decision) to test the hypothesis that within the slow neural oscillatory frequency range, distinct functional signatures and cortical networks can be identified at least for theta- (~3-7 Hz) and alpha-frequencies (~8-12 Hz). Listeners performed an auditory lexical decision task on a set of items that formed a word-pseudoword continuum: ranging from (1) real words over (2) ambiguous pseudowords (deviating from real words only in one vowel; comparable to natural mispronunciations in speech) to (3) pseudowords (clearly deviating from real words by randomized syllables). By means of time-frequency analysis and spatial filtering, we observed a dissociation into distinct but simultaneous patterns of alpha power suppression and theta power enhancement. Alpha exhibited a parametric suppression as items increasingly matched real words, in line with lowered functional inhibition in a left-dominant lexical processing network for more word-like input. Simultaneously, theta power in a bilateral fronto-temporal network was selectively enhanced for ambiguous pseudowords only. Thus, enhanced alpha power can neurally 'gate' lexical integration, while enhanced theta power might index functionally more specific ambiguity-resolution processes. To this end, a joint analysis of both frequency bands provides neural evidence for parallel processes in achieving spoken word recognition. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Visual attention shift to printed words during spoken word recognition in Chinese: The role of phonological information.

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Shen, Wei; Qu, Qingqing; Tong, Xiuhong

2018-05-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the extent to which phonological information mediates the visual attention shift to printed Chinese words in spoken word recognition by using an eye-movement technique with a printed-word paradigm. In this paradigm, participants are visually presented with four printed words on a computer screen, which include a target word, a phonological competitor, and two distractors. Participants are then required to select the target word using a computer mouse, and the eye movements are recorded. In Experiment 1, phonological information was manipulated at the full-phonological overlap; in Experiment 2, phonological information at the partial-phonological overlap was manipulated; and in Experiment 3, the phonological competitors were manipulated to share either fulloverlap or partial-overlap with targets directly. Results of the three experiments showed that the phonological competitor effects were observed at both the full-phonological overlap and partial-phonological overlap conditions. That is, phonological competitors attracted more fixations than distractors, which suggested that phonological information mediates the visual attention shift during spoken word recognition. More importantly, we found that the mediating role of phonological information varies as a function of the phonological similarity between target words and phonological competitors.

Primary phonological planning units in spoken word production are language-specific: Evidence from an ERP study.

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Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Wang, Suiping; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2017-07-19

It is widely acknowledged in Germanic languages that segments are the primary planning units at the phonological encoding stage of spoken word production. Mixed results, however, have been found in Chinese, and it is still unclear what roles syllables and segments play in planning Chinese spoken word production. In the current study, participants were asked to first prepare and later produce disyllabic Mandarin words upon picture prompts and a response cue while electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded. Each two consecutive pictures implicitly formed a pair of prime and target, whose names shared the same word-initial atonal syllable or the same word-initial segments, or were unrelated in the control conditions. Only syllable repetition induced significant effects on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) after target onset: a widely distributed positivity in the 200- to 400-ms interval and an anterior positivity in the 400- to 600-ms interval. We interpret these to reflect syllable-size representations at the phonological encoding and phonetic encoding stages. Our results provide the first electrophysiological evidence for the distinct role of syllables in producing Mandarin spoken words, supporting a language specificity hypothesis about the primary phonological units in spoken word production.

Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition.

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Cai, Zhenguang G; Gilbert, Rebecca A; Davis, Matthew H; Gaskell, M Gareth; Farrar, Lauren; Adler, Sarah; Rodd, Jennifer M

2017-11-01

Speech carries accent information relevant to determining the speaker's linguistic and social background. A series of web-based experiments demonstrate that accent cues can modulate access to word meaning. In Experiments 1-3, British participants were more likely to retrieve the American dominant meaning (e.g., hat meaning of "bonnet") in a word association task if they heard the words in an American than a British accent. In addition, results from a speeded semantic decision task (Experiment 4) and sentence comprehension task (Experiment 5) confirm that accent modulates on-line meaning retrieval such that comprehension of ambiguous words is easier when the relevant word meaning is dominant in the speaker's dialect. Critically, neutral-accent speech items, created by morphing British- and American-accented recordings, were interpreted in a similar way to accented words when embedded in a context of accented words (Experiment 2). This finding indicates that listeners do not use accent to guide meaning retrieval on a word-by-word basis; instead they use accent information to determine the dialectic identity of a speaker and then use their experience of that dialect to guide meaning access for all words spoken by that person. These results motivate a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition in which comprehenders determine key characteristics of their interlocutor and use this knowledge to guide word meaning access. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Effect of Lexical Frequency on Spoken Word Recognition in Young and Older Listeners

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Revill, Kathleen Pirog; Spieler, Daniel H.

2011-01-01

When identifying spoken words, older listeners may have difficulty resolving lexical competition or may place a greater weight on factors like lexical frequency. To obtain information about age differences in the time course of spoken word recognition, young and older adults’ eye movements were monitored as they followed spoken instructions to click on objects displayed on a computer screen. Older listeners were more likely than younger listeners to fixate high-frequency displayed phonological competitors. However, degradation of auditory quality in younger listeners does not reproduce this result. These data are most consistent with an increased role for lexical frequency with age. PMID:21707175

Discourse context and the recognition of reduced and canonical spoken words

OpenAIRE

Brouwer, S.; Mitterer, H.; Huettig, F.

2013-01-01

In two eye-tracking experiments we examined whether wider discourse information helps the recognition of reduced pronunciations (e.g., 'puter') more than the recognition of canonical pronunciations of spoken words (e.g., 'computer'). Dutch participants listened to sentences from a casual speech corpus containing canonical and reduced target words. Target word recognition was assessed by measuring eye fixation proportions to four printed words on a visual display: the target, a "reduced form" ...

Early use of orthographic information in spoken word recognition: Event-related potential evidence from the Korean language.

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Kwon, Youan; Choi, Sungmook; Lee, Yoonhyoung

2016-04-01

This study examines whether orthographic information is used during prelexical processes in spoken word recognition by investigating ERPs during spoken word processing for Korean words. Differential effects due to orthographic syllable neighborhood size and sound-to-spelling consistency on P200 and N320 were evaluated by recording ERPs from 42 participants during a lexical decision task. The results indicate that P200 was smaller for words whose orthographic syllable neighbors are large in number rather than those that are small. In addition, a word with a large orthographic syllable neighborhood elicited a smaller N320 effect than a word with a small orthographic syllable neighborhood only when the word had inconsistent sound-to-spelling mapping. The results provide support for the assumption that orthographic information is used early during the prelexical spoken word recognition process. © 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Assessing spoken word recognition in children who are deaf or hard of hearing: a translational approach.

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Kirk, Karen Iler; Prusick, Lindsay; French, Brian; Gotch, Chad; Eisenberg, Laurie S; Young, Nancy

2012-06-01

Under natural conditions, listeners use both auditory and visual speech cues to extract meaning from speech signals containing many sources of variability. However, traditional clinical tests of spoken word recognition routinely employ isolated words or sentences produced by a single talker in an auditory-only presentation format. The more central cognitive processes used during multimodal integration, perceptual normalization, and lexical discrimination that may contribute to individual variation in spoken word recognition performance are not assessed in conventional tests of this kind. In this article, we review our past and current research activities aimed at developing a series of new assessment tools designed to evaluate spoken word recognition in children who are deaf or hard of hearing. These measures are theoretically motivated by a current model of spoken word recognition and also incorporate "real-world" stimulus variability in the form of multiple talkers and presentation formats. The goal of this research is to enhance our ability to estimate real-world listening skills and to predict benefit from sensory aid use in children with varying degrees of hearing loss. American Academy of Audiology.

The Temporal Dynamics of Spoken Word Recognition in Adverse Listening Conditions

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Brouwer, Susanne; Bradlow, Ann R.

2016-01-01

This study examined the temporal dynamics of spoken word recognition in noise and background speech. In two visual-world experiments, English participants listened to target words while looking at four pictures on the screen: a target (e.g. "candle"), an onset competitor (e.g. "candy"), a rhyme competitor (e.g.…

Conducting spoken word recognition research online: Validation and a new timing method.

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Slote, Joseph; Strand, Julia F

2016-06-01

Models of spoken word recognition typically make predictions that are then tested in the laboratory against the word recognition scores of human subjects (e.g., Luce & Pisoni Ear and Hearing, 19, 1-36, 1998). Unfortunately, laboratory collection of large sets of word recognition data can be costly and time-consuming. Due to the numerous advantages of online research in speed, cost, and participant diversity, some labs have begun to explore the use of online platforms such as Amazon's Mechanical Turk (AMT) to source participation and collect data (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling Perspectives on Psychological Science, 6, 3-5, 2011). Many classic findings in cognitive psychology have been successfully replicated online, including the Stroop effect, task-switching costs, and Simon and flanker interference (Crump, McDonnell, & Gureckis PLoS ONE, 8, e57410, 2013). However, tasks requiring auditory stimulus delivery have not typically made use of AMT. In the present study, we evaluated the use of AMT for collecting spoken word identification and auditory lexical decision data. Although online users were faster and less accurate than participants in the lab, the results revealed strong correlations between the online and laboratory measures for both word identification accuracy and lexical decision speed. In addition, the scores obtained in the lab and online were equivalently correlated with factors that have been well established to predict word recognition, including word frequency and phonological neighborhood density. We also present and analyze a method for precise auditory reaction timing that is novel to behavioral research. Taken together, these findings suggest that AMT can be a viable alternative to the traditional laboratory setting as a source of participation for some spoken word recognition research.

The time course of lexical competition during spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: an event-related potential study.

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Huang, Xianjun; Yang, Jin-Chen

2016-01-20

The present study investigated the effect of lexical competition on the time course of spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese using a unimodal auditory priming paradigm. Two kinds of competitive environments were designed. In one session (session 1), only the unrelated and the identical primes were presented before the target words. In the other session (session 2), besides the two conditions in session 1, the target words were also preceded by the cohort primes that have the same initial syllables as the targets. Behavioral results showed an inhibitory effect of the cohort competitors (primes) on target word recognition. The event-related potential results showed that the spoken word recognition processing in the middle and late latency windows is modulated by whether the phonologically related competitors are presented or not. Specifically, preceding activation of the competitors can induce direct competitions between multiple candidate words and lead to increased processing difficulties, primarily at the word disambiguation and selection stage during Mandarin Chinese spoken word recognition. The current study provided both behavioral and electrophysiological evidences for the lexical competition effect among the candidate words during spoken word recognition.

Recognition memory for Braille or spoken words: an fMRI study in early blind.

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Burton, Harold; Sinclair, Robert J; Agato, Alvin

2012-02-15

We examined cortical activity in early blind during word recognition memory. Nine participants were blind at birth and one by 1.5years. In an event-related design, we studied blood oxygen level-dependent responses to studied ("old") compared to novel ("new") words. Presentation mode was in Braille or spoken. Responses were larger for identified "new" words read with Braille in bilateral lower and higher tier visual areas and primary somatosensory cortex. Responses to spoken "new" words were larger in bilateral primary and accessory auditory cortex. Auditory cortex was unresponsive to Braille words and occipital cortex responded to spoken words but not differentially with "old"/"new" recognition. Left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex had larger responses to "old" words only with Braille. Larger occipital cortex responses to "new" Braille words suggested verbal memory based on the mechanism of recollection. A previous report in sighted noted larger responses for "new" words studied in association with pictures that created a distinctiveness heuristic source factor which enhanced recollection during remembering. Prior behavioral studies in early blind noted an exceptional ability to recall words. Utilization of this skill by participants in the current study possibly engendered recollection that augmented remembering "old" words. A larger response when identifying "new" words possibly resulted from exhaustive recollecting the sensory properties of "old" words in modality appropriate sensory cortices. The uniqueness of a memory role for occipital cortex is in its cross-modal responses to coding tactile properties of Braille. The latter possibly reflects a "sensory echo" that aids recollection. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Sound specificity effects in spoken word recognition: The effect of integrality between words and sounds.

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Strori, Dorina; Zaar, Johannes; Cooke, Martin; Mattys, Sven L

2018-01-01

Recent evidence has shown that nonlinguistic sounds co-occurring with spoken words may be retained in memory and affect later retrieval of the words. This sound-specificity effect shares many characteristics with the classic voice-specificity effect. In this study, we argue that the sound-specificity effect is conditional upon the context in which the word and sound coexist. Specifically, we argue that, besides co-occurrence, integrality between words and sounds is a crucial factor in the emergence of the effect. In two recognition-memory experiments, we compared the emergence of voice and sound specificity effects. In Experiment 1 , we examined two conditions where integrality is high. Namely, the classic voice-specificity effect (Exp. 1a) was compared with a condition in which the intensity envelope of a background sound was modulated along the intensity envelope of the accompanying spoken word (Exp. 1b). Results revealed a robust voice-specificity effect and, critically, a comparable sound-specificity effect: A change in the paired sound from exposure to test led to a decrease in word-recognition performance. In the second experiment, we sought to disentangle the contribution of integrality from a mere co-occurrence context effect by removing the intensity modulation. The absence of integrality led to the disappearance of the sound-specificity effect. Taken together, the results suggest that the assimilation of background sounds into memory cannot be reduced to a simple context effect. Rather, it is conditioned by the extent to which words and sounds are perceived as integral as opposed to distinct auditory objects.

Recognition Memory for Braille or Spoken Words: An fMRI study in Early Blind

Science.gov (United States)

Burton, Harold; Sinclair, Robert J.; Agato, Alvin

2012-01-01

We examined cortical activity in early blind during word recognition memory. Nine participants were blind at birth and one by 1.5 yrs. In an event-related design, we studied blood oxygen level-dependent responses to studied (“old”) compared to novel (“new”) words. Presentation mode was in Braille or spoken. Responses were larger for identified “new” words read with Braille in bilateral lower and higher tier visual areas and primary somatosensory cortex. Responses to spoken “new” words were larger in bilateral primary and accessory auditory cortex. Auditory cortex was unresponsive to Braille words and occipital cortex responded to spoken words but not differentially with “old”/“new” recognition. Left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex had larger responses to “old” words only with Braille. Larger occipital cortex responses to “new” Braille words suggested verbal memory based on the mechanism of recollection. A previous report in sighted noted larger responses for “new” words studied in association with pictures that created a distinctiveness heuristic source factor which enhanced recollection during remembering. Prior behavioral studies in early blind noted an exceptional ability to recall words. Utilization of this skill by participants in the current study possibly engendered recollection that augmented remembering “old” words. A larger response when identifying “new” words possibly resulted from exhaustive recollecting the sensory properties of “old” words in modality appropriate sensory cortices. The uniqueness of a memory role for occipital cortex is in its cross-modal responses to coding tactile properties of Braille. The latter possibly reflects a “sensory echo” that aids recollection. PMID:22251836

Recording voiceover the spoken word in media

CERN Document Server

Blakemore, Tom

2015-01-01

The only book on the market to specifically address its audience, Recording Voiceover is the comprehensive guide for engineers looking to understand the aspects of capturing the spoken word.Discussing all phases of the recording session, Recording Voiceover addresses everything from microphone recommendations for voice recording to pre-production considerations, including setting up the studio, working with and directing the voice talent, and strategies for reducing or eliminating distracting noise elements found in human speech.Recording Voiceover features in-depth, specific recommendations f

The influence of talker and foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification.

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Bent, Tessa; Holt, Rachael Frush

2013-03-01

In spoken word identification and memory tasks, stimulus variability from numerous sources impairs performance. In the current study, the influence of foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification was evaluated in two experiments. Experiment 1 used a between-subjects design to test word identification in noise in single-talker and two multiple-talker conditions: multiple talkers with the same accent and multiple talkers with different accents. Identification performance was highest in the single-talker condition, but there was no difference between the single-accent and multiple-accent conditions. Experiment 2 further explored word recognition for multiple talkers in single-accent versus multiple-accent conditions using a mixed design. A detriment to word recognition was observed in the multiple-accent condition compared to the single-accent condition, but the effect differed across the language backgrounds tested. These results demonstrate that the processing of foreign-accent variation may influence word recognition in ways similar to other sources of variability (e.g., speaking rate or style) in that the inclusion of multiple foreign accents can result in a small but significant performance decrement beyond the multiple-talker effect.

Spectrotemporal processing drives fast access to memory traces for spoken words.

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Tavano, A; Grimm, S; Costa-Faidella, J; Slabu, L; Schröger, E; Escera, C

2012-05-01

The Mismatch Negativity (MMN) component of the event-related potentials is generated when a detectable spectrotemporal feature of the incoming sound does not match the sensory model set up by preceding repeated stimuli. MMN is enhanced at frontocentral scalp sites for deviant words when compared to acoustically similar deviant pseudowords, suggesting that automatic access to long-term memory traces for spoken words contributes to MMN generation. Does spectrotemporal feature matching also drive automatic lexical access? To test this, we recorded human auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) to disyllabic spoken words and pseudowords within a passive oddball paradigm. We first aimed at replicating the word-related MMN enhancement effect for Spanish, thereby adding to the available cross-linguistic evidence (e.g., Finnish, English). We then probed its resilience to spectrotemporal perturbation by inserting short (20 ms) and long (120 ms) silent gaps between first and second syllables of deviant and standard stimuli. A significantly enhanced, frontocentrally distributed MMN to deviant words was found for stimuli with no gap. The long gap yielded no deviant word MMN, showing that prior expectations of word form limits in a given language influence deviance detection processes. Crucially, the insertion of a short gap suppressed deviant word MMN enhancement at frontocentral sites. We propose that spectrotemporal point-wise matching constitutes a core mechanism for fast serial computations in audition and language, bridging sensory and long-term memory systems. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Event-related potentials reflecting the frequency of unattended spoken words

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Shtyrov, Yury; Kimppa, Lilli; Pulvermüller, Friedemann

2011-01-01

, in passive non-attend conditions, with acoustically matched high- and low-frequency words along with pseudo-words. Using factorial and correlation analyses, we found that already at ~120 ms after the spoken stimulus information was available, amplitude of brain responses was modulated by the words' lexical...... for the most frequent word stimuli, later-on (~270 ms), a more global lexicality effect with bilateral perisylvian sources was found for all stimuli, suggesting faster access to more frequent lexical entries. Our results support the account of word memory traces as interconnected neuronal circuits, and suggest......How are words represented in the human brain and can these representations be qualitatively assessed with respect to their structure and properties? Recent research demonstrates that neurophysiological signatures of individual words can be measured when subjects do not focus their attention...

Automated Metadata Extraction for Semantic Access to Spoken Word Archives

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Heeren, W.F.L.; van Hessen, Adrianus J.; Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; Nijholt, Antinus; Ruiz Miyares, L.; Alvarez Silva, M.R.

2011-01-01

Archival practice is shifting from the analogue to the digital world. A specific subset of heritage collections that impose interesting challenges for the field of language and speech technology are spoken word archives. Given the enormous backlog at audiovisual archives of unannotated materials and

Working memory affects older adults' use of context in spoken-word recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Janse, Esther; Jesse, Alexandra

2014-01-01

Many older listeners report difficulties in understanding speech in noisy situations. Working memory and other cognitive skills may modulate older listeners' ability to use context information to alleviate the effects of noise on spoken-word recognition. In the present study, we investigated whether verbal working memory predicts older adults' ability to immediately use context information in the recognition of words embedded in sentences, presented in different listening conditions. In a phoneme-monitoring task, older adults were asked to detect as fast and as accurately as possible target phonemes in sentences spoken by a target speaker. Target speech was presented without noise, with fluctuating speech-shaped noise, or with competing speech from a single distractor speaker. The gradient measure of contextual probability (derived from a separate offline rating study) affected the speed of recognition. Contextual facilitation was modulated by older listeners' verbal working memory (measured with a backward digit span task) and age across listening conditions. Working memory and age, as well as hearing loss, were also the most consistent predictors of overall listening performance. Older listeners' immediate benefit from context in spoken-word recognition thus relates to their ability to keep and update a semantic representation of the sentence content in working memory.

Word frequencies in written and spoken English based on the British National Corpus

CERN Document Server

Leech, Geoffrey; Wilson, Andrew (All Of Lancaster University)

2014-01-01

Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English is a landmark volume in the development of vocabulary frequency studies. Whereas previous books have in general given frequency information about the written language only, this book provides information on both speech and writing. It not only gives information about the language as a whole, but also about the differences between spoken and written English, and between different spoken and written varieties of the language. The frequencies are derived from a wide ranging and up-to-date corpus of English: the British Na

L1 and L2 Spoken Word Processing: Evidence from Divided Attention Paradigm.

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Shafiee Nahrkhalaji, Saeedeh; Lotfi, Ahmad Reza; Koosha, Mansour

2016-10-01

The present study aims to reveal some facts concerning first language (L 1 ) and second language (L 2 ) spoken-word processing in unbalanced proficient bilinguals using behavioral measures. The intention here is to examine the effects of auditory repetition word priming and semantic priming in first and second languages of these bilinguals. The other goal is to explore the effects of attention manipulation on implicit retrieval of perceptual and conceptual properties of spoken L 1 and L 2 words. In so doing, the participants performed auditory word priming and semantic priming as memory tests in their L 1 and L 2 . In a half of the trials of each experiment, they carried out the memory test while simultaneously performing a secondary task in visual modality. The results revealed that effects of auditory word priming and semantic priming were present when participants processed L 1 and L 2 words in full attention condition. Attention manipulation could reduce priming magnitude in both experiments in L 2 . Moreover, L 2 word retrieval increases the reaction times and reduces accuracy on the simultaneous secondary task to protect its own accuracy and speed.

Pedagogy for Liberation: Spoken Word Poetry in Urban Schools

Science.gov (United States)

Fiore, Mia

2015-01-01

The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, hip hop of the 1980s and early 1990s, and spoken word poetry have each attempted to initiate the dialogical process outlined by Paulo Freire as necessary in overturning oppression. Each art form has done this by critically engaging with the world and questioning dominant systems of power. However,…

A Prerequisite to L1 Homophone Effects in L2 Spoken-Word Recognition

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Nakai, Satsuki; Lindsay, Shane; Ota, Mitsuhiko

2015-01-01

When both members of a phonemic contrast in L2 (second language) are perceptually mapped to a single phoneme in one's L1 (first language), L2 words containing a member of that contrast can spuriously activate L2 words in spoken-word recognition. For example, upon hearing cattle, Dutch speakers of English are reported to experience activation…

Feature Statistics Modulate the Activation of Meaning during Spoken Word Processing

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Devereux, Barry J.; Taylor, Kirsten I.; Randall, Billi; Geertzen, Jeroen; Tyler, Lorraine K.

2016-01-01

Understanding spoken words involves a rapid mapping from speech to conceptual representations. One distributed feature-based conceptual account assumes that the statistical characteristics of concepts' features--the number of concepts they occur in ("distinctiveness/sharedness") and likelihood of co-occurrence ("correlational…

An fMRI study of concreteness effects in spoken word recognition.

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Roxbury, Tracy; McMahon, Katie; Copland, David A

2014-09-30

Evidence for the brain mechanisms recruited when processing concrete versus abstract concepts has been largely derived from studies employing visual stimuli. The tasks and baseline contrasts used have also involved varying degrees of lexical processing. This study investigated the neural basis of the concreteness effect during spoken word recognition and employed a lexical decision task with a novel pseudoword condition. The participants were seventeen healthy young adults (9 females). The stimuli consisted of (a) concrete, high imageability nouns, (b) abstract, low imageability nouns and (c) opaque legal pseudowords presented in a pseudorandomised, event-related design. Activation for the concrete, abstract and pseudoword conditions was analysed using anatomical regions of interest derived from previous findings of concrete and abstract word processing. Behaviourally, lexical decision reaction times for the concrete condition were significantly faster than both abstract and pseudoword conditions and the abstract condition was significantly faster than the pseudoword condition (p word recognition. Significant activity was also elicited by concrete words relative to pseudowords in the left fusiform and left anterior middle temporal gyrus. These findings confirm the involvement of a widely distributed network of brain regions that are activated in response to the spoken recognition of concrete but not abstract words. Our findings are consistent with the proposal that distinct brain regions are engaged as convergence zones and enable the binding of supramodal input.

An fMRI study of concreteness effects during spoken word recognition in aging. Preservation or attenuation?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tracy eRoxbury

2016-01-01

Full Text Available It is unclear whether healthy aging influences concreteness effects (ie. the processing advantage seen for concrete over abstract words and its associated neural mechanisms. We conducted an fMRI study on young and older healthy adults performing auditory lexical decisions on concrete versus abstract words. We found that spoken comprehension of concrete and abstract words appears relatively preserved for healthy older individuals, including the concreteness effect. This preserved performance was supported by altered activity in left hemisphere regions including the inferior and middle frontal gyri, angular gyrus, and fusiform gyrus. This pattern is consistent with age-related compensatory mechanisms supporting spoken word processing.

Spoken Word Recognition in Adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders and Specific Language Impairment

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Loucas, Tom; Riches, Nick; Baird, Gillian; Pickles, Andrew; Simonoff, Emily; Chandler, Susie; Charman, Tony

2013-01-01

Spoken word recognition, during gating, appears intact in specific language impairment (SLI). This study used gating to investigate the process in adolescents with autism spectrum disorders plus language impairment (ALI). Adolescents with ALI, SLI, and typical language development (TLD), matched on nonverbal IQ listened to gated words that varied…

The Impact of Orthographic Consistency on German Spoken Word Identification

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Beyermann, Sandra; Penke, Martina

2014-01-01

An auditory lexical decision experiment was conducted to find out whether sound-to-spelling consistency has an impact on German spoken word processing, and whether such an impact is different at different stages of reading development. Four groups of readers (school children in the second, third and fifth grades, and university students)…

Suprasegmental lexical stress cues in visual speech can guide spoken-word recognition.

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Jesse, Alexandra; McQueen, James M

2014-01-01

Visual cues to the individual segments of speech and to sentence prosody guide speech recognition. The present study tested whether visual suprasegmental cues to the stress patterns of words can also constrain recognition. Dutch listeners use acoustic suprasegmental cues to lexical stress (changes in duration, amplitude, and pitch) in spoken-word recognition. We asked here whether they can also use visual suprasegmental cues. In two categorization experiments, Dutch participants saw a speaker say fragments of word pairs that were segmentally identical but differed in their stress realization (e.g., 'ca-vi from cavia "guinea pig" vs. 'ka-vi from kaviaar "caviar"). Participants were able to distinguish between these pairs from seeing a speaker alone. Only the presence of primary stress in the fragment, not its absence, was informative. Participants were able to distinguish visually primary from secondary stress on first syllables, but only when the fragment-bearing target word carried phrase-level emphasis. Furthermore, participants distinguished fragments with primary stress on their second syllable from those with secondary stress on their first syllable (e.g., pro-'jec from projector "projector" vs. 'pro-jec from projectiel "projectile"), independently of phrase-level emphasis. Seeing a speaker thus contributes to spoken-word recognition by providing suprasegmental information about the presence of primary lexical stress.

The socially-weighted encoding of spoken words: A dual-route approach to speech perception

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Meghan eSumner

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Spoken words are highly variable. A single word may never be uttered the same way twice. As listeners, we regularly encounter speakers of different ages, genders, and accents, increasing the amount of variation we face. How listeners understand spoken words as quickly and adeptly as they do despite this variation remains an issue central to linguistic theory. We propose that learned acoustic patterns are mapped simultaneously to linguistic representations and to social representations. In doing so, we illuminate a paradox that results in the literature from, we argue, the focus on representations and the peripheral treatment of word-level phonetic variation. We consider phonetic variation more fully and highlight a growing body of work that is problematic for current theory: Words with different pronunciation variants are recognized equally well in immediate processing tasks, while an atypical, infrequent, but socially-idealized form is remembered better in the long-term. We suggest that the perception of spoken words is socially-weighted, resulting in sparse, but high-resolution clusters of socially-idealized episodes that are robust in immediate processing and are more strongly encoded, predicting memory inequality. Our proposal includes a dual-route approach to speech perception in which listeners map acoustic patterns in speech to linguistic and social representations in tandem. This approach makes novel predictions about the extraction of information from the speech signal, and provides a framework with which we can ask new questions. We propose that language comprehension, broadly, results from the integration of both linguistic and social information.

The socially weighted encoding of spoken words: a dual-route approach to speech perception.

Science.gov (United States)

Sumner, Meghan; Kim, Seung Kyung; King, Ed; McGowan, Kevin B

2013-01-01

Spoken words are highly variable. A single word may never be uttered the same way twice. As listeners, we regularly encounter speakers of different ages, genders, and accents, increasing the amount of variation we face. How listeners understand spoken words as quickly and adeptly as they do despite this variation remains an issue central to linguistic theory. We propose that learned acoustic patterns are mapped simultaneously to linguistic representations and to social representations. In doing so, we illuminate a paradox that results in the literature from, we argue, the focus on representations and the peripheral treatment of word-level phonetic variation. We consider phonetic variation more fully and highlight a growing body of work that is problematic for current theory: words with different pronunciation variants are recognized equally well in immediate processing tasks, while an atypical, infrequent, but socially idealized form is remembered better in the long-term. We suggest that the perception of spoken words is socially weighted, resulting in sparse, but high-resolution clusters of socially idealized episodes that are robust in immediate processing and are more strongly encoded, predicting memory inequality. Our proposal includes a dual-route approach to speech perception in which listeners map acoustic patterns in speech to linguistic and social representations in tandem. This approach makes novel predictions about the extraction of information from the speech signal, and provides a framework with which we can ask new questions. We propose that language comprehension, broadly, results from the integration of both linguistic and social information.

Effects of lexical competition on immediate memory span for spoken words.

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Goh, Winston D; Pisoni, David B

2003-08-01

Current theories and models of the structural organization of verbal short-term memory are primarily based on evidence obtained from manipulations of features inherent in the short-term traces of the presented stimuli, such as phonological similarity. In the present study, we investigated whether properties of the stimuli that are not inherent in the short-term traces of spoken words would affect performance in an immediate memory span task. We studied the lexical neighbourhood properties of the stimulus items, which are based on the structure and organization of words in the mental lexicon. The experiments manipulated lexical competition by varying the phonological neighbourhood structure (i.e., neighbourhood density and neighbourhood frequency) of the words on a test list while controlling for word frequency and intra-set phonological similarity (family size). Immediate memory span for spoken words was measured under repeated and nonrepeated sampling procedures. The results demonstrated that lexical competition only emerged when a nonrepeated sampling procedure was used and the participants had to access new words from their lexicons. These findings were not dependent on individual differences in short-term memory capacity. Additional results showed that the lexical competition effects did not interact with proactive interference. Analyses of error patterns indicated that item-type errors, but not positional errors, were influenced by the lexical attributes of the stimulus items. These results complement and extend previous findings that have argued for separate contributions of long-term knowledge and short-term memory rehearsal processes in immediate verbal serial recall tasks.

"Context and Spoken Word Recognition in a Novel Lexicon": Correction

Science.gov (United States)

Revill, Kathleen Pirog; Tanenhaus, Michael K.; Aslin, Richard N.

2009-01-01

Reports an error in "Context and spoken word recognition in a novel lexicon" by Kathleen Pirog Revill, Michael K. Tanenhaus and Richard N. Aslin ("Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition," 2008[Sep], Vol 34[5], 1207-1223). Figure 9 was inadvertently duplicated as Figure 10. Figure 9 in the original article was correct.…

The interaction of lexical semantics and cohort competition in spoken word recognition: an fMRI study.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhuang, Jie; Randall, Billi; Stamatakis, Emmanuel A; Marslen-Wilson, William D; Tyler, Lorraine K

2011-12-01

Spoken word recognition involves the activation of multiple word candidates on the basis of the initial speech input--the "cohort"--and selection among these competitors. Selection may be driven primarily by bottom-up acoustic-phonetic inputs or it may be modulated by other aspects of lexical representation, such as a word's meaning [Marslen-Wilson, W. D. Functional parallelism in spoken word-recognition. Cognition, 25, 71-102, 1987]. We examined these potential interactions in an fMRI study by presenting participants with words and pseudowords for lexical decision. In a factorial design, we manipulated (a) cohort competition (high/low competitive cohorts which vary the number of competing word candidates) and (b) the word's semantic properties (high/low imageability). A previous behavioral study [Tyler, L. K., Voice, J. K., & Moss, H. E. The interaction of meaning and sound in spoken word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 7, 320-326, 2000] showed that imageability facilitated word recognition but only for words in high competition cohorts. Here we found greater activity in the left inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45, 47) and the right inferior frontal gyrus (BA 47) with increased cohort competition, an imageability effect in the left posterior middle temporal gyrus/angular gyrus (BA 39), and a significant interaction between imageability and cohort competition in the left posterior superior temporal gyrus/middle temporal gyrus (BA 21, 22). In words with high competition cohorts, high imageability words generated stronger activity than low imageability words, indicating a facilitatory role of imageability in a highly competitive cohort context. For words in low competition cohorts, there was no effect of imageability. These results support the behavioral data in showing that selection processes do not rely solely on bottom-up acoustic-phonetic cues but rather that the semantic properties of candidate words facilitate discrimination between competitors.

Learning and Consolidation of New Spoken Words in Autism Spectrum Disorder

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Henderson, Lisa; Powell, Anna; Gaskell, M. Gareth; Norbury, Courtenay

2014-01-01

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by rich heterogeneity in vocabulary knowledge and word knowledge that is not well accounted for by current cognitive theories. This study examines whether individual differences in vocabulary knowledge in ASD might be partly explained by a difficulty with consolidating newly learned spoken words…

Task modulation of disyllabic spoken word recognition in Mandarin Chinese: a unimodal ERP study.

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, Xianjun; Yang, Jin-Chen; Chang, Ruohan; Guo, Chunyan

2016-05-16

Using unimodal auditory tasks of word-matching and meaning-matching, this study investigated how the phonological and semantic processes in Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition are modulated by top-down mechanism induced by experimental tasks. Both semantic similarity and word-initial phonological similarity between the primes and targets were manipulated. Results showed that at early stage of recognition (~150-250 ms), an enhanced P2 was elicited by the word-initial phonological mismatch in both tasks. In ~300-500 ms, a fronto-central negative component was elicited by word-initial phonological similarities in the word-matching task, while a parietal negativity was elicited by semantically unrelated primes in the meaning-matching task, indicating that both the semantic and phonological processes can be involved in this time window, depending on the task requirements. In the late stage (~500-700 ms), a centro-parietal Late N400 was elicited in both tasks, but with a larger effect in the meaning-matching task than in the word-matching task. This finding suggests that the semantic representation of the spoken words can be activated automatically in the late stage of recognition, even when semantic processing is not required. However, the magnitude of the semantic activation is modulated by task requirements.

Sound specificity effects in spoken word recognition: The effect of integrality between words and sounds

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Strori, Dorina; Zaar, Johannes; Cooke, Martin

2017-01-01

Recent evidence has shown that nonlinguistic sounds co-occurring with spoken words may be retained in memory and affect later retrieval of the words. This sound-specificity effect shares many characteristics with the classic voice-specificity effect. In this study, we argue that the sound......-specificity effect is conditional upon the context in which the word and sound coexist. Specifically, we argue that, besides co-occurrence, integrality between words and sounds is a crucial factor in the emergence of the effect. In two recognition-memory experiments, we compared the emergence of voice and sound...... from a mere co-occurrence context effect by removing the intensity modulation. The absence of integrality led to the disappearance of the sound-specificity effect. Taken together, the results suggest that the assimilation of background sounds into memory cannot be reduced to a simple context effect...

Suprasegmental lexical stress cues in visual speech can guide spoken-word recognition

OpenAIRE

Jesse, A.; McQueen, J.

2014-01-01

Visual cues to the individual segments of speech and to sentence prosody guide speech recognition. The present study tested whether visual suprasegmental cues to the stress patterns of words can also constrain recognition. Dutch listeners use acoustic suprasegmental cues to lexical stress (changes in duration, amplitude, and pitch) in spoken-word recognition. We asked here whether they can also use visual suprasegmental cues. In two categorization experiments, Dutch participants saw a speaker...

Neural dynamics of morphological processing in spoken word comprehension: Laterality and automaticity

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Caroline M. Whiting

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Rapid and automatic processing of grammatical complexity is argued to take place during speech comprehension, engaging a left-lateralised fronto-temporal language network. Here we address how neural activity in these regions is modulated by the grammatical properties of spoken words. We used combined magneto- and electroencephalography (MEG, EEG to delineate the spatiotemporal patterns of activity that support the recognition of morphologically complex words in English with inflectional (-s and derivational (-er affixes (e.g. bakes, baker. The mismatch negativity (MMN, an index of linguistic memory traces elicited in a passive listening paradigm, was used to examine the neural dynamics elicited by morphologically complex words. Results revealed an initial peak 130-180 ms after the deviation point with a major source in left superior temporal cortex. The localisation of this early activation showed a sensitivity to two grammatical properties of the stimuli: 1 the presence of morphological complexity, with affixed words showing increased left-laterality compared to non-affixed words; and 2 the grammatical category, with affixed verbs showing greater left-lateralisation in inferior frontal gyrus compared to affixed nouns (bakes vs. beaks. This automatic brain response was additionally sensitive to semantic coherence (the meaning of the stem vs. the meaning of the whole form in fronto-temporal regions. These results demonstrate that the spatiotemporal pattern of neural activity in spoken word processing is modulated by the presence of morphological structure, predominantly engaging the left-hemisphere’s fronto-temporal language network, and does not require focused attention on the linguistic input.

Development of lexical-semantic language system: N400 priming effect for spoken words in 18- and 24-month old children.

Science.gov (United States)

Rämä, Pia; Sirri, Louah; Serres, Josette

2013-04-01

Our aim was to investigate whether developing language system, as measured by a priming task for spoken words, is organized by semantic categories. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a priming task for spoken words in 18- and 24-month-old monolingual French learning children. Spoken word pairs were either semantically related (e.g., train-bike) or unrelated (e.g., chicken-bike). The results showed that the N400-like priming effect occurred in 24-month-olds over the right parietal-occipital recording sites. In 18-month-olds the effect was observed similarly to 24-month-olds only in those children with higher word production ability. The results suggest that words are categorically organized in the mental lexicon of children at the age of 2 years and even earlier in children with a high vocabulary. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The gender congruency effect during bilingual spoken-word recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Morales, Luis; Paolieri, Daniela; Dussias, Paola E.; Valdés kroff, Jorge R.; Gerfen, Chip; Bajo, María Teresa

2016-01-01

We investigate the ‘gender-congruency’ effect during a spoken-word recognition task using the visual world paradigm. Eye movements of Italian–Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals were monitored while they viewed a pair of objects on a computer screen. Participants listened to instructions in Spanish (encuentra la bufanda / ‘find the scarf’) and clicked on the object named in the instruction. Grammatical gender of the objects’ name was manipulated so that pairs of objects had the same (congruent) or different (incongruent) gender in Italian, but gender in Spanish was always congruent. Results showed that bilinguals, but not monolinguals, looked at target objects less when they were incongruent in gender, suggesting a between-language gender competition effect. In addition, bilinguals looked at target objects more when the definite article in the spoken instructions provided a valid cue to anticipate its selection (different-gender condition). The temporal dynamics of gender processing and cross-language activation in bilinguals are discussed. PMID:28018132

Children's Spoken Word Recognition and Contributions to Phonological Awareness and Nonword Repetition: A 1-Year Follow-Up

Science.gov (United States)

Metsala, Jamie L.; Stavrinos, Despina; Walley, Amanda C.

2009-01-01

This study examined effects of lexical factors on children's spoken word recognition across a 1-year time span, and contributions to phonological awareness and nonword repetition. Across the year, children identified words based on less input on a speech-gating task. For word repetition, older children improved for the most familiar words. There…

L[subscript 1] and L[subscript 2] Spoken Word Processing: Evidence from Divided Attention Paradigm

Science.gov (United States)

Shafiee Nahrkhalaji, Saeedeh; Lotfi, Ahmad Reza; Koosha, Mansour

2016-01-01

The present study aims to reveal some facts concerning first language (L[subscript 1]) and second language (L[subscript 2]) spoken-word processing in unbalanced proficient bilinguals using behavioral measures. The intention here is to examine the effects of auditory repetition word priming and semantic priming in first and second languages of…

The Effects of Listener's Familiarity about a Talker on the Free Recall Task of Spoken Words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chikako Oda

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Several recent studies have examined an interaction between talker's acoustic characteristics and spoken word recognition in speech perception and have shown that listener's familiarity about a talker influences an easiness of spoken word processing. The present study examined the effect of listener's familiarity about talkers on the free recall task of words spoken by two talkers. Subjects participated in three conditions of the task: the listener has (1 explicit knowledge, (2 implicit knowledge, and (3 no knowledge of the talker. In condition (1, subjects were familiar with talker's voices and were initially informed whose voices they would hear. In condition (2, subjects were familiar with talkers' voices but were not informed whose voices they would hear. In condition (3, subjects were entirely unfamiliar with talker's voices and were not informed whose voices they would hear. We analyzed the percentage of correct answers and compared these results across three conditions. We will discuss the possibility of whether a listener's knowledge about the individual talker's acoustic characteristics stored in long term memory could reduce the quantity of the cognitive resources required in the verbal information processing.

Development and Relationships Between Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness and Word Reading in Spoken and Standard Arabic

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Rachel Schiff

2018-04-01

Full Text Available This study addressed the development of and the relationship between foundational metalinguistic skills and word reading skills in Arabic. It compared Arabic-speaking children’s phonological awareness (PA, morphological awareness, and voweled and unvoweled word reading skills in spoken and standard language varieties separately in children across five grade levels from childhood to adolescence. Second, it investigated whether skills developed in the spoken variety of Arabic predict reading in the standard variety. Results indicate that although individual differences between students in PA are eliminated toward the end of elementary school in both spoken and standard language varieties, gaps in morphological awareness and in reading skills persisted through junior and high school years. The results also show that the gap in reading accuracy and fluency between Spoken Arabic (SpA and Standard Arabic (StA was evident in both voweled and unvoweled words. Finally, regression analyses showed that morphological awareness in SpA contributed to reading fluency in StA, i.e., children’s early morphological awareness in SpA explained variance in children’s gains in reading fluency in StA. These findings have important theoretical and practical contributions for Arabic reading theory in general and they extend the previous work regarding the cross-linguistic relevance of foundational metalinguistic skills in the first acquired language to reading in a second language, as in societal bilingualism contexts, or a second language variety, as in diglossic contexts.

Development and Relationships Between Phonological Awareness, Morphological Awareness and Word Reading in Spoken and Standard Arabic

Science.gov (United States)

Schiff, Rachel; Saiegh-Haddad, Elinor

2018-01-01

This study addressed the development of and the relationship between foundational metalinguistic skills and word reading skills in Arabic. It compared Arabic-speaking children’s phonological awareness (PA), morphological awareness, and voweled and unvoweled word reading skills in spoken and standard language varieties separately in children across five grade levels from childhood to adolescence. Second, it investigated whether skills developed in the spoken variety of Arabic predict reading in the standard variety. Results indicate that although individual differences between students in PA are eliminated toward the end of elementary school in both spoken and standard language varieties, gaps in morphological awareness and in reading skills persisted through junior and high school years. The results also show that the gap in reading accuracy and fluency between Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standard Arabic (StA) was evident in both voweled and unvoweled words. Finally, regression analyses showed that morphological awareness in SpA contributed to reading fluency in StA, i.e., children’s early morphological awareness in SpA explained variance in children’s gains in reading fluency in StA. These findings have important theoretical and practical contributions for Arabic reading theory in general and they extend the previous work regarding the cross-linguistic relevance of foundational metalinguistic skills in the first acquired language to reading in a second language, as in societal bilingualism contexts, or a second language variety, as in diglossic contexts. PMID:29686633

Stimulus variability and the phonetic relevance hypothesis: effects of variability in speaking style, fundamental frequency, and speaking rate on spoken word identification.

Science.gov (United States)

Sommers, Mitchell S; Barcroft, Joe

2006-04-01

Three experiments were conducted to examine the effects of trial-to-trial variations in speaking style, fundamental frequency, and speaking rate on identification of spoken words. In addition, the experiments investigated whether any effects of stimulus variability would be modulated by phonetic confusability (i.e., lexical difficulty). In Experiment 1, trial-to-trial variations in speaking style reduced the overall identification performance compared with conditions containing no speaking-style variability. In addition, the effects of variability were greater for phonetically confusable words than for phonetically distinct words. In Experiment 2, variations in fundamental frequency were found to have no significant effects on spoken word identification and did not interact with lexical difficulty. In Experiment 3, two different methods for varying speaking rate were found to have equivalent negative effects on spoken word recognition and similar interactions with lexical difficulty. Overall, the findings are consistent with a phonetic-relevance hypothesis, in which accommodating sources of acoustic-phonetic variability that affect phonetically relevant properties of speech signals can impair spoken word identification. In contrast, variability in parameters of the speech signal that do not affect phonetically relevant properties are not expected to affect overall identification performance. Implications of these findings for the nature and development of lexical representations are discussed.

V2 word order in subordinate clauses in spoken Danish

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jensen, Torben Juel; Christensen, Tanya Karoli

are asymmetrically distributed, we argue that the word order difference should rather be seen as a signal of (subtle) semantic differences. In main clauses, V3 is highly marked in comparison to V2, and occurs in what may be called emotives. In subordinate clauses, V2 is marked and signals what has been called...... ”assertiveness”, but is rather a question of foregrounding (cf. Simons 2007: Main Point of Utterance). The paper presents the results of a study of word order in subordinate clauses in contemporary spoken Danish and focuses on how to include the proposed semantic difference as a factor influencing the choice...... studies of two age cohorts of speakers in Copenhagen, recorded in the 1980s and again in 2005-07, and on recent recordings with two age cohorts of speakers from the western part of Jutland. This makes it possible to study variation and change with respect to word order in subordinate clauses in both real...

Long-term temporal tracking of speech rate affects spoken-word recognition.

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Baese-Berk, Melissa M; Heffner, Christopher C; Dilley, Laura C; Pitt, Mark A; Morrill, Tuuli H; McAuley, J Devin

2014-08-01

Humans unconsciously track a wide array of distributional characteristics in their sensory environment. Recent research in spoken-language processing has demonstrated that the speech rate surrounding a target region within an utterance influences which words, and how many words, listeners hear later in that utterance. On the basis of hypotheses that listeners track timing information in speech over long timescales, we investigated the possibility that the perception of words is sensitive to speech rate over such a timescale (e.g., an extended conversation). Results demonstrated that listeners tracked variation in the overall pace of speech over an extended duration (analogous to that of a conversation that listeners might have outside the lab) and that this global speech rate influenced which words listeners reported hearing. The effects of speech rate became stronger over time. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that neural entrainment by speech occurs on multiple timescales, some lasting more than an hour. © The Author(s) 2014.

Intentional and Reactive Inhibition during Spoken-Word Stroop Task Performance in People with Aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Pompon, Rebecca Hunting; McNeil, Malcolm R.; Spencer, Kristie A.; Kendall, Diane L.

2015-01-01

Purpose: The integrity of selective attention in people with aphasia (PWA) is currently unknown. Selective attention is essential for everyday communication, and inhibition is an important part of selective attention. This study explored components of inhibition--both intentional and reactive inhibition--during spoken-word production in PWA and in…

Interaction in Spoken Word Recognition Models: Feedback Helps

Science.gov (United States)

Magnuson, James S.; Mirman, Daniel; Luthra, Sahil; Strauss, Ted; Harris, Harlan D.

2018-01-01

Human perception, cognition, and action requires fast integration of bottom-up signals with top-down knowledge and context. A key theoretical perspective in cognitive science is the interactive activation hypothesis: forward and backward flow in bidirectionally connected neural networks allows humans and other biological systems to approximate optimal integration of bottom-up and top-down information under real-world constraints. An alternative view is that online feedback is neither necessary nor helpful; purely feed forward alternatives can be constructed for any feedback system, and online feedback could not improve processing and would preclude veridical perception. In the domain of spoken word recognition, the latter view was apparently supported by simulations using the interactive activation model, TRACE, with and without feedback: as many words were recognized more quickly without feedback as were recognized faster with feedback, However, these simulations used only a small set of words and did not address a primary motivation for interaction: making a model robust in noise. We conducted simulations using hundreds of words, and found that the majority were recognized more quickly with feedback than without. More importantly, as we added noise to inputs, accuracy and recognition times were better with feedback than without. We follow these simulations with a critical review of recent arguments that online feedback in interactive activation models like TRACE is distinct from other potentially helpful forms of feedback. We conclude that in addition to providing the benefits demonstrated in our simulations, online feedback provides a plausible means of implementing putatively distinct forms of feedback, supporting the interactive activation hypothesis. PMID:29666593

Interaction in Spoken Word Recognition Models: Feedback Helps.

Science.gov (United States)

Magnuson, James S; Mirman, Daniel; Luthra, Sahil; Strauss, Ted; Harris, Harlan D

2018-01-01

Human perception, cognition, and action requires fast integration of bottom-up signals with top-down knowledge and context. A key theoretical perspective in cognitive science is the interactive activation hypothesis: forward and backward flow in bidirectionally connected neural networks allows humans and other biological systems to approximate optimal integration of bottom-up and top-down information under real-world constraints. An alternative view is that online feedback is neither necessary nor helpful; purely feed forward alternatives can be constructed for any feedback system, and online feedback could not improve processing and would preclude veridical perception. In the domain of spoken word recognition, the latter view was apparently supported by simulations using the interactive activation model, TRACE, with and without feedback: as many words were recognized more quickly without feedback as were recognized faster with feedback, However, these simulations used only a small set of words and did not address a primary motivation for interaction: making a model robust in noise. We conducted simulations using hundreds of words, and found that the majority were recognized more quickly with feedback than without. More importantly, as we added noise to inputs, accuracy and recognition times were better with feedback than without. We follow these simulations with a critical review of recent arguments that online feedback in interactive activation models like TRACE is distinct from other potentially helpful forms of feedback. We conclude that in addition to providing the benefits demonstrated in our simulations, online feedback provides a plausible means of implementing putatively distinct forms of feedback, supporting the interactive activation hypothesis.

Interaction in Spoken Word Recognition Models: Feedback Helps

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

James S. Magnuson

2018-04-01

Full Text Available Human perception, cognition, and action requires fast integration of bottom-up signals with top-down knowledge and context. A key theoretical perspective in cognitive science is the interactive activation hypothesis: forward and backward flow in bidirectionally connected neural networks allows humans and other biological systems to approximate optimal integration of bottom-up and top-down information under real-world constraints. An alternative view is that online feedback is neither necessary nor helpful; purely feed forward alternatives can be constructed for any feedback system, and online feedback could not improve processing and would preclude veridical perception. In the domain of spoken word recognition, the latter view was apparently supported by simulations using the interactive activation model, TRACE, with and without feedback: as many words were recognized more quickly without feedback as were recognized faster with feedback, However, these simulations used only a small set of words and did not address a primary motivation for interaction: making a model robust in noise. We conducted simulations using hundreds of words, and found that the majority were recognized more quickly with feedback than without. More importantly, as we added noise to inputs, accuracy and recognition times were better with feedback than without. We follow these simulations with a critical review of recent arguments that online feedback in interactive activation models like TRACE is distinct from other potentially helpful forms of feedback. We conclude that in addition to providing the benefits demonstrated in our simulations, online feedback provides a plausible means of implementing putatively distinct forms of feedback, supporting the interactive activation hypothesis.

The influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation in spoken word production.

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Li, Chuchu; Wang, Min

2017-08-01

Three sets of experiments using the picture naming tasks with the form preparation paradigm investigated the influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation unit in spoken word production in native Mandarin-speaking children. Participants included kindergarten children who have not received formal literacy instruction, Grade 1 children who are comparatively more exposed to the alphabetic pinyin system and have very limited Chinese character knowledge, Grades 2 and 4 children who have better character knowledge and more exposure to characters, and skilled adult readers who have the most advanced character knowledge and most exposure to characters. Only Grade 1 children showed the form preparation effect in the same initial consonant condition (i.e., when a list of target words shared the initial consonant). Both Grade 4 children and adults showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable (but not tone) among target words was shared. Kindergartners and Grade 2 children only showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable including tonal information was shared. These developmental changes in phonological preparation could be interpreted as a joint function of the modification of phonological representation and attentional shift. Extensive pinyin experience encourages speakers to attend to and select onset phoneme in phonological preparation, whereas extensive character experience encourages speakers to prepare spoken words in syllables.

Young toddlers' word comprehension is flexible and efficient.

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Elika Bergelson

Full Text Available Much of what is known about word recognition in toddlers comes from eyetracking studies. Here we show that the speed and facility with which children recognize words, as revealed in such studies, cannot be attributed to a task-specific, closed-set strategy; rather, children's gaze to referents of spoken nouns reflects successful search of the lexicon. Toddlers' spoken word comprehension was examined in the context of pictures that had two possible names (such as a cup of juice which could be called "cup" or "juice" and pictures that had only one likely name for toddlers (such as "apple", using a visual world eye-tracking task and a picture-labeling task (n = 77, mean age, 21 months. Toddlers were just as fast and accurate in fixating named pictures with two likely names as pictures with one. If toddlers do name pictures to themselves, the name provides no apparent benefit in word recognition, because there is no cost to understanding an alternative lexical construal of the picture. In toddlers, as in adults, spoken words rapidly evoke their referents.

Assessing spoken word recognition in children who are deaf or hard of hearing: A translational approach

OpenAIRE

Kirk, Karen Iler; Prusick, Lindsay; French, Brian; Gotch, Chad; Eisenberg, Laurie S.; Young, Nancy

2012-01-01

Under natural conditions, listeners use both auditory and visual speech cues to extract meaning from speech signals containing many sources of variability. However, traditional clinical tests of spoken word recognition routinely employ isolated words or sentences produced by a single talker in an auditory-only presentation format. The more central cognitive processes used during multimodal integration, perceptual normalization and lexical discrimination that may contribute to individual varia...

The role of grammatical category information in spoken word retrieval.

Science.gov (United States)

Duràn, Carolina Palma; Pillon, Agnesa

2011-01-01

We investigated the role of lexical syntactic information such as grammatical gender and category in spoken word retrieval processes by using a blocking paradigm in picture and written word naming experiments. In Experiments 1, 3, and 4, we found that the naming of target words (nouns) from pictures or written words was faster when these target words were named within a list where only words from the same grammatical category had to be produced (homogeneous category list: all nouns) than when they had to be produced within a list comprising also words from another grammatical category (heterogeneous category list: nouns and verbs). On the other hand, we detected no significant facilitation effect when the target words had to be named within a homogeneous gender list (all masculine nouns) compared to a heterogeneous gender list (both masculine and feminine nouns). In Experiment 2, using the same blocking paradigm by manipulating the semantic category of the items, we found that naming latencies were significantly slower in the semantic category homogeneous in comparison with the semantic category heterogeneous condition. Thus semantic category homogeneity caused an interference, not a facilitation effect like grammatical category homogeneity. Finally, in Experiment 5, nouns in the heterogeneous category condition had to be named just after a verb (category-switching position) or a noun (same-category position). We found a facilitation effect of category homogeneity but no significant effect of position, which showed that the effect of category homogeneity found in Experiments 1, 3, and 4 was not due to a cost of switching between grammatical categories in the heterogeneous grammatical category list. These findings supported the hypothesis that grammatical category information impacts word retrieval processes in speech production, even when words are to be produced in isolation. They are discussed within the context of extant theories of lexical production.

Long-term memory traces for familiar spoken words in tonal languages as revealed by the Mismatch Negativity

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Naiphinich Kotchabhakdi

2004-11-01

Full Text Available Mismatch negativity (MMN, a primary response to an acoustic change and an index of sensory memory, was used to investigate the processing of the discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar Consonant-Vowel (CV speech contrasts. The MMN was elicited by rare familiar words presented among repetitive unfamiliar words. Phonetic and phonological contrasts were identical in all conditions. MMN elicited by the familiar word deviant was larger than that elicited by the unfamiliar word deviant. The presence of syllable contrast did significantly alter the word-elicited MMN in amplitude and scalp voltage field distribution. Thus, our results indicate the existence of word-related MMN enhancement largely independent of the word status of the standard stimulus. This enhancement may reflect the presence of a longterm memory trace for familiar spoken words in tonal languages.

Development of brain networks involved in spoken word processing of Mandarin Chinese.

Science.gov (United States)

Cao, Fan; Khalid, Kainat; Lee, Rebecca; Brennan, Christine; Yang, Yanhui; Li, Kuncheng; Bolger, Donald J; Booth, James R

2011-08-01

Developmental differences in phonological and orthographic processing of Chinese spoken words were examined in 9-year-olds, 11-year-olds and adults using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Rhyming and spelling judgments were made to two-character words presented sequentially in the auditory modality. Developmental comparisons between adults and both groups of children combined showed that age-related changes in activation in visuo-orthographic regions depended on a task. There were developmental increases in the left inferior temporal gyrus and the right inferior occipital gyrus in the spelling task, suggesting more extensive visuo-orthographic processing in a task that required access to these representations. Conversely, there were developmental decreases in activation in the left fusiform gyrus and left middle occipital gyrus in the rhyming task, suggesting that the development of reading is marked by reduced involvement of orthography in a spoken language task that does not require access to these orthographic representations. Developmental decreases may arise from the existence of extensive homophony (auditory words that have multiple spellings) in Chinese. In addition, we found that 11-year-olds and adults showed similar activation in the left superior temporal gyrus across tasks, with both groups showing greater activation than 9-year-olds. This pattern suggests early development of perceptual representations of phonology. In contrast, 11-year-olds and 9-year-olds showed similar activation in the left inferior frontal gyrus across tasks, with both groups showing weaker activation than adults. This pattern suggests late development of controlled retrieval and selection of lexical representations. Altogether, this study suggests differential effects of character acquisition on development of components of the language network in Chinese as compared to previous reports on alphabetic languages. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The role of visual representations during the lexical access of spoken words.

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis, Gwyneth; Poeppel, David

2014-07-01

Do visual representations contribute to spoken word recognition? We examine, using MEG, the effects of sublexical and lexical variables at superior temporal (ST) areas and the posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG) compared with that of word imageability at visual cortices. Embodied accounts predict early modulation of visual areas by imageability--concurrently with or prior to modulation of pMTG by lexical variables. Participants responded to speech stimuli varying continuously in imageability during lexical decision with simultaneous MEG recording. We employed the linguistic variables in a new type of correlational time course analysis to assess trial-by-trial activation in occipital, ST, and pMTG regions of interest (ROIs). The linguistic variables modulated the ROIs during different time windows. Critically, visual regions reflected an imageability effect prior to effects of lexicality on pMTG. This surprising effect supports a view on which sensory aspects of a lexical item are not a consequence of lexical activation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Iconic Factors and Language Word Order

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Moeser, Shannon Dawn

1975-01-01

College students were presented with an artificial language in which spoken nonsense words were correlated with visual references. Inferences regarding vocabulary acquisition were drawn, and it was suggested that the processing of the language was mediated through a semantic memory system. (CK)

Competition between multiple words for a referent in cross-situational word learning

Science.gov (United States)

Benitez, Viridiana L.; Yurovsky, Daniel; Smith, Linda B.

2016-01-01

Three experiments investigated competition between word-object pairings in a cross-situational word-learning paradigm. Adults were presented with One-Word pairings, where a single word labeled a single object, and Two-Word pairings, where two words labeled a single object. In addition to measuring learning of these two pairing types, we measured competition between words that refer to the same object. When the word-object co-occurrences were presented intermixed in training (Experiment 1), we found evidence for direct competition between words that label the same referent. Separating the two words for an object in time eliminated any evidence for this competition (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrated that adding a linguistic cue to the second label for a referent led to different competition effects between adults who self-reported different language learning histories, suggesting both distinctiveness and language learning history affect competition. Finally, in all experiments, competition effects were unrelated to participants’ explicit judgments of learning, suggesting that competition reflects the operating characteristics of implicit learning processes. Together, these results demonstrate that the role of competition between overlapping associations in statistical word-referent learning depends on time, the distinctiveness of word-object pairings, and language learning history. PMID:27087742

Audiovisual spoken word recognition as a clinical criterion for sensory aids efficiency in Persian-language children with hearing loss.

Science.gov (United States)

Oryadi-Zanjani, Mohammad Majid; Vahab, Maryam; Bazrafkan, Mozhdeh; Haghjoo, Asghar

2015-12-01

The aim of this study was to examine the role of audiovisual speech recognition as a clinical criterion of cochlear implant or hearing aid efficiency in Persian-language children with severe-to-profound hearing loss. This research was administered as a cross-sectional study. The sample size was 60 Persian 5-7 year old children. The assessment tool was one of subtests of Persian version of the Test of Language Development-Primary 3. The study included two experiments: auditory-only and audiovisual presentation conditions. The test was a closed-set including 30 words which were orally presented by a speech-language pathologist. The scores of audiovisual word perception were significantly higher than auditory-only condition in the children with normal hearing (Paudiovisual presentation conditions (P>0.05). The audiovisual spoken word recognition can be applied as a clinical criterion to assess the children with severe to profound hearing loss in order to find whether cochlear implant or hearing aid has been efficient for them or not; i.e. if a child with hearing impairment who using CI or HA can obtain higher scores in audiovisual spoken word recognition than auditory-only condition, his/her auditory skills have appropriately developed due to effective CI or HA as one of the main factors of auditory habilitation. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Tone of voice guides word learning in informative referential contexts.

Science.gov (United States)

Reinisch, Eva; Jesse, Alexandra; Nygaard, Lynne C

2013-06-01

Listeners infer which object in a visual scene a speaker refers to from the systematic variation of the speaker's tone of voice (ToV). We examined whether ToV also guides word learning. During exposure, participants heard novel adjectives (e.g., "daxen") spoken with a ToV representing hot, cold, strong, weak, big, or small while viewing picture pairs representing the meaning of the adjective and its antonym (e.g., elephant-ant for big-small). Eye fixations were recorded to monitor referent detection and learning. During test, participants heard the adjectives spoken with a neutral ToV, while selecting referents from familiar and unfamiliar picture pairs. Participants were able to learn the adjectives' meanings, and, even in the absence of informative ToV, generalize them to new referents. A second experiment addressed whether ToV provides sufficient information to infer the adjectival meaning or needs to operate within a referential context providing information about the relevant semantic dimension. Participants who saw printed versions of the novel words during exposure performed at chance during test. ToV, in conjunction with the referential context, thus serves as a cue to word meaning. ToV establishes relations between labels and referents for listeners to exploit in word learning.

Pointing and Reference in Sign Language and Spoken Language: Anchoring vs. Identifying

Science.gov (United States)

Barberà, Gemma; Zwets, Martine

2013-01-01

In both signed and spoken languages, pointing serves to direct an addressee's attention to a particular entity. This entity may be either present or absent in the physical context of the conversation. In this article we focus on pointing directed to nonspeaker/nonaddressee referents in Sign Language of the Netherlands (Nederlandse Gebarentaal,…

The influence of spelling on phonological encoding in word reading, object naming, and word generation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Roelofs, A.P.A.

2006-01-01

Does the spelling of a word mandatorily constrain spoken word production, or does it do so only when spelling is relevant for the production task at hand? Damian and Bowers (2003) reported spelling effects in spoken word production in English using a prompt–response word generation task. Preparation

Early Gesture Provides a Helping Hand to Spoken Vocabulary Development for Children with Autism, Down Syndrome, and Typical Development

Science.gov (United States)

Özçaliskan, Seyda; Adamson, Lauren B.; Dimitrova, Nevena; Baumann, Stephanie

2017-01-01

Typically developing (TD) children refer to objects uniquely in gesture (e.g., point at a cat) before they produce verbal labels for these objects ("cat"). The onset of such gestures predicts the onset of similar spoken words, showing a strong positive relation between early gestures and early words. We asked whether gesture plays the…

The Influence of the Phonological Neighborhood Clustering Coefficient on Spoken Word Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Chan, Kit Ying; Vitevitch, Michael S.

2009-01-01

Clustering coefficient--a measure derived from the new science of networks--refers to the proportion of phonological neighbors of a target word that are also neighbors of each other. Consider the words "bat", "hat", and "can", all of which are neighbors of the word "cat"; the words "bat" and…

Modulating the Focus of Attention for Spoken Words at Encoding Affects Frontoparietal Activation for Incidental Verbal Memory

OpenAIRE

Christensen, Thomas A.; Almryde, Kyle R.; Fidler, Lesley J.; Lockwood, Julie L.; Antonucci, Sharon M.; Plante, Elena

2012-01-01

Attention is crucial for encoding information into memory, and current dual-process models seek to explain the roles of attention in both recollection memory and incidental-perceptual memory processes. The present study combined an incidental memory paradigm with event-related functional MRI to examine the effect of attention at encoding on the subsequent neural activation associated with unintended perceptual memory for spoken words. At encoding, we systematically varied attention levels as ...

Finding words in a language that allows words without vowels.

Science.gov (United States)

El Aissati, Abder; McQueen, James M; Cutler, Anne

2012-07-01

Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring win in twin because t cannot be a word). However, the constraint would be counter-productive in certain languages that allow stand-alone vowelless open-class words. One such language is Berber (where t is indeed a word). Berber listeners here detected words affixed to nonsense contexts with or without vowels. Length effects seen in other languages replicated in Berber, but in contrast to prior findings, word detection was not hindered by vowelless contexts. When words can be vowelless, otherwise universal constraints disfavoring vowelless words do not feature in spoken-word recognition. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Activation of Embedded Words in Spoken Word Recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G

2015-01-01

The current study investigated how listeners understand English words that have shorter words embedded in them. A series of auditory-auditory priming experiments assessed the activation of six types of embedded words (2 embedded positions × 3 embedded proportions) under different listening conditions. Facilitation of lexical decision responses to targets (e.g., pig) associated with words embedded in primes (e.g., hamster ) indexed activation of the embedded words (e.g., ham ). When the listening conditions were optimal, isolated embedded words (e.g., ham ) primed their targets in all six conditions (Experiment 1a). Within carrier words (e.g., hamster ), the same set of embedded words produced priming only when they were at the beginning or comprised a large proportion of the carrier word (Experiment 1b). When the listening conditions were made suboptimal by expanding or compressing the primes, significant priming was found for isolated embedded words (Experiment 2a), but no priming was produced when the carrier words were compressed/expanded (Experiment 2b). Similarly, priming was eliminated when the carrier words were presented with one segment replaced by noise (Experiment 3). When cognitive load was imposed, priming for embedded words was again found when they were presented in isolation (Experiment 4a), but not when they were embedded in the carrier words (Experiment 4b). The results suggest that both embedded position and proportion play important roles in the activation of embedded words, but that such activation only occurs under unusually good listening conditions.

The Activation of Embedded Words in Spoken Word Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Xujin; Samuel, Arthur G.

2015-01-01

The current study investigated how listeners understand English words that have shorter words embedded in them. A series of auditory-auditory priming experiments assessed the activation of six types of embedded words (2 embedded positions × 3 embedded proportions) under different listening conditions. Facilitation of lexical decision responses to targets (e.g., pig) associated with words embedded in primes (e.g., hamster) indexed activation of the embedded words (e.g., ham). When the listening conditions were optimal, isolated embedded words (e.g., ham) primed their targets in all six conditions (Experiment 1a). Within carrier words (e.g., hamster), the same set of embedded words produced priming only when they were at the beginning or comprised a large proportion of the carrier word (Experiment 1b). When the listening conditions were made suboptimal by expanding or compressing the primes, significant priming was found for isolated embedded words (Experiment 2a), but no priming was produced when the carrier words were compressed/expanded (Experiment 2b). Similarly, priming was eliminated when the carrier words were presented with one segment replaced by noise (Experiment 3). When cognitive load was imposed, priming for embedded words was again found when they were presented in isolation (Experiment 4a), but not when they were embedded in the carrier words (Experiment 4b). The results suggest that both embedded position and proportion play important roles in the activation of embedded words, but that such activation only occurs under unusually good listening conditions. PMID:25593407

The Influence of Topic Status on Written and Spoken Sentence Production

Science.gov (United States)

Cowles, H. Wind; Ferreira, Victor S.

2012-01-01

Four experiments investigate the influence of topic status and givenness on how speakers and writers structure sentences. The results of these experiments show that when a referent is previously given, it is more likely to be produced early in both sentences and word lists, confirming prior work showing that givenness increases the accessibility of given referents. When a referent is previously given and assigned topic status, it is even more likely to be produced early in a sentence, but not in a word list. Thus, there appears to be an early mention advantage for topics that is present in both written and spoken modalities, but is specific to sentence production. These results suggest that information-structure constructs like topic exert an influence that is not based only on increased accessibility, but also reflects mapping to syntactic structure during sentence production. PMID:22408281

Effects of prosody on spoken Thai word perception in pre-attentive brain processing: a pilot study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kittipun Arunphalungsanti

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to investigate the effect of the unfamiliar stressed prosody on spoken Thai word perception in the pre-attentive processing of the brain evaluated by the N2a and brain wave oscillatory activity. EEG recording was obtained from eleven participants, who were instructed to ignore the sound stimuli while watching silent movies. Results showed that prosody of unfamiliar stress word perception elicited N2a component and the quantitative EEG analysis found that theta and delta wave powers were principally generated in the frontal area. It was possible that the unfamiliar prosody with different frequencies, duration and intensity of the sound of Thai words induced highly selective attention and retrieval of information from the episodic memory of the pre-attentive stage of speech perception. This brain electrical activity evidence could be used for further study in the development of valuable clinical tests to evaluate the frontal lobe function in speech perception.

The role of reference in cross-situational word learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Felix Hao; Mintz, Toben H

2018-01-01

Word learning involves massive ambiguity, since in a particular encounter with a novel word, there are an unlimited number of potential referents. One proposal for how learners surmount the problem of ambiguity is that learners use cross-situational statistics to constrain the ambiguity: When a word and its referent co-occur across multiple situations, learners will associate the word with the correct referent. Yu and Smith (2007) propose that these co-occurrence statistics are sufficient for word-to-referent mapping. Alternative accounts hold that co-occurrence statistics alone are insufficient to support learning, and that learners are further guided by knowledge that words are referential (e.g., Waxman & Gelman, 2009). However, no behavioral word learning studies we are aware of explicitly manipulate subjects' prior assumptions about the role of the words in the experiments in order to test the influence of these assumptions. In this study, we directly test whether, when faced with referential ambiguity, co-occurrence statistics are sufficient for word-to-referent mappings in adult word-learners. Across a series of cross-situational learning experiments, we varied the degree to which there was support for the notion that the words were referential. At the same time, the statistical information about the words' meanings was held constant. When we overrode support for the notion that words were referential, subjects failed to learn the word-to-referent mappings, but otherwise they succeeded. Thus, cross-situational statistics were useful only when learners had the goal of discovering mappings between words and referents. We discuss the implications of these results for theories of word learning in children's language acquisition. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social interaction facilitates word learning in preverbal infants: Word-object mapping and word segmentation.

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Hakuno, Yoko; Omori, Takahide; Yamamoto, Jun-Ichi; Minagawa, Yasuyo

2017-08-01

In natural settings, infants learn spoken language with the aid of a caregiver who explicitly provides social signals. Although previous studies have demonstrated that young infants are sensitive to these signals that facilitate language development, the impact of real-life interactions on early word segmentation and word-object mapping remains elusive. We tested whether infants aged 5-6 months and 9-10 months could segment a word from continuous speech and acquire a word-object relation in an ecologically valid setting. In Experiment 1, infants were exposed to a live tutor, while in Experiment 2, another group of infants were exposed to a televised tutor. Results indicate that both younger and older infants were capable of segmenting a word and learning a word-object association only when the stimuli were derived from a live tutor in a natural manner, suggesting that real-life interaction enhances the learning of spoken words in preverbal infants. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Spoken Word Recognition Errors in Speech Audiometry: A Measure of Hearing Performance?

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Martine Coene

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This report provides a detailed analysis of incorrect responses from an open-set spoken word-repetition task which is part of a Dutch speech audiometric test battery. Single-consonant confusions were analyzed from 230 normal hearing participants in terms of the probability of choice of a particular response on the basis of acoustic-phonetic, lexical, and frequency variables. The results indicate that consonant confusions are better predicted by lexical knowledge than by acoustic properties of the stimulus word. A detailed analysis of the transmission of phonetic features indicates that “voicing” is best preserved whereas “manner of articulation” yields most perception errors. As consonant confusion matrices are often used to determine the degree and type of a patient’s hearing impairment, to predict a patient’s gain in hearing performance with hearing devices and to optimize the device settings in view of maximum output, the observed findings are highly relevant for the audiological practice. Based on our findings, speech audiometric outcomes provide a combined auditory-linguistic profile of the patient. The use of confusion matrices might therefore not be the method best suited to measure hearing performance. Ideally, they should be complemented by other listening task types that are known to have less linguistic bias, such as phonemic discrimination.

SPOKEN BAHASA INDONESIA BY GERMAN STUDENTS

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I Nengah Sudipa

2014-11-01

Full Text Available This article investigates the spoken ability for German students using Bahasa Indonesia (BI. They have studied it for six weeks in IBSN Program at Udayana University, Bali-Indonesia. The data was collected at the time the students sat for the mid-term oral test and was further analyzed with reference to the standard usage of BI. The result suggests that most students managed to express several concepts related to (1 LOCATION; (2 TIME; (3 TRANSPORT; (4 PURPOSE; (5 TRANSACTION; (6 IMPRESSION; (7 REASON; (8 FOOD AND BEVERAGE, and (9 NUMBER AND PERSON. The only problem few students might encounter is due to the influence from their own language system called interference, especially in word order.

Finding words in a language that allows words without vowels

NARCIS (Netherlands)

El Aissati, A.; McQueen, J.M.; Cutler, A.

2012-01-01

Across many languages from unrelated families, spoken-word recognition is subject to a constraint whereby potential word candidates must contain a vowel. This constraint minimizes competition from embedded words (e.g., in English, disfavoring win in twin because t cannot be a word). However, the

Auditory word recognition is not more sensitive to word-initial than to word-final stimulus information

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Vlugt, van der M.J.; Nooteboom, S.G.

1986-01-01

Several accounts of human recognition of spoken words a.!!llign special importance to stimulus-word onsets. The experiment described here was d~igned to find out whether such a word-beginning superiority effect, which ill supported by experimental evidence of various kinds, is due to a special

The word-length effect and disyllabic words.

Science.gov (United States)

Lovatt, P; Avons, S E; Masterson, J

2000-02-01

Three experiments compared immediate serial recall of disyllabic words that differed on spoken duration. Two sets of long- and short-duration words were selected, in each case maximizing duration differences but matching for frequency, familiarity, phonological similarity, and number of phonemes, and controlling for semantic associations. Serial recall measures were obtained using auditory and visual presentation and spoken and picture-pointing recall. In Experiments 1a and 1b, using the first set of items, long words were better recalled than short words. In Experiments 2a and 2b, using the second set of items, no difference was found between long and short disyllabic words. Experiment 3 confirmed the large advantage for short-duration words in the word set originally selected by Baddeley, Thomson, and Buchanan (1975). These findings suggest that there is no reliable advantage for short-duration disyllables in span tasks, and that previous accounts of a word-length effect in disyllables are based on accidental differences between list items. The failure to find an effect of word duration casts doubt on theories that propose that the capacity of memory span is determined by the duration of list items or the decay rate of phonological information in short-term memory.

Effects of providing word sounds during printed word learning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Reitsma, P.; Dongen, van A.J.N.; Custers, E.

1984-01-01

The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of the availability of the spoken sound of words along with the printed forms during reading practice. Firstgrade children from two normal elementary schools practised reading several unfamiliar words in print. For half of the printed words the

Hearing taboo words can result in early talker effects in word recognition for female listeners.

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Tuft, Samantha E; MᶜLennan, Conor T; Krestar, Maura L

2018-02-01

Previous spoken word recognition research using the long-term repetition-priming paradigm found performance costs for stimuli mismatching in talker identity. That is, when words were repeated across the two blocks, and the identity of the talker changed reaction times (RTs) were slower than when the repeated words were spoken by the same talker. Such performance costs, or talker effects, followed a time course, occurring only when processing was relatively slow. More recent research suggests that increased explicit and implicit attention towards the talkers can result in talker effects even during relatively fast processing. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether word meaning would influence the pattern of talker effects in an easy lexical decision task and, if so, whether results would differ depending on whether the presentation of neutral and taboo words was mixed or blocked. Regardless of presentation, participants responded to taboo words faster than neutral words. Furthermore, talker effects for the female talker emerged when participants heard both taboo and neutral words (consistent with an attention-based hypothesis), but not for participants that heard only taboo or only neutral words (consistent with the time-course hypothesis). These findings have important implications for theoretical models of spoken word recognition.

Modulating the Focus of Attention for Spoken Words at Encoding Affects Frontoparietal Activation for Incidental Verbal Memory

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Thomas A. Christensen

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Attention is crucial for encoding information into memory, and current dual-process models seek to explain the roles of attention in both recollection memory and incidental-perceptual memory processes. The present study combined an incidental memory paradigm with event-related functional MRI to examine the effect of attention at encoding on the subsequent neural activation associated with unintended perceptual memory for spoken words. At encoding, we systematically varied attention levels as listeners heard a list of single English nouns. We then presented these words again in the context of a recognition task and assessed the effect of modulating attention at encoding on the BOLD responses to words that were either attended strongly, weakly, or not heard previously. MRI revealed activity in right-lateralized inferior parietal and prefrontal regions, and positive BOLD signals varied with the relative level of attention present at encoding. Temporal analysis of hemodynamic responses further showed that the time course of BOLD activity was modulated differentially by unintentionally encoded words compared to novel items. Our findings largely support current models of memory consolidation and retrieval, but they also provide fresh evidence for hemispheric differences and functional subdivisions in right frontoparietal attention networks that help shape auditory episodic recall.

Modulating the focus of attention for spoken words at encoding affects frontoparietal activation for incidental verbal memory.

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Christensen, Thomas A; Almryde, Kyle R; Fidler, Lesley J; Lockwood, Julie L; Antonucci, Sharon M; Plante, Elena

2012-01-01

Attention is crucial for encoding information into memory, and current dual-process models seek to explain the roles of attention in both recollection memory and incidental-perceptual memory processes. The present study combined an incidental memory paradigm with event-related functional MRI to examine the effect of attention at encoding on the subsequent neural activation associated with unintended perceptual memory for spoken words. At encoding, we systematically varied attention levels as listeners heard a list of single English nouns. We then presented these words again in the context of a recognition task and assessed the effect of modulating attention at encoding on the BOLD responses to words that were either attended strongly, weakly, or not heard previously. MRI revealed activity in right-lateralized inferior parietal and prefrontal regions, and positive BOLD signals varied with the relative level of attention present at encoding. Temporal analysis of hemodynamic responses further showed that the time course of BOLD activity was modulated differentially by unintentionally encoded words compared to novel items. Our findings largely support current models of memory consolidation and retrieval, but they also provide fresh evidence for hemispheric differences and functional subdivisions in right frontoparietal attention networks that help shape auditory episodic recall.

Processing spoken lectures in resource-scarce environments

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Van Heerden, CJ

2011-11-01

Full Text Available and then adapting or training new models using the segmented spoken lectures. The eventual systems perform quite well, aligning more than 90% of a selected set of target words successfully....

Voice reinstatement modulates neural indices of continuous word recognition.

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Campeanu, Sandra; Craik, Fergus I M; Backer, Kristina C; Alain, Claude

2014-09-01

The present study was designed to examine listeners' ability to use voice information incidentally during spoken word recognition. We recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during a continuous recognition paradigm in which participants indicated on each trial whether the spoken word was "new" or "old." Old items were presented at 2, 8 or 16 words following the first presentation. Context congruency was manipulated by having the same word repeated by either the same speaker or a different speaker. The different speaker could share the gender, accent or neither feature with the word presented the first time. Participants' accuracy was greatest when the old word was spoken by the same speaker than by a different speaker. In addition, accuracy decreased with increasing lag. The correct identification of old words was accompanied by an enhanced late positivity over parietal sites, with no difference found between voice congruency conditions. In contrast, an earlier voice reinstatement effect was observed over frontal sites, an index of priming that preceded recollection in this task. Our results provide further evidence that acoustic and semantic information are integrated into a unified trace and that acoustic information facilitates spoken word recollection. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Spoken Word, the Book and the Image in the Work of Evangelization

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Jerzy Strzelczyk

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Little is known about the ‘material’ equipment of the early missionaries who set out to evangelize pagans and apostates, since the authors of the sources focused mainly on the successes (or failures of the missions. Information concerning the ‘infrastructure’ of missions is rather occasional and of fragmentary nature. The major part in the process of evangelization must have been played by the spoken word preached indirectly or through an interpreter, at least in the areas and milieus remote from the centers of ancient civilization. It could not have been otherwise when coming into contact with communities which did not know the art of reading, still less writing. A little more attention is devoted to the other two media, that is, the written word and the images. The significance of the written word was manifold, and – at least as the basic liturgical books are concerned (the missal, the evangeliary? – the manuscripts were indispensable elements of missionaries’ equipment. In certain circumstances the books which the missionaries had at their disposal could acquire special – even magical – significance, the most comprehensible to the Christianized people (the examples given: the evangeliary of St. Winfried-Boniface in the face of death at the hands of a pagan Frisian, the episode with a manuscript in the story of Anskar’s mission written by Rimbert. The role of the plastic art representations (images during the missions is much less frequently mentioned in the sources. After quoting a few relevant examples (Bede the Venerable, Ermoldus Nigellus, Paul the Deacon, Thietmar of Merseburg, the author also cites an interesting, although not entirely successful, attempt to use drama to instruct the Livonians in the faith while converting them to Christianity, which was reported by Henry of Latvia.

THE RECOGNITION OF SPOKEN MONO-MORPHEMIC COMPOUNDS IN CHINESE

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Yu-da Lai

2012-12-01

Full Text Available This paper explores the auditory lexical access of mono-morphemic compounds in Chinese as a way of understanding the role of orthography in the recognition of spoken words. In traditional Chinese linguistics, a compound is a word written with two or more characters whether or not they are morphemic. A monomorphemic compound may either be a binding word, written with characters that only appear in this one word, or a non-binding word, written with characters that are chosen for their pronunciation but that also appear in other words. Our goal was to determine if this purely orthographic difference affects auditory lexical access by conducting a series of four experiments with materials matched by whole-word frequency, syllable frequency, cross-syllable predictability, cohort size, and acoustic duration, but differing in binding. An auditory lexical decision task (LDT found an orthographic effect: binding words were recognized more quickly than non-binding words. However, this effect disappeared in an auditory repetition and in a visual LDT with the same materials, implying that the orthographic effect during auditory lexical access was localized to the decision component and involved the influence of cross-character predictability without the activation of orthographic representations. This claim was further confirmed by overall faster recognition of spoken binding words in a cross-modal LDT with different types of visual interference. The theoretical and practical consequences of these findings are discussed.

Autosegmental Representation of Epenthesis in the Spoken French ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Nneka Umera-Okeke

... spoken French of IUFLs. Key words: IUFLs, Epenthensis, Ijebu dialect, Autosegmental phonology .... Ambiguities may result: salmi "strait" vs. salami. (An exception is that in .... tiers of segments. In the picture given us by classical generative.

Age of acquisition and word frequency in written picture naming.

Science.gov (United States)

Bonin, P; Fayol, M; Chalard, M

2001-05-01

This study investigates age of acquisition (AoA) and word frequency effects in both spoken and written picture naming. In the first two experiments, reliable AoA effects on object naming speed, with objective word frequency controlled for, were found in both spoken (Experiment 1) and written picture naming (Experiment 2). In contrast, no reliable objective word frequency effects were observed on naming speed, with AoA controlled for, in either spoken (Experiment 3) or written (Experiment 4) picture naming. The implications of the findings for written picture naming are briefly discussed.

Effects of Rhyme and Spelling Patterns on Auditory Word ERPs Depend on Selective Attention to Phonology

Science.gov (United States)

Yoncheva, Yuliya N.; Maurer, Urs; Zevin, Jason D.; McCandliss, Bruce D.

2013-01-01

ERP responses to spoken words are sensitive to both rhyming effects and effects of associated spelling patterns. Are such effects automatically elicited by spoken words or dependent on selectively attending to phonology? To address this question, ERP responses to spoken word pairs were investigated under two equally demanding listening tasks that…

The locus of word frequency effects in skilled spelling-to-dictation.

Science.gov (United States)

Chua, Shi Min; Liow, Susan J Rickard

2014-01-01

In spelling-to-dictation tasks, skilled spellers consistently initiate spelling of high-frequency words faster than that of low-frequency words. Tainturier and Rapp's model of spelling shows three possible loci for this frequency effect: spoken word recognition, orthographic retrieval, and response execution of the first letter. Thus far, researchers have attributed the effect solely to orthographic retrieval without considering spoken word recognition or response execution. To investigate word frequency effects at each of these three loci, Experiment 1 involved a delayed spelling-to-dictation task and Experiment 2 involved a delayed/uncertain task. In Experiment 1, no frequency effect was found in the 1200-ms delayed condition, suggesting that response execution is not affected by word frequency. In Experiment 2, no frequency effect was found in the delayed/uncertain task that reflects the orthographic retrieval, whereas a frequency effect was found in the comparison immediate/uncertain task that reflects both spoken word recognition and orthographic retrieval. The results of this two-part study suggest that frequency effects in spoken word recognition play a substantial role in skilled spelling-to-dictation. Discrepancies between these findings and previous research, and the limitations of the present study, are discussed.

A database for semantic, grammatical, and frequency properties of the first words acquired by Italian children.

Science.gov (United States)

Rinaldi, Pasquale; Barca, Laura; Burani, Cristina

2004-08-01

The CFVlexvar.xls database includes imageability, frequency, and grammatical properties of the first words acquired by Italian children. For each of 519 words that are known by children 18-30 months of age (taken from Caselli & Casadio's, 1995, Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory), new values of imageability are provided and values for age of acquisition, child written frequency, and adult written and spoken frequency are included. In this article, correlations among the variables are discussed and the words are grouped into grammatical categories. The results show that words acquired early have imageable referents, are frequently used in the texts read and written by elementary school children, and are frequent in adult written and spoken language. Nouns are acquired earlier and are more imageable than both verbs and adjectives. The composition in grammatical categories of the child's first vocabulary reflects the composition of adult vocabulary. The full set of these norms can be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive/.

An associative model of adaptive inference for learning word-referent mappings.

Science.gov (United States)

Kachergis, George; Yu, Chen; Shiffrin, Richard M

2012-04-01

People can learn word-referent pairs over a short series of individually ambiguous situations containing multiple words and referents (Yu & Smith, 2007, Cognition 106: 1558-1568). Cross-situational statistical learning relies on the repeated co-occurrence of words with their intended referents, but simple co-occurrence counts cannot explain the findings. Mutual exclusivity (ME: an assumption of one-to-one mappings) can reduce ambiguity by leveraging prior experience to restrict the number of word-referent pairings considered but can also block learning of non-one-to-one mappings. The present study first trained learners on one-to-one mappings with varying numbers of repetitions. In late training, a new set of word-referent pairs were introduced alongside pretrained pairs; each pretrained pair consistently appeared with a new pair. Results indicate that (1) learners quickly infer new pairs in late training on the basis of their knowledge of pretrained pairs, exhibiting ME; and (2) learners also adaptively relax the ME bias and learn two-to-two mappings involving both pretrained and new words and objects. We present an associative model that accounts for both results using competing familiarity and uncertainty biases.

Word Recognition in Auditory Cortex

Science.gov (United States)

DeWitt, Iain D. J.

2013-01-01

Although spoken word recognition is more fundamental to human communication than text recognition, knowledge of word-processing in auditory cortex is comparatively impoverished. This dissertation synthesizes current models of auditory cortex, models of cortical pattern recognition, models of single-word reading, results in phonetics and results in…

Does Discourse Congruence Influence Spoken Language Comprehension before Lexical Association? Evidence from Event-Related Potentials

Science.gov (United States)

Boudewyn, Megan A.; Gordon, Peter C.; Long, Debra; Polse, Lara; Swaab, Tamara Y.

2011-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine how lexical association and discourse congruence affect the time course of processing incoming words in spoken discourse. In an ERP norming study, we presented prime-target pairs in the absence of a sentence context to obtain a baseline measure of lexical priming. We observed a typical N400 effect when participants heard critical associated and unassociated target words in word pairs. In a subsequent experiment, we presented the same word pairs in spoken discourse contexts. Target words were always consistent with the local sentence context, but were congruent or not with the global discourse (e.g., “Luckily Ben had picked up some salt and pepper/basil”, preceded by a context in which Ben was preparing marinara sauce (congruent) or dealing with an icy walkway (incongruent). ERP effects of global discourse congruence preceded those of local lexical association, suggesting an early influence of the global discourse representation on lexical processing, even in locally congruent contexts. Furthermore, effects of lexical association occurred earlier in the congruent than incongruent condition. These results differ from those that have been obtained in studies of reading, suggesting that the effects may be unique to spoken word recognition. PMID:23002319

Tracking the time course of word-frequency effects in auditory word recognition with event-related potentials.

Science.gov (United States)

Dufour, Sophie; Brunellière, Angèle; Frauenfelder, Ulrich H

2013-04-01

Although the word-frequency effect is one of the most established findings in spoken-word recognition, the precise processing locus of this effect is still a topic of debate. In this study, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to track the time course of the word-frequency effect. In addition, the neighborhood density effect, which is known to reflect mechanisms involved in word identification, was also examined. The ERP data showed a clear frequency effect as early as 350 ms from word onset on the P350, followed by a later effect at word offset on the late N400. A neighborhood density effect was also found at an early stage of spoken-word processing on the PMN, and at word offset on the late N400. Overall, our ERP differences for word frequency suggest that frequency affects the core processes of word identification starting from the initial phase of lexical activation and including target word selection. They thus rule out any interpretation of the word frequency effect that is limited to a purely decisional locus after word identification has been completed. Copyright © 2012 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

What does že jo (and že ne) mean in spoken dialogue

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Komrsková, Zuzana

2017-01-01

Roč. 68, č. 2 (2017), s. 229-237 ISSN 0021-5597 R&D Projects: GA ČR GA15-01116S Institutional support: RVO:68378092 Keywords : spoken languge * spoken corpus * tag question * responze word Subject RIV: AI - Linguistics OBOR OECD: Linguistics http://www.juls.savba.sk/ediela/jc/2017/2/jc17-02.pdf

Phonologic-graphemic transcodifier for Portuguese Language spoken in Brazil (PLB)

Science.gov (United States)

Fragadasilva, Francisco Jose; Saotome, Osamu; Deoliveira, Carlos Alberto

An automatic speech-to-text transformer system, suited to unlimited vocabulary, is presented. The basic acoustic unit considered are the allophones of the phonemes corresponding to the Portuguese language spoken in Brazil (PLB). The input to the system is a phonetic sequence, from a former step of isolated word recognition of slowly spoken speech. In a first stage, the system eliminates phonetic elements that don't belong to PLB. Using knowledge sources such as phonetics, phonology, orthography, and PLB specific lexicon, the output is a sequence of written words, ordered by probabilistic criterion that constitutes the set of graphemic possibilities to that input sequence. Pronunciation differences of some regions of Brazil are considered, but only those that cause differences in phonological transcription, because those of phonetic level are absorbed, during the transformation to phonological level. In the final stage, all possible written words are analyzed for orthography and grammar point of view, to eliminate the incorrect ones.

The impact of music on learning and consolidation of novel words.

Science.gov (United States)

Tamminen, Jakke; Rastle, Kathleen; Darby, Jess; Lucas, Rebecca; Williamson, Victoria J

2017-01-01

Music can be a powerful mnemonic device, as shown by a body of literature demonstrating that listening to text sung to a familiar melody results in better memory for the words compared to conditions where they are spoken. Furthermore, patients with a range of memory impairments appear to be able to form new declarative memories when they are encoded in the form of lyrics in a song, while unable to remember similar materials after hearing them in the spoken modality. Whether music facilitates the acquisition of completely new information, such as new vocabulary, remains unknown. Here we report three experiments in which adult participants learned novel words in the spoken or sung modality. While we found no benefit of musical presentation on free recall or recognition memory of novel words, novel words learned in the sung modality were more strongly integrated in the mental lexicon compared to words learned in the spoken modality. This advantage for the sung words was only present when the training melody was familiar. The impact of musical presentation on learning therefore appears to extend beyond episodic memory and can be reflected in the emergence and properties of new lexical representations.

The company objects keep: Linking referents together during cross-situational word learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Zettersten, Martin; Wojcik, Erica; Benitez, Viridiana L; Saffran, Jenny

2018-04-01

Learning the meanings of words involves not only linking individual words to referents but also building a network of connections among entities in the world, concepts, and words. Previous studies reveal that infants and adults track the statistical co-occurrence of labels and objects across multiple ambiguous training instances to learn words. However, it is less clear whether, given distributional or attentional cues, learners also encode associations amongst the novel objects. We investigated the consequences of two types of cues that highlighted object-object links in a cross-situational word learning task: distributional structure - how frequently the referents of novel words occurred together - and visual context - whether the referents were seen on matching backgrounds. Across three experiments, we found that in addition to learning novel words, adults formed connections between frequently co-occurring objects. These findings indicate that learners exploit statistical regularities to form multiple types of associations during word learning.

Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English

African Journals Online (AJOL)

R.B. Ruthven

data of the corpus and includes more formal audio material (lectures, TV and ... meticulous word-class tagging of nouns, adjectives, verbs etc., this book is not limited to word ... Fréquences d'utilisation des mots en français écrit contemporain.

Attention demands of spoken word planning: A review

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ardi eRoelofs

2011-11-01

Full Text Available Attention and language are among the most intensively researched abilities in the cognitive neurosciences, but the relation between these abilities has largely been neglected. There is increasing evidence, however, that linguistic processes, such as those underlying the planning of words, cannot proceed without paying some form of attention. Here, we review evidence that word planning requires some but not full attention. The evidence comes from chronometric studies of word planning in picture naming and word reading under divided attention conditions. It is generally assumed that the central attention demands of a process are indexed by the extent that the process delays the performance of a concurrent unrelated task. The studies measured the speed and accuracy of linguistic and nonlinguistic responding as well as eye gaze durations reflecting the allocation of attention. First, empirical evidence indicates that in several task situations, processes up to and including phonological encoding in word planning delay, or are delayed by, the performance of concurrent unrelated nonlinguistic tasks. These findings suggest that word planning requires central attention. Second, empirical evidence indicates that conflicts in word planning may be resolved while concurrently performing an unrelated nonlinguistic task, making a task decision, or making a go/no-go decision. These findings suggest that word planning does not require full central attention. We outline a computationally implemented theory of attention and word planning, and describe at various points the outcomes of computer simulations that demonstrate the utility of the theory in accounting for the key findings. Finally, we indicate how attention deficits may contribute to impaired language performance, such as in individuals with specific language impairment.

Auditory and verbal memory predictors of spoken language skills in children with cochlear implants.

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de Hoog, Brigitte E; Langereis, Margreet C; van Weerdenburg, Marjolijn; Keuning, Jos; Knoors, Harry; Verhoeven, Ludo

2016-10-01

Large variability in individual spoken language outcomes remains a persistent finding in the group of children with cochlear implants (CIs), particularly in their grammatical development. In the present study, we examined the extent of delay in lexical and morphosyntactic spoken language levels of children with CIs as compared to those of a normative sample of age-matched children with normal hearing. Furthermore, the predictive value of auditory and verbal memory factors in the spoken language performance of implanted children was analyzed. Thirty-nine profoundly deaf children with CIs were assessed using a test battery including measures of lexical, grammatical, auditory and verbal memory tests. Furthermore, child-related demographic characteristics were taken into account. The majority of the children with CIs did not reach age-equivalent lexical and morphosyntactic language skills. Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that lexical spoken language performance in children with CIs was best predicted by age at testing, phoneme perception, and auditory word closure. The morphosyntactic language outcomes of the CI group were best predicted by lexicon, auditory word closure, and auditory memory for words. Qualitatively good speech perception skills appear to be crucial for lexical and grammatical development in children with CIs. Furthermore, strongly developed vocabulary skills and verbal memory abilities predict morphosyntactic language skills. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Word learning in adults with second language experience: Effects of phonological and referent familiarity

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Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Yoo, Jeewon; Van Hecke, Stephanie

2014-01-01

Purpose The goal of this research was to examine whether phonological familiarity exerts different effects on novel word learning for familiar vs. unfamiliar referents, and whether successful word-learning is associated with increased second-language experience. Method Eighty-one adult native English speakers with various levels of Spanish knowledge learned phonologically-familiar novel words (constructed using English sounds) or phonologically-unfamiliar novel words (constructed using non-English and non-Spanish sounds) in association with either familiar or unfamiliar referents. Retention was tested via a forced-choice recognition-task. A median-split procedure identified high-ability and low-ability word-learners in each condition, and the two groups were compared on measures of second-language experience. Results Findings suggest that the ability to accurately match newly-learned novel names to their appropriate referents is facilitated by phonological familiarity only for familiar referents but not for unfamiliar referents. Moreover, more extensive second-language learning experience characterized superior learners primarily in one word-learning condition: Where phonologically-unfamiliar novel words were paired with familiar referents. Conclusions Together, these findings indicate that phonological familiarity facilitates novel word learning only for familiar referents, and that experience with learning a second language may have a specific impact on novel vocabulary learning in adults. PMID:22992709

The effects of sad prosody on hemispheric specialization for words processing.

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Leshem, Rotem; Arzouan, Yossi; Armony-Sivan, Rinat

2015-06-01

This study examined the effect of sad prosody on hemispheric specialization for word processing using behavioral and electrophysiological measures. A dichotic listening task combining focused attention and signal-detection methods was conducted to evaluate the detection of a word spoken in neutral or sad prosody. An overall right ear advantage together with leftward lateralization in early (150-170 ms) and late (240-260 ms) processing stages was found for word detection, regardless of prosody. Furthermore, the early stage was most pronounced for words spoken in neutral prosody, showing greater negative activation over the left than the right hemisphere. In contrast, the later stage was most pronounced for words spoken with sad prosody, showing greater positive activation over the left than the right hemisphere. The findings suggest that sad prosody alone was not sufficient to modulate hemispheric asymmetry in word-level processing. We posit that lateralized effects of sad prosody on word processing are largely dependent on the psychoacoustic features of the stimuli as well as on task demands. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Repeated imitation makes human vocalizations more word-like.

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Edmiston, Pierce; Perlman, Marcus; Lupyan, Gary

2018-03-14

People have long pondered the evolution of language and the origin of words. Here, we investigate how conventional spoken words might emerge from imitations of environmental sounds. Does the repeated imitation of an environmental sound gradually give rise to more word-like forms? In what ways do these forms resemble the original sounds that motivated them (i.e. exhibit iconicity)? Participants played a version of the children's game 'Telephone'. The first generation of participants imitated recognizable environmental sounds (e.g. glass breaking, water splashing). Subsequent generations imitated the previous generation of imitations for a maximum of eight generations. The results showed that the imitations became more stable and word-like, and later imitations were easier to learn as category labels. At the same time, even after eight generations, both spoken imitations and their written transcriptions could be matched above chance to the category of environmental sound that motivated them. These results show how repeated imitation can create progressively more word-like forms while continuing to retain a resemblance to the original sound that motivated them, and speak to the possible role of human vocal imitation in explaining the origins of at least some spoken words. © 2018 The Author(s).

Prosodic Parallelism – comparing spoken and written language

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Richard Wiese

2016-10-01

Full Text Available The Prosodic Parallelism hypothesis claims adjacent prosodic categories to prefer identical branching of internal adjacent constituents. According to Wiese and Speyer (2015, this preference implies feet contained in the same phonological phrase to display either binary or unary branching, but not different types of branching. The seemingly free schwa-zero alternations at the end of some words in German make it possible to test this hypothesis. The hypothesis was successfully tested by conducting a corpus study which used large-scale bodies of written German. As some open questions remain, and as it is unclear whether Prosodic Parallelism is valid for the spoken modality as well, the present study extends this inquiry to spoken German. As in the previous study, the results of a corpus analysis recruiting a variety of linguistic constructions are presented. The Prosodic Parallelism hypothesis can be demonstrated to be valid for spoken German as well as for written German. The paper thus contributes to the question whether prosodic preferences are similar between the spoken and written modes of a language. Some consequences of the results for the production of language are discussed.

Is there pain in champagne? Semantic involvement of words within words during sense-making

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van Alphen, P.M.; van Berkum, J.J.A.

2010-01-01

In an ERP experiment, we examined whether listeners, when making sense of spoken utterances, take into account the meaning of spurious words that are embedded in longer words, either at their onsets (e.g., pie in pirate) or at their offsets (e.g., pain in champagne). In the experiment, Dutch

"Daddy, Where Did the Words Go?" How Teachers Can Help Emergent Readers Develop a Concept of Word in Text

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Flanigan, Kevin

2006-01-01

This article focuses on a concept that has rarely been studied in beginning reading research--a child's concept of word in text. Recent examinations of this phenomenon suggest that a child's ability to match spoken words to written words while reading--a concept of word in text--plays a pivotal role in early reading development. In this article,…

Delayed Anticipatory Spoken Language Processing in Adults with Dyslexia—Evidence from Eye-tracking.

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Huettig, Falk; Brouwer, Susanne

2015-05-01

It is now well established that anticipation of upcoming input is a key characteristic of spoken language comprehension. It has also frequently been observed that literacy influences spoken language processing. Here, we investigated whether anticipatory spoken language processing is related to individuals' word reading abilities. Dutch adults with dyslexia and a control group participated in two eye-tracking experiments. Experiment 1 was conducted to assess whether adults with dyslexia show the typical language-mediated eye gaze patterns. Eye movements of both adults with and without dyslexia closely replicated earlier research: spoken language is used to direct attention to relevant objects in the environment in a closely time-locked manner. In Experiment 2, participants received instructions (e.g., 'Kijk naar de(COM) afgebeelde piano(COM)', look at the displayed piano) while viewing four objects. Articles (Dutch 'het' or 'de') were gender marked such that the article agreed in gender only with the target, and thus, participants could use gender information from the article to predict the target object. The adults with dyslexia anticipated the target objects but much later than the controls. Moreover, participants' word reading scores correlated positively with their anticipatory eye movements. We conclude by discussing the mechanisms by which reading abilities may influence predictive language processing. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Modality differences between written and spoken story retelling in healthy older adults

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Jessica Ann Obermeyer

2015-04-01

Methods: Ten native English speaking healthy elderly participants between the ages of 50 and 80 were recruited. Exclusionary criteria included neurological disease/injury, history of learning disability, uncorrected hearing or vision impairment, history of drug/alcohol abuse and presence of cognitive decline (based on Cognitive Linguistic Quick Test. Spoken and written discourse was analyzed for micro linguistic measures including total words, percent correct information units (CIUs; Nicholas & Brookshire, 1993 and percent complete utterances (CUs; Edmonds, et al. 2009. CIUs measure relevant and informative words while CUs focus at the sentence level and measure whether a relevant subject and verb and object (if appropriate are present. Results: Analysis was completed using Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test due to small sample size. Preliminary results revealed that healthy elderly people produced significantly more words in spoken retellings than written retellings (p=.000; however, this measure contrasted with %CIUs and %CUs with participants producing significantly higher %CIUs (p=.000 and %CUs (p=.000 in written story retellings than in spoken story retellings. Conclusion: These findings indicate that written retellings, while shorter, contained higher accuracy at both a word (CIU and sentence (CU level. This observation could be related to the ability to revise written text and therefore make it more concise, whereas the nature of speech results in more embellishment and “thinking out loud,” such as comments about the task, associated observations about the story, etc. We plan to run more participants and conduct a main concepts analysis (before conference time to gain more insight into modality differences and implications.

Voice congruency facilitates word recognition.

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Campeanu, Sandra; Craik, Fergus I M; Alain, Claude

2013-01-01

Behavioral studies of spoken word memory have shown that context congruency facilitates both word and source recognition, though the level at which context exerts its influence remains equivocal. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs) while participants performed both types of recognition task with words spoken in four voices. Two voice parameters (i.e., gender and accent) varied between speakers, with the possibility that none, one or two of these parameters was congruent between study and test. Results indicated that reinstating the study voice at test facilitated both word and source recognition, compared to similar or no context congruency at test. Behavioral effects were paralleled by two ERP modulations. First, in the word recognition test, the left parietal old/new effect showed a positive deflection reflective of context congruency between study and test words. Namely, the same speaker condition provided the most positive deflection of all correctly identified old words. In the source recognition test, a right frontal positivity was found for the same speaker condition compared to the different speaker conditions, regardless of response success. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that the benefit of context congruency is reflected behaviorally and in ERP modulations traditionally associated with recognition memory.

Voice congruency facilitates word recognition.

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Sandra Campeanu

Full Text Available Behavioral studies of spoken word memory have shown that context congruency facilitates both word and source recognition, though the level at which context exerts its influence remains equivocal. We measured event-related potentials (ERPs while participants performed both types of recognition task with words spoken in four voices. Two voice parameters (i.e., gender and accent varied between speakers, with the possibility that none, one or two of these parameters was congruent between study and test. Results indicated that reinstating the study voice at test facilitated both word and source recognition, compared to similar or no context congruency at test. Behavioral effects were paralleled by two ERP modulations. First, in the word recognition test, the left parietal old/new effect showed a positive deflection reflective of context congruency between study and test words. Namely, the same speaker condition provided the most positive deflection of all correctly identified old words. In the source recognition test, a right frontal positivity was found for the same speaker condition compared to the different speaker conditions, regardless of response success. Taken together, the results of this study suggest that the benefit of context congruency is reflected behaviorally and in ERP modulations traditionally associated with recognition memory.

The serial order of response units in word production: The case of typing.

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Scaltritti, Michele; Longcamp, Marieke; Alario, F-Xavier

2018-05-01

The selection and ordering of response units (phonemes, letters, keystrokes) represents a transversal issue across different modalities of language production. Here, the issue of serial order was investigated with respect to typewriting. Following seminal investigations in the spoken modality, we conducted an experiment where participants typed as many times as possible a pair of words during a fixed time-window. The 2 words shared either their first 2 keystrokes, the last 2 ones, all the keystrokes, or were unrelated. Fine-grained performance measures were recorded at the level of individual keystrokes. In contrast with previous results from the spoken modality, we observed an overall facilitation for words sharing the initial keystrokes. In addition, the initial overlap briefly delayed the execution of the following keystroke. The results are discussed with reference to different theoretical perspectives on serial order, with a particular attention to the competing accounts offered by position coding models and chaining models. Our findings point to potential major differences between the speaking and typing modalities in terms of interactive activation between lexical and response units processing levels. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Interference Effects on the Recall of Pictures, Printed Words and Spoken Words.

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Burton, John K.; Bruning, Roger H.

Thirty college undergraduates participated in a study of the effects of acoustic and visual interference on the recall of word and picture triads in both short-term and long-term memory. The subjects were presented 24 triads of monosyllabic nouns representing all of the possible combinations of presentation types: pictures, printed words, and…

Words Get in the Way: Linguistic Effects on Talker Discrimination.

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Narayan, Chandan R; Mak, Lorinda; Bialystok, Ellen

2017-07-01

A speech perception experiment provides evidence that the linguistic relationship between words affects the discrimination of their talkers. Listeners discriminated two talkers' voices with various linguistic relationships between their spoken words. Listeners were asked whether two words were spoken by the same person or not. Word pairs varied with respect to the linguistic relationship between the component words, forming either: phonological rhymes, lexical compounds, reversed compounds, or unrelated pairs. The degree of linguistic relationship between the words affected talker discrimination in a graded fashion, revealing biases listeners have regarding the nature of words and the talkers that speak them. These results indicate that listeners expect a talker's words to be linguistically related, and more generally, indexical processing is affected by linguistic information in a top-down fashion even when listeners are not told to attend to it. Copyright © 2016 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Competition in the perception of spoken Japanese words

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Otake, T.; McQueen, J.M.; Cutler, A.

2010-01-01

Japanese listeners detected Japanese words embedded at the end of nonsense sequences (e.g., kaba 'hippopotamus' in gyachikaba). When the final portion of the preceding context together with the initial portion of the word (e.g., here, the sequence chika) was compatible with many lexical competitors,

Webster's word power better English grammar improve your written and spoken English

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Kirkpatrick, Betty

2014-01-01

With questions and answer sections throughout, this book helps you to improve your written and spoken English through understanding the structure of the English language. This is a thorough and useful book with all parts of speech and grammar explained. Used by ELT self-study students.

Interpreting Chicken-Scratch: Lexical Access for Handwritten Words

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Barnhart, Anthony S.; Goldinger, Stephen D.

2010-01-01

Handwritten word recognition is a field of study that has largely been neglected in the psychological literature, despite its prevalence in society. Whereas studies of spoken word recognition almost exclusively employ natural, human voices as stimuli, studies of visual word recognition use synthetic typefaces, thus simplifying the process of word…

A dual contribution to the involuntary semantic processing of unexpected spoken words.

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Parmentier, Fabrice B R; Turner, Jacqueline; Perez, Laura

2014-02-01

Sounds are a major cause of distraction. Unexpected to-be-ignored auditory stimuli presented in the context of an otherwise repetitive acoustic background ineluctably break through selective attention and distract people from an unrelated visual task (deviance distraction). This involuntary capture of attention by deviant sounds has been hypothesized to trigger their semantic appraisal and, in some circumstances, interfere with ongoing performance, but it remains unclear how such processing compares with the automatic processing of distractors in classic interference tasks (e.g., Stroop, flanker, Simon tasks). Using a cross-modal oddball task, we assessed the involuntary semantic processing of deviant sounds in the presence and absence of deviance distraction. The results revealed that some involuntary semantic analysis of spoken distractors occurs in the absence of deviance distraction but that this processing is significantly greater in its presence. We conclude that the automatic processing of spoken distractors reflects 2 contributions, one that is contingent upon deviance distraction and one that is independent from it.

The employment of a spoken language computer applied to an air traffic control task.

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Laveson, J. I.; Silver, C. A.

1972-01-01

Assessment of the merits of a limited spoken language (56 words) computer in a simulated air traffic control (ATC) task. An airport zone approximately 60 miles in diameter with a traffic flow simulation ranging from single-engine to commercial jet aircraft provided the workload for the controllers. This research determined that, under the circumstances of the experiments carried out, the use of a spoken-language computer would not improve the controller performance.

Word order in Russian Sign Language

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Kimmelman, V.

2012-01-01

The article discusses word order, the syntactic arrangement of words in a sentence, clause, or phrase as one of the most crucial aspects of grammar of any spoken language. It aims to investigate the order of the primary constituents which can either be subject, object, or verb of a simple

A joint model of word segmentation and meaning acquisition through cross-situational learning.

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Räsänen, Okko; Rasilo, Heikki

2015-10-01

Human infants learn meanings for spoken words in complex interactions with other people, but the exact learning mechanisms are unknown. Among researchers, a widely studied learning mechanism is called cross-situational learning (XSL). In XSL, word meanings are learned when learners accumulate statistical information between spoken words and co-occurring objects or events, allowing the learner to overcome referential uncertainty after having sufficient experience with individually ambiguous scenarios. Existing models in this area have mainly assumed that the learner is capable of segmenting words from speech before grounding them to their referential meaning, while segmentation itself has been treated relatively independently of the meaning acquisition. In this article, we argue that XSL is not just a mechanism for word-to-meaning mapping, but that it provides strong cues for proto-lexical word segmentation. If a learner directly solves the correspondence problem between continuous speech input and the contextual referents being talked about, segmentation of the input into word-like units emerges as a by-product of the learning. We present a theoretical model for joint acquisition of proto-lexical segments and their meanings without assuming a priori knowledge of the language. We also investigate the behavior of the model using a computational implementation, making use of transition probability-based statistical learning. Results from simulations show that the model is not only capable of replicating behavioral data on word learning in artificial languages, but also shows effective learning of word segments and their meanings from continuous speech. Moreover, when augmented with a simple familiarity preference during learning, the model shows a good fit to human behavioral data in XSL tasks. These results support the idea of simultaneous segmentation and meaning acquisition and show that comprehensive models of early word segmentation should take referential word

Children's level of word knowledge predicts their exclusion of familiar objects as referents of novel words

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Susanne eGrassmann

2015-08-01

Full Text Available When children are learning a novel object label, they tend to exclude as possible referents familiar objects for which they already have a name. In the current study, we wanted to know if children would behave in this same way regardless of how well they knew the name of potential referent objects, specifically, whether they could only comprehend it or they could both comprehend and produce it. Sixty-six monolingual German-speaking 2-, 3-, and 4-year-old children participated in two experimental sessions. In one session the familiar objects were chosen such that their labels were in the children's productive vocabularies, and in the other session the familiar objects were chosen such that their labels were only in the children's receptive vocabularies. Results indicated that children at all three ages were more likely to exclude a familiar object as the potential referent of the novel word if they could comprehend and produce its name rather than comprehend its name only. Indeed, level of word knowledge as operationalized in this way was a better predictor than was age. These results are discussed in the context of current theories of word learning by exclusion.

The Study of Synonymous Word "Mistake"

OpenAIRE

Suwardi, Albertus

2016-01-01

This article discusses the synonymous word "mistake*.The discussion will also cover the meaning of 'word' itself. Words can be considered as form whether spoken or written, or alternatively as composite expression, which combine and meaning. Synonymous are different phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings. The synonyms of mistake are error, fault, blunder, slip, slipup, gaffe and inaccuracy. The data is taken from a computer program. The procedure of data collection is...

Time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Mandarin word production: Evidence from the picture-word interference paradigm.

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Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2017-06-05

The time course of phonological encoding in Mandarin monosyllabic word production was investigated by using the picture-word interference paradigm. Participants were asked to name pictures in Mandarin while visual distractor words were presented before, at, or after picture onset (i.e., stimulus-onset asynchrony/SOA = -100, 0, or +100 ms, respectively). Compared with the unrelated control, the distractors sharing atonal syllables with the picture names significantly facilitated the naming responses at -100- and 0-ms SOAs. In addition, the facilitation effect of sharing word-initial segments only appeared at 0-ms SOA, and null effects were found for sharing word-final segments. These results indicate that both syllables and subsyllabic units play important roles in Mandarin spoken word production and more critically that syllabic processing precedes subsyllabic processing. The current results lend strong support to the proximate units principle (O'Seaghdha, Chen, & Chen, 2010), which holds that the phonological structure of spoken word production is language-specific and that atonal syllables are the proximate phonological units in Mandarin Chinese. On the other hand, the significance of word-initial segments over word-final segments suggests that serial processing of segmental information seems to be universal across Germanic languages and Chinese, which remains to be verified in future studies.

Word level language identification in online multilingual communication

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Nguyen, Dong-Phuong; Dogruoz, A. Seza

2013-01-01

Multilingual speakers switch between languages in online and spoken communication. Analyses of large scale multilingual data require automatic language identification at the word level. For our experiments with multilingual online discussions, we first tag the language of individual words using

Improving Spoken Language Outcomes for Children With Hearing Loss: Data-driven Instruction.

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Douglas, Michael

2016-02-01

To assess the effects of data-driven instruction (DDI) on spoken language outcomes of children with cochlear implants and hearing aids. Retrospective, matched-pairs comparison of post-treatment speech/language data of children who did and did not receive DDI. Private, spoken-language preschool for children with hearing loss. Eleven matched pairs of children with cochlear implants who attended the same spoken language preschool. Groups were matched for age of hearing device fitting, time in the program, degree of predevice fitting hearing loss, sex, and age at testing. Daily informal language samples were collected and analyzed over a 2-year period, per preschool protocol. Annual informal and formal spoken language assessments in articulation, vocabulary, and omnibus language were administered at the end of three time intervals: baseline, end of year one, and end of year two. The primary outcome measures were total raw score performance of spontaneous utterance sentence types and syntax element use as measured by the Teacher Assessment of Spoken Language (TASL). In addition, standardized assessments (the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals--Preschool Version 2 (CELF-P2), the Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (EOWPVT), the Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test (ROWPVT), and the Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 2 (GFTA2)) were also administered and compared with the control group. The DDI group demonstrated significantly higher raw scores on the TASL each year of the study. The DDI group also achieved statistically significant higher scores for total language on the CELF-P and expressive vocabulary on the EOWPVT, but not for articulation nor receptive vocabulary. Post-hoc assessment revealed that 78% of the students in the DDI group achieved scores in the average range compared with 59% in the control group. The preliminary results of this study support further investigation regarding DDI to investigate whether this method can consistently

Locus of word frequency effects in spelling to dictation: Still at the orthographic level!

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Bonin, Patrick; Laroche, Betty; Perret, Cyril

2016-11-01

The present study was aimed at testing the locus of word frequency effects in spelling to dictation: Are they located at the level of spoken word recognition (Chua & Rickard Liow, 2014) or at the level of the orthographic output lexicon (Delattre, Bonin, & Barry, 2006)? Words that varied on objective word frequency and on phonological neighborhood density were orally presented to adults who had to write them down. Following the additive factors logic (Sternberg, 1969, 2001), if word frequency in spelling to dictation influences a processing level, that is, the orthographic output level, different from that influenced by phonological neighborhood density, that is, spoken word recognition, the impact of the 2 factors should be additive. In contrast, their influence should be overadditive if they act at the same processing level in spelling to dictation, namely the spoken word recognition level. We found that both factors had a reliable influence on the spelling latencies but did not interact. This finding is in line with an orthographic output locus hypothesis of word frequency effects in spelling to dictation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Does Hearing Several Speakers Reduce Foreign Word Learning?

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Ludington, Jason Darryl

2016-01-01

Learning spoken word forms is a vital part of second language learning, and CALL lends itself well to this training. Not enough is known, however, about how auditory variation across speech tokens may affect receptive word learning. To find out, 144 Thai university students with no knowledge of the Patani Malay language learned 24 foreign words in…

Word learning emerges from the interaction of online referent selection and slow associative learning

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McMurray, Bob; Horst, Jessica S.; Samuelson, Larissa K.

2013-01-01

Classic approaches to word learning emphasize the problem of referential ambiguity: in any naming situation the referent of a novel word must be selected from many possible objects, properties, actions, etc. To solve this problem, researchers have posited numerous constraints, and inference strategies, but assume that determining the referent of a novel word is isomorphic to learning. We present an alternative model in which referent selection is an online process that is independent of long-term learning. This two timescale approach creates significant power in the developing system. We illustrate this with a dynamic associative model in which referent selection is simulated as dynamic competition between competing referents, and learning is simulated using associative (Hebbian) learning. This model can account for a range of findings including the delay in expressive vocabulary relative to receptive vocabulary, learning under high degrees of referential ambiguity using cross-situational statistics, accelerating (vocabulary explosion) and decelerating (power-law) learning rates, fast-mapping by mutual exclusivity (and differences in bilinguals), improvements in familiar word recognition with development, and correlations between individual differences in speed of processing and learning. Five theoretical points are illustrated. 1) Word learning does not require specialized processes – general association learning buttressed by dynamic competition can account for much of the literature. 2) The processes of recognizing familiar words are not different than those that support novel words (e.g., fast-mapping). 3) Online competition may allow the network (or child) to leverage information available in the task to augment performance or behavior despite what might be relatively slow learning or poor representations. 4) Even associative learning is more complex than previously thought – a major contributor to performance is the pruning of incorrect associations

Rethinking spoken fluency

OpenAIRE

McCarthy, Michael

2009-01-01

This article re-examines the notion of spoken fluency. Fluent and fluency are terms commonly used in everyday, lay language, and fluency, or lack of it, has social consequences. The article reviews the main approaches to understanding and measuring spoken fluency and suggest that spoken fluency is best understood as an interactive achievement, and offers the metaphor of ‘confluence’ to replace the term fluency. Many measures of spoken fluency are internal and monologue-based, whereas evidence...

Single dose antidepressant administration modulates the neural processing of self-referent personality trait words

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Miskowiak, Kamilla; Papadatou-Pastou, Marietta; Cowen, Philip J

2007-01-01

categorisation and recognition of self-referent personality trait words were assessed using event-related functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Reboxetine had no effect on neuronal response during self-referent categorisation of positive or negative personality trait words. However, in a subsequent...

A Descriptive Study of Registers Found in Spoken and Written Communication (A Semantic Analysis

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Nurul Hidayah

2016-07-01

Full Text Available This research is descriptive study of registers found in spoken and written communication. The type of this research is Descriptive Qualitative Research. In this research, the data of the study is register in spoken and written communication that are found in a book entitled "Communicating! Theory and Practice" and from internet. The data can be in the forms of words, phrases and abbreviation. In relation with method of collection data, the writer uses the library method as her instrument. The writer relates it to the study of register in spoken and written communication. The technique of analyzing the data using descriptive method. The types of register in this term will be separated into formal register and informal register, and identify the meaning of register.

Word Frequencies in Written and Spoken English

African Journals Online (AJOL)

R.B. Ruthven

gogy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cowie, A.P. 1998. Phraseology: Theory, Analysis, Applications. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Cowie, A.P. 1999. English Dictionaries for Foreign Learners. Oxford: The Clarendon Press. Read, J. and M. Ambrose, M. 1998. Towards a Multilingual Dictionary of Academic Words.

Electronic Control System Of Home Appliances Using Speech Command Words

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Aye Min Soe

2015-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract The main idea of this paper is to develop a speech recognition system. By using this system smart home appliances are controlled by spoken words. The spoken words chosen for recognition are Fan On Fan Off Light On Light Off TV On and TV Off. The input of the system takes speech signals to control home appliances. The proposed system has two main parts speech recognition and smart home appliances electronic control system. Speech recognition is implemented in MATLAB environment. In this process it contains two main modules feature extraction and feature matching. Mel Frequency Cepstral Coefficients MFCC is used for feature extraction. Vector Quantization VQ approach using clustering algorithm is applied for feature matching. In electrical home appliances control system RF module is used to carry command signal from PC to microcontroller wirelessly. Microcontroller is connected to driver circuit for relay and motor. The input commands are recognized very well. The system is a good performance to control home appliances by spoken words.

Activation of words with phonological overlap

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Claudia K. Friedrich

2013-08-01

Full Text Available Multiple lexical representations overlapping with the input (cohort neighbors are temporarily activated in the listener’s mental lexicon when speech unfolds in time. Activation for cohort neighbors appears to rapidly decline as soon as there is mismatch with the input. However, it is a matter of debate whether or not they are completely excluded from further processing. We recorded behavioral data and event-related brain potentials (ERPs in auditory-visual word onset priming during a lexical decision task. As primes we used the first two syllables of spoken German words. In a carrier word condition, the primes were extracted from spoken versions of the target words (ano-ANORAK 'anorak'. In a cohort neighbor condition, the primes were taken from words that overlap with the target word up to the second nucleus (ana- taken from ANANAS 'pineapple'. Relative to a control condition, where primes and targets were unrelated, lexical decision responses for cohort neighbors were delayed. This reveals that cohort neighbors are disfavored by the decision processes at the behavioral front end. In contrast, left-anterior ERPs reflected long-lasting facilitated processing of cohort neighbors. We interpret these results as evidence for extended parallel processing of cohort neighbors. That is, in parallel to the preparation and elicitation of delayed lexical decision responses to cohort neighbors, aspects of the processing system appear to keep track of those less efficient candidates.

Inferring Speaker Affect in Spoken Natural Language Communication

OpenAIRE

Pon-Barry, Heather Roberta

2012-01-01

The field of spoken language processing is concerned with creating computer programs that can understand human speech and produce human-like speech. Regarding the problem of understanding human speech, there is currently growing interest in moving beyond speech recognition (the task of transcribing the words in an audio stream) and towards machine listening—interpreting the full spectrum of information in an audio stream. One part of machine listening, the problem that this thesis focuses on, ...

TISK 1.0: An easy-to-use Python implementation of the time-invariant string kernel model of spoken word recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

You, Heejo; Magnuson, James S

2018-04-30

This article describes a new Python distribution of TISK, the time-invariant string kernel model of spoken word recognition (Hannagan et al. in Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 563, 2013). TISK is an interactive-activation model similar to the TRACE model (McClelland & Elman in Cognitive Psychology, 18, 1-86, 1986), but TISK replaces most of TRACE's reduplicated, time-specific nodes with theoretically motivated time-invariant, open-diphone nodes. We discuss the utility of computational models as theory development tools, the relative merits of TISK as compared to other models, and the ways in which researchers might use this implementation to guide their own research and theory development. We describe a TISK model that includes features that facilitate in-line graphing of simulation results, integration with standard Python data formats, and graph and data export. The distribution can be downloaded from https://github.com/maglab-uconn/TISK1.0 .

Brain-to-text: Decoding spoken phrases from phone representations in the brain

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Christian eHerff

2015-06-01

Full Text Available It has long been speculated whether communication between humans and machines based on natural speech related cortical activity is possible. Over the past decade, studies have suggested that it is feasible to recognize isolated aspects of speech from neural signals, such as auditory features, phones or one of a few isolated words. However, until now it remained an unsolved challenge to decode continuously spoken speech from the neural substrate associated with speech and language processing. Here, we show for the first time that continuously spoken speech can be decoded into the expressed words from intracranial electrocorticographic (ECoG recordings. Specifically, we implemented a system, which we call Brain-To-Text that models single phones, employs techniques from automatic speech recognition (ASR, and thereby transforms brain activity while speaking into the corresponding textual representation. Our results demonstrate that our system achieved word error rates as low as 25% and phone error rates below 50%. Additionally, our approach contributes to the current understanding of the neural basis of continuous speech production by identifying those cortical regions that hold substantial information about individual phones. In conclusion, the Brain-To-Text system described in this paper represents an important step towards human-machine communication based on imagined speech.

Let's all speak together! Exploring the masking effects of various languages on spoken word identification in multi-linguistic babble.

Science.gov (United States)

Gautreau, Aurore; Hoen, Michel; Meunier, Fanny

2013-01-01

This study aimed to characterize the linguistic interference that occurs during speech-in-speech comprehension by combining offline and online measures, which included an intelligibility task (at a -5 dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and 2 lexical decision tasks (at a -5 dB and 0 dB SNR) that were performed with French spoken target words. In these 3 experiments we always compared the masking effects of speech backgrounds (i.e., 4-talker babble) that were produced in the same language as the target language (i.e., French) or in unknown foreign languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) to the masking effects of corresponding non-speech backgrounds (i.e., speech-derived fluctuating noise). The fluctuating noise contained similar spectro-temporal information as babble but lacked linguistic information. At -5 dB SNR, both tasks revealed significantly divergent results between the unknown languages (i.e., Irish and Italian) with Italian and French hindering French target word identification to a similar extent, whereas Irish led to significantly better performances on these tasks. By comparing the performances obtained with speech and fluctuating noise backgrounds, we were able to evaluate the effect of each language. The intelligibility task showed a significant difference between babble and fluctuating noise for French, Irish and Italian, suggesting acoustic and linguistic effects for each language. However, the lexical decision task, which reduces the effect of post-lexical interference, appeared to be more accurate, as it only revealed a linguistic effect for French. Thus, although French and Italian had equivalent masking effects on French word identification, the nature of their interference was different. This finding suggests that the differences observed between the masking effects of Italian and Irish can be explained at an acoustic level but not at a linguistic level.

Young Children Follow Pointing over Words in Interpreting Acts of Reference

Science.gov (United States)

Grassmann, Susanne; Tomasello, Michael

2010-01-01

Adults refer young children's attention to things in two basic ways: through the use of pointing (and other deictic gestures) and words (and other linguistic conventions). In the current studies, we referred young children (2- and 4-year-olds) to things in conflicting ways, that is, by pointing to one object while indicating linguistically (in…

Spoken Grammar for Chinese Learners

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

徐晓敏

2013-01-01

Currently, the concept of spoken grammar has been mentioned among Chinese teachers. However, teach-ers in China still have a vague idea of spoken grammar. Therefore this dissertation examines what spoken grammar is and argues that native speakers’ model of spoken grammar needs to be highlighted in the classroom teaching.

Word Order Acquisition in Persian Speaking Children

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Nahid Jalilevand

2017-06-01

Discussion: Despite the fact that the spoken-Persian language has no strict word order, Persian-speaking children tend to use other logically possible orders of subject (S, verb (V, and object (O lesser than the SOV structure.

Spoken Dialogue Systems

CERN Document Server

Jokinen, Kristiina

2009-01-01

Considerable progress has been made in recent years in the development of dialogue systems that support robust and efficient human-machine interaction using spoken language. Spoken dialogue technology allows various interactive applications to be built and used for practical purposes, and research focuses on issues that aim to increase the system's communicative competence by including aspects of error correction, cooperation, multimodality, and adaptation in context. This book gives a comprehensive view of state-of-the-art techniques that are used to build spoken dialogue systems. It provides

Attention demands of spoken word planning: A review

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Roelofs, A.P.A.; Piai, V.

2011-01-01

Attention and language are among the most intensively researched abilities in the cognitive neurosciences, but the relation between these abilities has largely been neglected. There is increasing evidence, however, that linguistic processes, such as those underlying the planning of words, cannot

Phonological and Semantic Knowledge Are Causal Influences on Learning to Read Words in Chinese

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Zhou, Lulin; Duff, Fiona J.; Hulme, Charles

2015-01-01

We report a training study that assesses whether teaching the pronunciation and meaning of spoken words improves Chinese children's subsequent attempts to learn to read the words. Teaching the pronunciations of words helps children to learn to read those same words, and teaching the pronunciations and meanings improves learning still further.…

Variation Patterns in Across-Word Regressive Assimilation in Picard: An Optimality Theoretic Account.

Science.gov (United States)

Cardoso, Walcir

2001-01-01

Offers an optimality theoretic account for the phonological process of across-word regressive assimilation (AWRA) in Picard, a Gallo-Romance dialect spoken in the Picardie region in Northern France and Southern Belgium. Focuses on the varieties spoken in the Vimeu region of France. Examines one particular topic in the analysis of AWRA: the…

Auditory semantic processing in dichotic listening: effects of competing speech, ear of presentation, and sentential bias on N400s to spoken words in context.

Science.gov (United States)

Carey, Daniel; Mercure, Evelyne; Pizzioli, Fabrizio; Aydelott, Jennifer

2014-12-01

The effects of ear of presentation and competing speech on N400s to spoken words in context were examined in a dichotic sentence priming paradigm. Auditory sentence contexts with a strong or weak semantic bias were presented in isolation to the right or left ear, or with a competing signal presented in the other ear at a SNR of -12 dB. Target words were congruent or incongruent with the sentence meaning. Competing speech attenuated N400s to both congruent and incongruent targets, suggesting that the demand imposed by a competing signal disrupts the engagement of semantic comprehension processes. Bias strength affected N400 amplitudes differentially depending upon ear of presentation: weak contexts presented to the le/RH produced a more negative N400 response to targets than strong contexts, whereas no significant effect of bias strength was observed for sentences presented to the re/LH. The results are consistent with a model of semantic processing in which the RH relies on integrative processing strategies in the interpretation of sentence-level meaning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Locus of Word Frequency Effects in Spelling to Dictation: Still at the Orthographic Level!

Science.gov (United States)

Bonin, Patrick; Laroche, Betty; Perret, Cyril

2016-01-01

The present study was aimed at testing the locus of word frequency effects in spelling to dictation: Are they located at the level of spoken word recognition (Chua & Rickard Liow, 2014) or at the level of the orthographic output lexicon (Delattre, Bonin, & Barry, 2006)? Words that varied on objective word frequency and on phonological…

Spoken word production: A theory of lexical access

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Levelt, W.J.M.

2001-01-01

A core operation in speech production is the preparation of words from a semantic base. The theory of lexical access reviewed in this article covers a sequence of processing stages beginning with the speaker's focusing on a target concept and ending with the initiation of articulation. The initial

Cross-cultural evidence for multimodal motherese: Asian Indian mothers' adaptive use of synchronous words and gestures.

Science.gov (United States)

Gogate, Lakshmi; Maganti, Madhavilatha; Bahrick, Lorraine E

2015-01-01

In a quasi-experimental study, 24 Asian Indian mothers were asked to teach novel (target) names for two objects and two actions to their children of three different levels of lexical mapping development: prelexical (5-8 months), early lexical (9-17 months), and advanced lexical (20-43 months). Target naming (n=1482) and non-target naming (other, n=2411) were coded for synchronous spoken words and object motion (multimodal motherese) and other naming styles. Indian mothers abundantly used multimodal motherese with target words to highlight novel word-referent relations, paralleling earlier findings from American mothers. They used it with target words more often for prelexical infants than for advanced lexical children and to name target actions later in children's development. Unlike American mothers, Indian mothers also abundantly used multimodal motherese to name target objects later in children's development. Finally, monolingual mothers who spoke a verb-dominant Indian language used multimodal motherese more often than bilingual mothers who also spoke noun-dominant English to their children. The findings suggest that within a dynamic and reciprocal mother-infant communication system, multimodal motherese adapts to unify novel words and referents across cultures. It adapts to children's level of lexical development and to ambient language-specific lexical dominance hierarchies. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The visual-auditory color-word Stroop asymmetry and its time course

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Roelofs, A.P.A.

2005-01-01

Four experiments examined crossmodal versions of the Stroop task in order (1) to look for Stroop asymmetries in color naming, spoken-word naming, and written-word naming and to evaluate the time course of these asymmetries, and (2) to compare these findings to current models of the Stroop effect.

Children show right-lateralized effects of spoken word-form learning.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Anni Nora

Full Text Available It is commonly thought that phonological learning is different in young children compared to adults, possibly due to the speech processing system not yet having reached full native-language specialization. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms of phonological learning in children are poorly understood. We employed magnetoencephalography (MEG to track cortical correlates of incidental learning of meaningless word forms over two days as 6-8-year-olds overtly repeated them. Native (Finnish pseudowords were compared with words of foreign sound structure (Korean to investigate whether the cortical learning effects would be more dependent on previous proficiency in the language rather than maturational factors. Half of the items were encountered four times on the first day and once more on the following day. Incidental learning of these recurring word forms manifested as improved repetition accuracy and a correlated reduction of activation in the right superior temporal cortex, similarly for both languages and on both experimental days, and in contrast to a salient left-hemisphere emphasis previously reported in adults. We propose that children, when learning new word forms in either native or foreign language, are not yet constrained by left-hemispheric segmental processing and established sublexical native-language representations. Instead, they may rely more on supra-segmental contours and prosody.

Engaging Minority Youth in Diabetes Prevention Efforts Through a Participatory, Spoken-Word Social Marketing Campaign.

Science.gov (United States)

Rogers, Elizabeth A; Fine, Sarah C; Handley, Margaret A; Davis, Hodari B; Kass, James; Schillinger, Dean

2017-07-01

To examine the reach, efficacy, and adoption of The Bigger Picture, a type 2 diabetes (T2DM) social marketing campaign that uses spoken-word public service announcements (PSAs) to teach youth about socioenvironmental conditions influencing T2DM risk. A nonexperimental pilot dissemination evaluation through high school assemblies and a Web-based platform were used. The study took place in San Francisco Bay Area high schools during 2013. In the study, 885 students were sampled from 13 high schools. A 1-hour assembly provided data, poet performances, video PSAs, and Web-based platform information. A Web-based platform featured the campaign Web site and social media. Student surveys preassembly and postassembly (knowledge, attitudes), assembly observations, school demographics, counts of Web-based utilization, and adoption were measured. Descriptive statistics, McNemar's χ 2 test, and mixed modeling accounting for clustering were used to analyze data. The campaign included 23 youth poet-created PSAs. It reached >2400 students (93% self-identified non-white) through school assemblies and has garnered >1,000,000 views of Web-based video PSAs. School participants demonstrated increased short-term knowledge of T2DM as preventable, with risk driven by socioenvironmental factors (34% preassembly identified environmental causes as influencing T2DM risk compared to 83% postassembly), and perceived greater personal salience of T2DM risk reduction (p < .001 for all). The campaign has been adopted by regional public health departments. The Bigger Picture campaign showed its potential for reaching and engaging diverse youth. Campaign messaging is being adopted by stakeholders.

The role of syllabic structure in French visual word recognition.

Science.gov (United States)

Rouibah, A; Taft, M

2001-03-01

Two experiments are reported in which the processing units involved in the reading of French polysyllabic words are examined. A comparison was made between units following the maximal onset principle (i.e., the spoken syllable) and units following the maximal coda principle (i.e., the basic orthographic syllabic structure [BOSS]). In the first experiment, it took longer to recognize that a syllable was the beginning of a word (e.g., the FOE of FOETUS) than to make the same judgment of a BOSS (e.g., FOET). The fact that a BOSS plus one letter (e.g., FOETU) also took longer to judge than the BOSS indicated that the maximal coda principle applies to the units of processing in French. The second experiment confirmed this, using a lexical decision task with the different units being demarcated on the basis of color. It was concluded that the syllabic structure that is so clearly manifested in the spoken form of French is not involved in visual word recognition.

Word Learning in Adults with Second-Language Experience: Effects of Phonological and Referent Familiarity

Science.gov (United States)

Kaushanskaya, Margarita; Yoo, Jeewon; Van Hecke, Stephanie

2013-01-01

Purpose: The goal of this research was to examine whether phonological familiarity exerts different effects on novel word learning for familiar versus unfamiliar referents and whether successful word learning is associated with increased second-language experience. Method: Eighty-one adult native English speakers with various levels of Spanish…

Using Key Part-of-Speech Analysis to Examine Spoken Discourse by Taiwanese EFL Learners

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Yen-Liang

2015-01-01

This study reports on a corpus analysis of samples of spoken discourse between a group of British and Taiwanese adolescents, with the aim of exploring the statistically significant differences in the use of grammatical categories between the two groups of participants. The key word method extended to a part-of-speech level using the web-based…

The Self-Organization of a Spoken Word

Science.gov (United States)

Holden, John G.; Rajaraman, Srinivasan

2012-01-01

Pronunciation time probability density and hazard functions from large speeded word naming data sets were assessed for empirical patterns consistent with multiplicative and reciprocal feedback dynamics – interaction dominant dynamics. Lognormal and inverse power law distributions are associated with multiplicative and interdependent dynamics in many natural systems. Mixtures of lognormal and inverse power law distributions offered better descriptions of the participant’s distributions than the ex-Gaussian or ex-Wald – alternatives corresponding to additive, superposed, component processes. The evidence for interaction dominant dynamics suggests fundamental links between the observed coordinative synergies that support speech production and the shapes of pronunciation time distributions. PMID:22783213

A connectionist model for the simulation of human spoken-word recognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kuijk, D.J. van; Wittenburg, P.; Dijkstra, A.F.J.; Den Brinker, B.P.L.M.; Beek, P.J.; Brand, A.N.; Maarse, F.J.; Mulder, L.J.M.

1999-01-01

A new psycholinguistically motivated and neural network base model of human word recognition is presented. In contrast to earlier models it uses real speech as input. At the word layer acoustical and temporal information is stored by sequences of connected sensory neurons that pass on sensor

Stimulus-independent semantic bias misdirects word recognition in older adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Rogers, Chad S; Wingfield, Arthur

2015-07-01

Older adults' normally adaptive use of semantic context to aid in word recognition can have a negative consequence of causing misrecognitions, especially when the word actually spoken sounds similar to a word that more closely fits the context. Word-pairs were presented to young and older adults, with the second word of the pair masked by multi-talker babble varying in signal-to-noise ratio. Results confirmed older adults' greater tendency to misidentify words based on their semantic context compared to the young adults, and to do so with a higher level of confidence. This age difference was unaffected by differences in the relative level of acoustic masking.

A real-time spoken-language system for interactive problem-solving, combining linguistic and statistical technology for improved spoken language understanding

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Robert C.; Cohen, Michael H.

1993-09-01

Under this effort, SRI has developed spoken-language technology for interactive problem solving, featuring real-time performance for up to several thousand word vocabularies, high semantic accuracy, habitability within the domain, and robustness to many sources of variability. Although the technology is suitable for many applications, efforts to date have focused on developing an Air Travel Information System (ATIS) prototype application. SRI's ATIS system has been evaluated in four ARPA benchmark evaluations, and has consistently been at or near the top in performance. These achievements are the result of SRI's technical progress in speech recognition, natural-language processing, and speech and natural-language integration.

Is spoken Danish less intelligible than Swedish?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gooskens, Charlotte; van Heuven, Vincent J.; van Bezooijen, Renee; Pacilly, Jos J. A.

2010-01-01

The most straightforward way to explain why Danes understand spoken Swedish relatively better than Swedes understand spoken Danish would be that spoken Danish is intrinsically a more difficult language to understand than spoken Swedish. We discuss circumstantial evidence suggesting that Danish is

Cross-Cultural Evidence for Multimodal Motherese: Asian-Indian Mothers’ Adaptive Use of Synchronous Words and Gestures

Science.gov (United States)

Maganti, Madhavilatha; Bahrick, Lorraine E.

2014-01-01

In a quasi-experimental study, twenty-four Asian-Indian mothers were asked to teach novel (target) names for two objects and two actions to their children of three different levels of lexical-mapping development, pre-lexical (5–8 months), early-lexical (9–17 months), and advanced-lexical (20–43 months). Target (N = 1482) and non-target (other, N = 2411) naming was coded for synchronous spoken words and object motion (multimodal motherese) and other naming styles. Indian mothers abundantly used multimodal motherese with target words to highlight novel word-referent relations, paralleling earlier findings from American mothers (Gogate, Bahrick, & Watson, 2000). They used it with target words more often for pre-lexical infants than advanced-lexical children, and to name target actions later into children’s development. Unlike American mothers, Indian mothers also abundantly used multimodal motherese to name target objects later into children’s development. Finally, monolingual mothers who spoke a verb-dominant Indian language used multimodal motherese more often than bilingual mothers who also spoke noun-dominant English to their child. The findings suggest that within a dynamic and reciprocal mother-infant communication system, multimodal motherese adapts to unify novel words and referents across cultures. It adapts to children’s level of lexical development and to ambient language-specific lexical-dominance hierarchies. PMID:25285369

Prosody and Spoken Word Recognition in Early and Late Spanish-English Bilingual Individuals

Science.gov (United States)

Boutsen, Frank R.; Dvorak, Justin D.; Deweber, Derick D.

2017-01-01

Purpose: This study was conducted to compare the influence of word properties on gated single-word recognition in monolingual and bilingual individuals under conditions of native and nonnative accent and to determine whether word-form prosody facilitates recognition in bilingual individuals. Method: Word recognition was assessed in monolingual and…

The Role of Attentional Priority of the Agent in the Acquisition of Word Reference.

Science.gov (United States)

Grace, Janet; Suci, George J.

A study is undertaken to determine whether the nonlinguistic priority of the agent of an action facilitates the comprehension of word reference. The subjects were twelve male and twelve female infants at the one word stage of language production. The children were presented with three nonsense names (presented as part of a narration of a filmed…

Theology of Jesus’ words from the cross

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bogdan Zbroja

2012-09-01

Full Text Available The article presents a theological message of the last words that Jesus spoke from the height of the cross. Layout content is conveyed in three kinds of Christ’s relations: the words addressed to God the Father; the words addressed to the good people standing by the cross; the so-called declarations that the Master had spoken to anyone but uttered them in general. All these words speak of the Master’s love. They express His full awareness of what is being done and of His decision voluntarily taken. Above all, it is revealed in the Lord’s statements His obedience to the will of God expressed in the inspired words of the Holy Scriptures. Jesus fulfills all the prophecies of the Old Testament by pronounced words and accomplished works that will become content of the New Testament.

Bilingualism affects 9-month-old infants' expectations about how words refer to kinds.

Science.gov (United States)

Byers-Heinlein, Krista

2017-01-01

Infants are precocious word learners, and seem to possess systematic expectations about how words refer to object kinds. For example, while monolingual infants show a one-to-one mapping bias (e.g. mutual exclusivity), expecting each object to have only one basic level label, previous research has shown that this is less robust in bi- and multilinguals aged 1.5 years and older. This study examined the early origins of such one-to-one mapping biases by comparing monolingual and bilingual 9-10-month-olds' expectations about the relationship between labels and object kinds. In a violation of expectation paradigm, infants heard a speaker name hidden objects with either one label ('I see a mouba! I see a mouba!') or two labels ('I see a camo! I see a tenda!'). An occluder moved to reveal two objects that were either identical or of different kinds. Monolingual infants looked longest when two labels were associated with identical objects, and when one label was associated with objects of different kinds, showing that they found these outcomes unexpected. This replicated previous findings showing that monolinguals expect that distinct words label distinct object kinds (Dewar & Xu, ). Bilinguals looked equally to the outcomes regardless of the number of labels, showing no such expectations. This finding indicates that bilingualism influences young infants' expectations about how words refer to kinds, and more broadly supports the position that language experience contributes to the development of word learning heuristics. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Word order and information structure in Makhuwa-Enahara

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wal, Guenever Johanna van der

2009-01-01

This thesis investigates the grammar of Makhuwa-Enahara, a Bantu language spoken in the north of Mozambique. The information structure is an influential factor in this language, determining the word order and the use of special conjugations known as conjoint and disjoint verb forms. The thesis

Grasp it loudly! Supporting actions with semantically congruent spoken action words.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Raphaël Fargier

Full Text Available Evidence for cross-talk between motor and language brain structures has accumulated over the past several years. However, while a significant amount of research has focused on the interaction between language perception and action, little attention has been paid to the potential impact of language production on overt motor behaviour. The aim of the present study was to test whether verbalizing during a grasp-to-displace action would affect motor behaviour and, if so, whether this effect would depend on the semantic content of the pronounced word (Experiment I. Furthermore, we sought to test the stability of such effects in a different group of participants and investigate at which stage of the motor act language intervenes (Experiment II. For this, participants were asked to reach, grasp and displace an object while overtly pronouncing verbal descriptions of the action ("grasp" and "put down" or unrelated words (e.g. "butterfly" and "pigeon". Fine-grained analyses of several kinematic parameters such as velocity peaks revealed that when participants produced action-related words their movements became faster compared to conditions in which they did not verbalize or in which they produced words that were not related to the action. These effects likely result from the functional interaction between semantic retrieval of the words and the planning and programming of the action. Therefore, links between (action language and motor structures are significant to the point that language can refine overt motor behaviour.

Word order variation and foregrounding of complement clauses

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christensen, Tanya Karoli; Jensen, Torben Juel

2015-01-01

Through mixed models analyses of complement clauses in a corpus of spoken Danish we examine the role of sentence adverbials in relation to a word order distinction in Scandinavian signalled by the relative position of sentence adverbials and finite verb (V>Adv vs. Adv>V). The type of sentence...

A Comparison between Written and Spoken Narratives in Aphasia

Science.gov (United States)

Behrns, Ingrid; Wengelin, Asa; Broberg, Malin; Hartelius, Lena

2009-01-01

The aim of the present study was to explore how a personal narrative told by a group of eight persons with aphasia differed between written and spoken language, and to compare this with findings from 10 participants in a reference group. The stories were analysed through holistic assessments made by 60 participants without experience of aphasia…

Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People's Emotions.

Science.gov (United States)

Weis, Patrick P; Herbert, Cornelia

2017-01-01

According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person ("my," "his") or the non-referential negation term ("no") as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions ( M. Zygomaticus , M. Corrugator ), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader's self (e.g., "my happiness," "my joy") than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., "his happiness," "his joy"), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real communication partner is present

The role of visual representations within working memory for paired-associate and serial order of spoken words.

Science.gov (United States)

Ueno, Taiji; Saito, Satoru

2013-09-01

Caplan and colleagues have recently explained paired-associate learning and serial-order learning with a single-mechanism computational model by assuming differential degrees of isolation. Specifically, two items in a pair can be grouped together and associated to positional codes that are somewhat isolated from the rest of the items. In contrast, the degree of isolation among the studied items is lower in serial-order learning. One of the key predictions drawn from this theory is that any variables that help chunking of two adjacent items into a group should be beneficial to paired-associate learning, more than serial-order learning. To test this idea, the role of visual representations in memory for spoken verbal materials (i.e., imagery) was compared between two types of learning directly. Experiment 1 showed stronger effects of word concreteness and of concurrent presentation of irrelevant visual stimuli (dynamic visual noise: DVN) in paired-associate memory than in serial-order memory, consistent with the prediction. Experiment 2 revealed that the irrelevant visual stimuli effect was boosted when the participants had to actively maintain the information within working memory, rather than feed it to long-term memory for subsequent recall, due to cue overloading. This indicates that the sensory input from irrelevant visual stimuli can reach and affect visual representations of verbal items within working memory, and that this disruption can be attenuated when the information within working memory can be efficiently supported by long-term memory for subsequent recall.

EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE IN SPOKEN AND SIGNED STORIES TOLD BY A DEAF CHILD WITH A COCHLEAR IMPLANT: WORDS, SIGNS OR PARALINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ritva Takkinen

2011-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper the use and quality of the evaluative language produced by a bilingual child in a story-telling situation is analysed. The subject, an 11-year-old Finnish boy, Jimmy, is bilingual in Finnish sign language (FinSL and spoken Finnish.He was born deaf but got a cochlear implant at the age of five.The data consist of a spoken and a signed version of “The Frog Story”. The analysis shows that evaluative devices and expressions differ in the spoken and signed stories told by the child. In his Finnish story he uses mostly lexical devices – comments on a character and the character’s actions as well as quoted speech occasionally combined with prosodic features. In his FinSL story he uses both lexical and paralinguistic devices in a balanced way.

Two-year-olds exclude novel objects as potential referents of novel words based on pragmatics.

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Grassmann, Susanne; Stracke, Marén; Tomasello, Michael

2009-09-01

Many studies have established that children tend to exclude objects for which they already have a name as potential referents of novel words. In the current study we asked whether this exclusion can be triggered by social-pragmatic context alone without pre-existing words as blockers. Two-year-old children watched an adult looking at a novel object while saying a novel word with excitement. In one condition the adult had not seen the object beforehand, and so the children interpreted the adult's utterance as referring to the gazed-at object. In another condition the adult and child had previously played jointly with the gazed-at object. In this case, children less often assumed that the adult was referring to the object but rather they searched for an alternative referent--presumably because they inferred that the gazed-at object was old news in their common ground with the adult and so not worthy of excited labeling. Since this inference based on exclusion is highly similar to that underlying the Principle of Contrast/Mutual Exclusivity, we propose that this principle is not purely lexical but rather is based on children's understanding of how and why people direct one another's attention to things either with or without language.

Spoken Word Recognition and Serial Recall of Words from Components in the Phonological Network

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Siew, Cynthia S. Q.; Vitevitch, Michael S.

2016-01-01

Network science uses mathematical techniques to study complex systems such as the phonological lexicon (Vitevitch, 2008). The phonological network consists of a "giant component" (the largest connected component of the network) and "lexical islands" (smaller groups of words that are connected to each other, but not to the giant…

Is negative self-referent bias an endophenotype for depression? An fMRI study of emotional self-referent words in twins at high vs. low risk of depression.

Science.gov (United States)

Miskowiak, K W; Larsen, J E; Harmer, C J; Siebner, H R; Kessing, L V; Macoveanu, J; Vinberg, M

2018-01-15

Negative cognitive bias and aberrant neural processing of self-referent emotional words seem to be trait-marks of depression. However, it is unclear whether these neurocognitive changes are present in unaffected first-degree relatives and constitute an illness endophenotype. Fifty-three healthy, never-depressed monozygotic or dizygotic twins with a co-twin history of depression (high-risk group: n = 26) or no first-degree family history of depression (low-risk group: n = 27) underwent neurocognitive testing and functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) as part of a follow-up cohort study. Participants performed a self-referent emotional word categorisation task and free word recall task followed by a recognition task during fMRI. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing mood, personality traits and coping strategies. High-risk and low-risk twins (age, mean ± SD: 40 ± 11) were well-balanced for demographic variables, mood, coping and neuroticism. High-risk twins showed lower accuracy during self-referent categorisation of emotional words independent of valence and more false recollections of negative words than low-risk twins during free recall. Functional MRI yielded no differences between high-risk and low-risk twins in retrieval-specific neural activity for positive or negative words or during the recognition of negative versus positive words within the hippocampus or prefrontal cortex. The subtle display of negative recall bias is consistent with the hypothesis that self-referent negative memory bias is an endophenotype for depression. High-risk twins' lower categorisation accuracy adds to the evidence for valence-independent cognitive deficits in individuals at familial risk for depression. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Auditory Perception and Word Recognition in Cantonese-Chinese Speaking Children with and without Specific Language Impairment

Science.gov (United States)

Kidd, Joanna C.; Shum, Kathy K.; Wong, Anita M.-Y.; Ho, Connie S.-H.

2017-01-01

Auditory processing and spoken word recognition difficulties have been observed in Specific Language Impairment (SLI), raising the possibility that auditory perceptual deficits disrupt word recognition and, in turn, phonological processing and oral language. In this study, fifty-seven kindergarten children with SLI and fifty-three language-typical…

Introducing Spoken Dialogue Systems into Intelligent Environments

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Heinroth, Tobias

2013-01-01

Introducing Spoken Dialogue Systems into Intelligent Environments outlines the formalisms of a novel knowledge-driven framework for spoken dialogue management and presents the implementation of a model-based Adaptive Spoken Dialogue Manager(ASDM) called OwlSpeak. The authors have identified three stakeholders that potentially influence the behavior of the ASDM: the user, the SDS, and a complex Intelligent Environment (IE) consisting of various devices, services, and task descriptions. The theoretical foundation of a working ontology-based spoken dialogue description framework, the prototype implementation of the ASDM, and the evaluation activities that are presented as part of this book contribute to the ongoing spoken dialogue research by establishing the fertile ground of model-based adaptive spoken dialogue management. This monograph is ideal for advanced undergraduate students, PhD students, and postdocs as well as academic and industrial researchers and developers in speech and multimodal interactive ...

Does Set for Variability Mediate the Influence of Vocabulary Knowledge on the Development of Word Recognition Skills?

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Tunmer, William E.; Chapman, James W.

2012-01-01

This study investigated the hypothesis that vocabulary influences word recognition skills indirectly through "set for variability", the ability to determine the correct pronunciation of approximations to spoken English words. One hundred forty children participating in a 3-year longitudinal study were administered reading and…

Effects of Word Frequency and Transitional Probability on Word Reading Durations of Younger and Older Speakers.

Science.gov (United States)

Moers, Cornelia; Meyer, Antje; Janse, Esther

2017-06-01

High-frequency units are usually processed faster than low-frequency units in language comprehension and language production. Frequency effects have been shown for words as well as word combinations. Word co-occurrence effects can be operationalized in terms of transitional probability (TP). TPs reflect how probable a word is, conditioned by its right or left neighbouring word. This corpus study investigates whether three different age groups-younger children (8-12 years), adolescents (12-18 years) and older (62-95 years) Dutch speakers-show frequency and TP context effects on spoken word durations in reading aloud, and whether age groups differ in the size of these effects. Results show consistent effects of TP on word durations for all age groups. Thus, TP seems to influence the processing of words in context, beyond the well-established effect of word frequency, across the entire age range. However, the study also indicates that age groups differ in the size of TP effects, with older adults having smaller TP effects than adolescent readers. Our results show that probabilistic reduction effects in reading aloud may at least partly stem from contextual facilitation that leads to faster reading times in skilled readers, as well as in young language learners.

Recurrent Word Combinations in EAP Test-Taker Writing: Differences between High- and Low-Proficiency Levels

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Appel, Randy; Wood, David

2016-01-01

The correct use of frequently occurring word combinations represents an important part of language proficiency in spoken and written discourse. This study investigates the use of English-language recurrent word combinations in low-level and high-level L2 English academic essays sourced from the Canadian Academic English Language (CAEL) assessment.…

Speech Perception Engages a General Timer: Evidence from a Divided Attention Word Identification Task

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Casini, Laurence; Burle, Boris; Nguyen, Noel

2009-01-01

Time is essential to speech. The duration of speech segments plays a critical role in the perceptual identification of these segments, and therefore in that of spoken words. Here, using a French word identification task, we show that vowels are perceived as shorter when attention is divided between two tasks, as compared to a single task control…

Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People’s Emotions

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Weis, Patrick P.; Herbert, Cornelia

2017-01-01

According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person (“my,” “his”) or the non-referential negation term (“no”) as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant) to 9 (very pleasant). Facial expressions (M. Zygomaticus, M. Corrugator), heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader’s self (e.g., “my happiness,” “my joy”) than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., “his happiness,” “his joy”), suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no real

Bodily Reactions to Emotional Words Referring to Own versus Other People’s Emotions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Patrick P. Weis

2017-08-01

Full Text Available According to embodiment theories, language and emotion affect each other. In line with this, several previous studies investigated changes in bodily responses including facial expressions, heart rate or skin conductance during affective evaluation of emotional words and sentences. This study investigates the embodiment of emotional word processing from a social perspective by experimentally manipulating the emotional valence of a word and its personal reference. Stimuli consisted of pronoun-noun pairs, i.e., positive, negative, and neutral nouns paired with possessive pronouns of the first or the third person (“my,” “his” or the non-referential negation term (“no” as controls. Participants had to quickly evaluate the word pairs by key presses as either positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the subjective feelings they elicit. Hereafter, they elaborated the intensity of the feeling on a non-verbal scale from 1 (very unpleasant to 9 (very pleasant. Facial expressions (M. Zygomaticus, M. Corrugator, heart rate, and, for exploratory purposes, skin conductance were recorded continuously during the spontaneous and elaborate evaluation tasks. Positive pronoun-noun phrases were responded to the quickest and judged more often as positive when they were self-related, i.e., related to the reader’s self (e.g., “my happiness,” “my joy” than when related to the self of a virtual other (e.g., “his happiness,” “his joy”, suggesting a self-positivity bias in the emotional evaluation of word stimuli. Physiologically, evaluation of emotional, unlike neutral pronoun-noun pairs initially elicited an increase in mean heart rate irrespective of stimulus reference. Changes in facial muscle activity, M. Zygomaticus in particular, were most pronounced during spontaneous evaluation of positive other-related pronoun-noun phrases in line with theoretical assumptions that facial expressions are socially embedded even in situation where no

Learning Spoken Words via the Ears and Eyes: Evidence from 30-Month-Old Children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mélanie Havy

2017-12-01

Full Text Available From the very first moments of their lives, infants are able to link specific movements of the visual articulators to auditory speech signals. However, recent evidence indicates that infants focus primarily on auditory speech signals when learning new words. Here, we ask whether 30-month-old children are able to learn new words based solely on visible speech information, and whether information from both auditory and visual modalities is available after learning in only one modality. To test this, children were taught new lexical mappings. One group of children experienced the words in the auditory modality (i.e., acoustic form of the word with no accompanying face. Another group experienced the words in the visual modality (seeing a silent talking face. Lexical recognition was tested in either the learning modality or in the other modality. Results revealed successful word learning in either modality. Results further showed cross-modal recognition following an auditory-only, but not a visual-only, experience of the words. Together, these findings suggest that visible speech becomes increasingly informative for the purpose of lexical learning, but that an auditory-only experience evokes a cross-modal representation of the words.

Two-year-olds' sensitivity to subphonemic mismatch during online spoken word recognition.

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Paquette-Smith, Melissa; Fecher, Natalie; Johnson, Elizabeth K

2016-11-01

Sensitivity to noncontrastive subphonemic detail plays an important role in adult speech processing, but little is known about children's use of this information during online word recognition. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigate 2-year-olds' sensitivity to a specific type of subphonemic detail: coarticulatory mismatch. In Experiment 1, toddlers viewed images of familiar objects (e.g., a boat and a book) while hearing labels containing appropriate or inappropriate coarticulation. Inappropriate coarticulation was created by cross-splicing the coda of the target word onto the onset of another word that shared the same onset and nucleus (e.g., to create boat, the final consonant of boat was cross-spliced onto the initial CV of bone). We tested 24-month-olds and 29-month-olds in this paradigm. Both age groups behaved similarly, readily detecting the inappropriate coarticulation (i.e., showing better recognition of identity-spliced than cross-spliced items). In Experiment 2, we asked how children's sensitivity to subphonemic mismatch compared to their sensitivity to phonemic mismatch. Twenty-nine-month-olds were presented with targets that contained either a phonemic (e.g., the final consonant of boat was spliced onto the initial CV of bait) or a subphonemic mismatch (e.g., the final consonant of boat was spliced onto the initial CV of bone). Here, the subphonemic (coarticulatory) mismatch was not nearly as disruptive to children's word recognition as a phonemic mismatch. Taken together, our findings support the view that 2-year-olds, like adults, use subphonemic information to optimize online word recognition.

Professionals' Guidance about Spoken Language Multilingualism and Spoken Language Choice for Children with Hearing Loss

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Crowe, Kathryn; McLeod, Sharynne

2016-01-01

The purpose of this research was to investigate factors that influence professionals' guidance of parents of children with hearing loss regarding spoken language multilingualism and spoken language choice. Sixteen professionals who provide services to children and young people with hearing loss completed an online survey, rating the importance of…

The Role of Secondary-Stressed and Unstressed-Unreduced Syllables in Word Recognition: Acoustic and Perceptual Studies with Russian Learners of English

Science.gov (United States)

Banzina, Elina; Dilley, Laura C.; Hewitt, Lynne E.

2016-01-01

The importance of secondary-stressed (SS) and unstressed-unreduced (UU) syllable accuracy for spoken word recognition in English is as yet unclear. An acoustic study first investigated Russian learners' of English production of SS and UU syllables. Significant vowel quality and duration reductions in Russian-spoken SS and UU vowels were found,…

The Effect of Background Noise on the Word Activation Process in Nonnative Spoken-Word Recognition

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Scharenborg, Odette; Coumans, Juul M. J.; van Hout, Roeland

2018-01-01

This article investigates 2 questions: (1) does the presence of background noise lead to a differential increase in the number of simultaneously activated candidate words in native and nonnative listening? And (2) do individual differences in listeners' cognitive and linguistic abilities explain the differential effect of background noise on…

Spoken Narrative Assessment: A Supplementary Measure of Children's Creativity

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Wong, Miranda Kit-Yi; So, Wing Chee

2016-01-01

This study developed a spoken narrative (i.e., storytelling) assessment as a supplementary measure of children's creativity. Both spoken and gestural contents of children's spoken narratives were coded to assess their verbal and nonverbal creativity. The psychometric properties of the coding system for the spoken narrative assessment were…

Grammatical Deviations in the Spoken and Written Language of Hebrew-Speaking Children With Hearing Impairments.

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Tur-Kaspa, Hana; Dromi, Esther

2001-04-01

The present study reports a detailed analysis of written and spoken language samples of Hebrew-speaking children aged 11-13 years who are deaf. It focuses on the description of various grammatical deviations in the two modalities. Participants were 13 students with hearing impairments (HI) attending special classrooms integrated into two elementary schools in Tel Aviv, Israel, and 9 students with normal hearing (NH) in regular classes in these same schools. Spoken and written language samples were collected from all participants using the same five preplanned elicitation probes. Students with HI were found to display significantly more grammatical deviations than their NH peers in both their spoken and written language samples. Most importantly, between-modality differences were noted. The participants with HI exhibited significantly more grammatical deviations in their written language samples than in their spoken samples. However, the distribution of grammatical deviations across categories was similar in the two modalities. The most common grammatical deviations in order of their frequency were failure to supply obligatory morphological markers, failure to mark grammatical agreement, and the omission of a major syntactic constituent in a sentence. Word order violations were rarely recorded in the Hebrew samples. Performance differences in the two modalities encourage clinicians and teachers to facilitate target linguistic forms in diverse communication contexts. Furthermore, the identification of linguistic targets for intervention must be based on the unique grammatical structure of the target language.

WORD LEVEL DISCRIMINATIVE TRAINING FOR HANDWRITTEN WORD RECOGNITION

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chen, W.; Gader, P.

2004-01-01

Word level training refers to the process of learning the parameters of a word recognition system based on word level criteria functions. Previously, researchers trained lexicon­driven handwritten word recognition systems at the character level individually. These systems generally use statistical

A Positivity Bias in Written and Spoken English and Its Moderation by Personality and Gender.

Science.gov (United States)

Augustine, Adam A; Mehl, Matthias R; Larsen, Randy J

2011-09-01

The human tendency to use positive words ("adorable") more often than negative words ("dreadful") is called the linguistic positivity bias. We find evidence for this bias in two studies of word use, one based on written corpora and another based on naturalistic speech samples. In addition, we demonstrate that the positivity bias applies to nouns and verbs as well as adjectives. We also show that it is found to the same degree in written as well as spoken English. Moreover, personality traits and gender moderate the effect, such that persons high on extraversion and agreeableness and women display a larger positivity bias in naturalistic speech. Results are discussed in terms of how the linguistic positivity bias may serve as a mechanism for social facilitation. People, in general, and some people more than others, tend to talk about the brighter side of life.

English Loan Words in the Speech of Six-Year-Old Navajo Children, with Supplement-Concordance.

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Holm, Agnes; And Others

As part of a study of the feasibility and effect of teaching Navajo children to read their own language first, preliminary data on English loan words in the speech of 6-year-old Navajos were gathered in this study of the language of over 200 children. Taped interviews with these children were analyzed, and a spoken word count of all English words…

Age of Acquisition and Sensitivity to Gender in Spanish Word Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Foote, Rebecca

2014-01-01

Speakers of gender-agreement languages use gender-marked elements of the noun phrase in spoken-word recognition: A congruent marking on a determiner or adjective facilitates the recognition of a subsequent noun, while an incongruent marking inhibits its recognition. However, while monolinguals and early language learners evidence this…

A randomized trial comparison of the effects of verbal and pictorial naturalistic communication strategies on spoken language for young children with autism.

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Schreibman, Laura; Stahmer, Aubyn C

2014-05-01

Presently there is no consensus on the specific behavioral treatment of choice for targeting language in young nonverbal children with autism. This randomized clinical trial compared the effectiveness of a verbally-based intervention, Pivotal Response Training (PRT) to a pictorially-based behavioral intervention, the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) on the acquisition of spoken language by young (2-4 years), nonverbal or minimally verbal (≤9 words) children with autism. Thirty-nine children were randomly assigned to either the PRT or PECS condition. Participants received on average 247 h of intervention across 23 weeks. Dependent measures included overall communication, expressive vocabulary, pictorial communication and parent satisfaction. Children in both intervention groups demonstrated increases in spoken language skills, with no significant difference between the two conditions. Seventy-eight percent of all children exited the program with more than 10 functional words. Parents were very satisfied with both programs but indicated PECS was more difficult to implement.

Is negative self-referent bias an endophenotype for depression? An fMRI study of emotional self-referent words in twins at high vs. low risk of depression

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Miskowiak, K W; Larsen, J E; Harmer, C J

2018-01-01

, mean ± SD: 40 ± 11) were well-balanced for demographic variables, mood, coping and neuroticism. High-risk twins showed lower accuracy during self-referent categorisation of emotional words independent of valence and more false recollections of negative words than low-risk twins during free recall...... is consistent with the hypothesis that self-referent negative memory bias is an endophenotype for depression. High-risk twins' lower categorisation accuracy adds to the evidence for valence-independent cognitive deficits in individuals at familial risk for depression....

'No daddy', 'A kind of daddy': words used by donor conceived children and (aspiring) parents to refer to the sperm donor.

Science.gov (United States)

Provoost, Veerle; Bernaerdt, Jodie; Van Parys, Hanna; Buysse, Ann; De Sutter, Petra; Pennings, Guido

2018-04-01

Research has shown that the recipients of donor sperm can experience difficulties finding appropriate language to refer to the donor. Based on two qualitative analysis techniques, namely word count and empirical discourse analysis, we studied the words used to refer to the donor in heterosexual and lesbian (aspiring) parents and in donor conceived children. Findings show that the words used in these households are highly diverse and have at least four different interlinked functions: (1) to position the donor in relation to the nuclear family; (2) to safeguard the role of the social parent; (3) to clarify family structure; and (4) to present a positive picture of the donor. Both parents and children consciously reflect on what words to use to refer to the donor. Although parents try to keep words like 'father' and 'daddy' out of the family narrative, children use these words. These findings show that it is important for healthcare personnel and policy makers to reflect on the careful use of terminology when they address questions around sperm donation because the terminology invokes specific meanings that have an effect on how the recipients and their children perceive the role of the donor.

Second Language Learners' Contiguous and Discontiguous Multi-Word Unit Use Over Time

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Yuldashev, Aziz; Fernandez, Julieta; Thorne, Steven L.

Research has described the key role of formulaic language use in both written and spoken communication (Schmitt, 2004; Wray, 2002), as well as in relation to L2 learning (Ellis, Simpson-Vlach, & Maynard, 2008). Relatively few studies have examined related fixed and semifixed multi-word units (MWUs),

Distinct patterns of brain activity characterise lexical activation and competition in spoken word production.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vitória Piai

Full Text Available According to a prominent theory of language production, concepts activate multiple associated words in memory, which enter into competition for selection. However, only a few electrophysiological studies have identified brain responses reflecting competition. Here, we report a magnetoencephalography study in which the activation of competing words was manipulated by presenting pictures (e.g., dog with distractor words. The distractor and picture name were semantically related (cat, unrelated (pin, or identical (dog. Related distractors are stronger competitors to the picture name because they receive additional activation from the picture relative to other distractors. Picture naming times were longer with related than unrelated and identical distractors. Phase-locked and non-phase-locked activity were distinct but temporally related. Phase-locked activity in left temporal cortex, peaking at 400 ms, was larger on unrelated than related and identical trials, suggesting differential activation of alternative words by the picture-word stimuli. Non-phase-locked activity between roughly 350-650 ms (4-10 Hz in left superior frontal gyrus was larger on related than unrelated and identical trials, suggesting differential resolution of the competition among the alternatives, as reflected in the naming times. These findings characterise distinct patterns of activity associated with lexical activation and competition, supporting the theory that words are selected by competition.

Narrative skills in deaf children who use spoken English: Dissociations between macro and microstructural devices.

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Jones, -A C; Toscano, E; Botting, N; Marshall, C-R; Atkinson, J R; Denmark, T; Herman, -R; Morgan, G

2016-12-01

Previous research has highlighted that deaf children acquiring spoken English have difficulties in narrative development relative to their hearing peers both in terms of macro-structure and with micro-structural devices. The majority of previous research focused on narrative tasks designed for hearing children that depend on good receptive language skills. The current study compared narratives of 6 to 11-year-old deaf children who use spoken English (N=59) with matched for age and non-verbal intelligence hearing peers. To examine the role of general language abilities, single word vocabulary was also assessed. Narratives were elicited by the retelling of a story presented non-verbally in video format. Results showed that deaf and hearing children had equivalent macro-structure skills, but the deaf group showed poorer performance on micro-structural components. Furthermore, the deaf group gave less detailed responses to inferencing probe questions indicating poorer understanding of the story's underlying message. For deaf children, micro-level devices most strongly correlated with the vocabulary measure. These findings suggest that deaf children, despite spoken language delays, are able to convey the main elements of content and structure in narrative but have greater difficulty in using grammatical devices more dependent on finer linguistic and pragmatic skills. Crown Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Self-references among children's first fifty words : Indications for an emerging sense of self in Dutch-speaking children

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van der Meulen, Matty

2001-01-01

The present study investigated at what age self-references would turn up for the first time in young children's language and what kind of words these were. This was studied for a corpus of the first 50 words, produced by ten children, five boys and five girls, collected through parental reports.

Does segmental overlap help or hurt? Evidence from blocked cyclic naming in spoken and written production.

Science.gov (United States)

Breining, Bonnie; Nozari, Nazbanou; Rapp, Brenda

2016-04-01

Past research has demonstrated interference effects when words are named in the context of multiple items that share a meaning. This interference has been explained within various incremental learning accounts of word production, which propose that each attempt at mapping semantic features to lexical items induces slight but persistent changes that result in cumulative interference. We examined whether similar interference-generating mechanisms operate during the mapping of lexical items to segments by examining the production of words in the context of others that share segments. Previous research has shown that initial-segment overlap amongst a set of target words produces facilitation, not interference. However, this initial-segment facilitation is likely due to strategic preparation, an external factor that may mask underlying interference. In the present study, we applied a novel manipulation in which the segmental overlap across target items was distributed unpredictably across word positions, in order to reduce strategic response preparation. This manipulation led to interference in both spoken (Exp. 1) and written (Exp. 2) production. We suggest that these findings are consistent with a competitive learning mechanism that applies across stages and modalities of word production.

Easy Words: Reference Resolution in a Malevolent Referent World.

Science.gov (United States)

Gleitman, Lila R; Trueswell, John C

2018-06-15

This article describes early stages in the acquisition of a first vocabulary by infants and young children. It distinguishes two major stages, the first of which operates by a stand-alone word-to-world pairing procedure and the second of which, using the evidence so acquired, builds a domain-specific syntax-sensitive structure-to-world pairing procedure. As we show, the first stage of learning is slow, restricted in character, and to some extent errorful, whereas the second procedure is determinative, rapid, and essentially errorless. Our central claim here is that the early, referentially based learning procedure succeeds at all because it is reined in by attention-focusing properties of word-to-world timing and related indicants of referential intent. Copyright © 2018 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Impressive Words: Linguistic Predictors of Public Approval of the U.S. Congress

OpenAIRE

Decter-Frain, Ari; Frimer, Jeremy A.

2016-01-01

What type of language makes the most positive impression within a professional setting? Is competent/agentic language or warm/communal language more effective at eliciting social approval? We examined this basic social cognitive question in a real world context using a big data approach—the recent record-low levels of public approval of the U.S. Congress. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we text analyzed all 123+ million words spoken by members of the U.S. House of Representa...

Visual information constrains early and late stages of spoken-word recognition in sentence context.

Science.gov (United States)

Brunellière, Angèle; Sánchez-García, Carolina; Ikumi, Nara; Soto-Faraco, Salvador

2013-07-01

Audiovisual speech perception has been frequently studied considering phoneme, syllable and word processing levels. Here, we examined the constraints that visual speech information might exert during the recognition of words embedded in a natural sentence context. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) to words that could be either strongly or weakly predictable on the basis of the prior semantic sentential context and, whose initial phoneme varied in the degree of visual saliency from lip movements. When the sentences were presented audio-visually (Experiment 1), words weakly predicted from semantic context elicited a larger long-lasting N400, compared to strongly predictable words. This semantic effect interacted with the degree of visual saliency over a late part of the N400. When comparing audio-visual versus auditory alone presentation (Experiment 2), the typical amplitude-reduction effect over the auditory-evoked N100 response was observed in the audiovisual modality. Interestingly, a specific benefit of high- versus low-visual saliency constraints occurred over the early N100 response and at the late N400 time window, confirming the result of Experiment 1. Taken together, our results indicate that the saliency of visual speech can exert an influence over both auditory processing and word recognition at relatively late stages, and thus suggest strong interactivity between audio-visual integration and other (arguably higher) stages of information processing during natural speech comprehension. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Brain basis of phonological awareness for spoken language in children and its disruption in dyslexia.

Science.gov (United States)

Kovelman, Ioulia; Norton, Elizabeth S; Christodoulou, Joanna A; Gaab, Nadine; Lieberman, Daniel A; Triantafyllou, Christina; Wolf, Maryanne; Whitfield-Gabrieli, Susan; Gabrieli, John D E

2012-04-01

Phonological awareness, knowledge that speech is composed of syllables and phonemes, is critical for learning to read. Phonological awareness precedes and predicts successful transition from language to literacy, and weakness in phonological awareness is a leading cause of dyslexia, but the brain basis of phonological awareness for spoken language in children is unknown. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to identify the neural correlates of phonological awareness using an auditory word-rhyming task in children who were typical readers or who had dyslexia (ages 7-13) and a younger group of kindergarteners (ages 5-6). Typically developing children, but not children with dyslexia, recruited left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) when making explicit phonological judgments. Kindergarteners, who were matched to the older children with dyslexia on standardized tests of phonological awareness, also recruited left DLPFC. Left DLPFC may play a critical role in the development of phonological awareness for spoken language critical for reading and in the etiology of dyslexia.

Neural Response After a Single ECT Session During Retrieval of Emotional Self-Referent Words in Depression

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Miskowiak, Kamilla W; Macoveanu, Julian; Jørgensen, Martin B

2018-01-01

of their electroconvulsive therapy course in a double-blind, between-groups design. The following day, patients were given a self-referential emotional word categorization test and a free recall test. This was followed by an incidental word recognition task during whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3T...... response may reflect early facilitation of memory for positive self-referent information, which could contribute to improvements in depressive symptoms including feelings of self-worth with repeated treatments....

Towards Adaptive Spoken Dialog Systems

CERN Document Server

Schmitt, Alexander

2013-01-01

In Monitoring Adaptive Spoken Dialog Systems, authors Alexander Schmitt and Wolfgang Minker investigate statistical approaches that allow for recognition of negative dialog patterns in Spoken Dialog Systems (SDS). The presented stochastic methods allow a flexible, portable and  accurate use.  Beginning with the foundations of machine learning and pattern recognition, this monograph examines how frequently users show negative emotions in spoken dialog systems and develop novel approaches to speech-based emotion recognition using hybrid approach to model emotions. The authors make use of statistical methods based on acoustic, linguistic and contextual features to examine the relationship between the interaction flow and the occurrence of emotions using non-acted  recordings several thousand real users from commercial and non-commercial SDS. Additionally, the authors present novel statistical methods that spot problems within a dialog based on interaction patterns. The approaches enable future SDS to offer m...

Vocabulary Learning in a Yorkshire Terrier: Slow Mapping of Spoken Words

Science.gov (United States)

Griebel, Ulrike; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2012-01-01

Rapid vocabulary learning in children has been attributed to “fast mapping”, with new words often claimed to be learned through a single presentation. As reported in 2004 in Science a border collie (Rico) not only learned to identify more than 200 words, but fast mapped the new words, remembering meanings after just one presentation. Our research tests the fast mapping interpretation of the Science paper based on Rico's results, while extending the demonstration of large vocabulary recognition to a lap dog. We tested a Yorkshire terrier (Bailey) with the same procedures as Rico, illustrating that Bailey accurately retrieved randomly selected toys from a set of 117 on voice command of the owner. Second we tested her retrieval based on two additional voices, one male, one female, with different accents that had never been involved in her training, again showing she was capable of recognition by voice command. Third, we did both exclusion-based training of new items (toys she had never seen before with names she had never heard before) embedded in a set of known items, with subsequent retention tests designed as in the Rico experiment. After Bailey succeeded on exclusion and retention tests, a crucial evaluation of true mapping tested items previously successfully retrieved in exclusion and retention, but now pitted against each other in a two-choice task. Bailey failed on the true mapping task repeatedly, illustrating that the claim of fast mapping in Rico had not been proven, because no true mapping task had ever been conducted with him. It appears that the task called retention in the Rico study only demonstrated success in retrieval by a process of extended exclusion. PMID:22363421

Vocabulary learning in a Yorkshire terrier: slow mapping of spoken words.

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Ulrike Griebel

Full Text Available Rapid vocabulary learning in children has been attributed to "fast mapping", with new words often claimed to be learned through a single presentation. As reported in 2004 in Science a border collie (Rico not only learned to identify more than 200 words, but fast mapped the new words, remembering meanings after just one presentation. Our research tests the fast mapping interpretation of the Science paper based on Rico's results, while extending the demonstration of large vocabulary recognition to a lap dog. We tested a Yorkshire terrier (Bailey with the same procedures as Rico, illustrating that Bailey accurately retrieved randomly selected toys from a set of 117 on voice command of the owner. Second we tested her retrieval based on two additional voices, one male, one female, with different accents that had never been involved in her training, again showing she was capable of recognition by voice command. Third, we did both exclusion-based training of new items (toys she had never seen before with names she had never heard before embedded in a set of known items, with subsequent retention tests designed as in the Rico experiment. After Bailey succeeded on exclusion and retention tests, a crucial evaluation of true mapping tested items previously successfully retrieved in exclusion and retention, but now pitted against each other in a two-choice task. Bailey failed on the true mapping task repeatedly, illustrating that the claim of fast mapping in Rico had not been proven, because no true mapping task had ever been conducted with him. It appears that the task called retention in the Rico study only demonstrated success in retrieval by a process of extended exclusion.

Cohesion as interaction in ELF spoken discourse

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T. Christiansen

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Hitherto, most research into cohesion has concentrated on texts (usually written only in standard Native Speaker English – e.g. Halliday and Hasan (1976. By contrast, following on the work in anaphora of such scholars as Reinhart (1983 and Cornish (1999, Christiansen (2011 describes cohesion as an interac­tive process focusing on the link between text cohesion and discourse coherence. Such a consideration of cohesion from the perspective of discourse (i.e. the process of which text is the product -- Widdowson 1984, p. 100 is especially relevant within a lingua franca context as the issue of different variations of ELF and inter-cultural concerns (Guido 2008 add extra dimensions to the complex multi-code interaction. In this case study, six extracts of transcripts (approximately 1000 words each, taken from the VOICE corpus (2011 of conference question and answer sessions (spoken interaction set in multicultural university con­texts are analysed in depth by means of a qualitative method.

Remembering New Words: Integrating Early Memory Development into Word Learning

OpenAIRE

Wojcik, Erica H.

2013-01-01

In order to successfully acquire a new word, young children must learn the correct associations between labels and their referents. For decades, word-learning researchers have explored how young children are able to form these associations. However, in addition to learning label-referent mappings, children must also remember them. Despite the importance of memory processes in forming a stable lexicon, there has been little integration of early memory research into the study of early word lear...

Business Spoken English Learning Strategies for Chinese Enterprise Staff

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Han Li

2013-01-01

This study addresses the issue of promoting effective Business Spoken English of Enterprise Staff in China.It aims to assess the assessment of spoken English learning methods and identify the difficulties of learning English oral expression concerned business area.It also provides strategies for enhancing Enterprise Staff’s level of Business Spoken English.

Interaction between episodic and semantic memory networks in the acquisition and consolidation of novel spoken words.

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Takashima, Atsuko; Bakker, Iske; van Hell, Janet G; Janzen, Gabriele; McQueen, James M

2017-04-01

When a novel word is learned, its memory representation is thought to undergo a process of consolidation and integration. In this study, we tested whether the neural representations of novel words change as a function of consolidation by observing brain activation patterns just after learning and again after a delay of one week. Words learned with meanings were remembered better than those learned without meanings. Both episodic (hippocampus-dependent) and semantic (dependent on distributed neocortical areas) memory systems were utilised during recognition of the novel words. The extent to which the two systems were involved changed as a function of time and the amount of associated information, with more involvement of both systems for the meaningful words than for the form-only words after the one-week delay. These results suggest that the reason the meaningful words were remembered better is that their retrieval can benefit more from these two complementary memory systems. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Adapting the Freiburg monosyllabic word test for Slovenian

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Tatjana Marvin

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Speech audiometry is one of the standard methods used to diagnose the type of hearing loss and to assess the communication function of the patient by determining the level of the patient’s ability to understand and repeat words presented to him or her in a hearing test. For this purpose, the Slovenian adaptation of the German tests developed by Hahlbrock (1953, 1960 – the Freiburg Monosyllabic Word Test and the Freiburg Number Test – are used in Slovenia (adapted in 1968 by Pompe. In this paper we focus on the Freiburg Monosyllabic Word Test for Slovenian, which has been criticized by patients as well as in the literature for the unequal difficulty and frequency of the words, with many of these being extremely rare or even obsolete. As part of the patient’s communication function is retrieving the meaning of individual words by guessing, the less frequent and consequently less familiar words do not contribute to reliable testing results. We therefore adapt the test by identifying and removing such words and supplement them with phonetically similar words to preserve the phonetic balance of the list. The words used for replacement are extracted from the written corpus of Slovenian Gigafida and the spoken corpus of Slovenian GOS, while the optimal combinations of words are established by using computational algorithms.

Fast mapping of novel word forms traced neurophysiologically

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Yury eShtyrov

2011-11-01

Full Text Available Human capacity to quickly learn new words, critical for our ability to communicate using language, is well-known from behavioural studies and observations, but its neural underpinnings remain unclear. In this study, we have used event-related potentials to record brain activity to novel spoken word forms as they are being learnt by the human nervous system through passive auditory exposure. We found that the brain response dynamics change dramatically within the short (20 min exposure session: as the subjects become familiarised with the novel word forms, the early (~100 ms fronto-central activity they elicit increases in magnitude and becomes similar to that of known real words. At the same time, acoustically similar real words used as control stimuli show a relatively stable response throughout the recording session; these differences between the stimulus groups are confirmed using both factorial and linear regression analyses. Furthermore, acoustically matched novel non-speech stimuli do not demonstrate similar response increase, suggesting neural specificity of this rapid learning phenomenon to linguistic stimuli. Left-lateralised perisylvian cortical networks appear to be underlying such fast mapping of novel word forms unto the brain’s mental lexicon.

Tracking Eye Movements to Localize Stroop Interference in Naming: Word Planning Versus Articulatory Buffering

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Roelofs, A.P.A.

2014-01-01

Investigators have found no agreement on the functional locus of Stroop interference in vocal naming. Whereas it has long been assumed that the interference arises during spoken word planning, more recently some investigators have revived an account from the 1960s and 1970s holding that the

Learning words

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Jaswal, Vikram K.; Hansen, Mikkel

2006-01-01

Children tend to infer that when a speaker uses a new label, the label refers to an unlabeled object rather than one they already know the label for. Does this inference reflect a default assumption that words are mutually exclusive? Or does it instead reflect the result of a pragmatic reasoning...... process about what the speaker intended? In two studies, we distinguish between these possibilities. Preschoolers watched as a speaker pointed toward (Study 1) or looked at (Study 2) a familiar object while requesting the referent for a new word (e.g. 'Can you give me the blicket?'). In both studies......, despite the speaker's unambiguous behavioral cue indicating an intent to refer to a familiar object, children inferred that the novel label referred to an unfamiliar object. These results suggest that children expect words to be mutually exclusive even when a speaker provides some kinds of pragmatic...

Second Language Learners' Contiguous and Discontiguous Multi-Word Unit Use over Time

Science.gov (United States)

Yuldashev, Aziz; Fernandez, Julieta; Thorne, Steven L.

2013-01-01

Research has described the key role of formulaic language use in both written and spoken communication (Schmitt, 2004; Wray, 2002), as well as in relation to L2 learning (Ellis, Simpson--Vlach, & Maynard, 2008). Relatively few studies have examined related fixed and semi-fixed multi-word units (MWUs), which comprise fixed parts with the potential…

Spoken word recognition in young tone language learners: Age-dependent effects of segmental and suprasegmental variation.

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Ma, Weiyi; Zhou, Peng; Singh, Leher; Gao, Liqun

2017-02-01

The majority of the world's languages rely on both segmental (vowels, consonants) and suprasegmental (lexical tones) information to contrast the meanings of individual words. However, research on early language development has mostly focused on the acquisition of vowel-consonant languages. Developmental research comparing sensitivity to segmental and suprasegmental features in young tone learners is extremely rare. This study examined 2- and 3-year-old monolingual tone learners' sensitivity to vowels and tones. Experiment 1a tested the influence of vowel and tone variation on novel word learning. Vowel and tone variation hindered word recognition efficiency in both age groups. However, tone variation hindered word recognition accuracy only in 2-year-olds, while 3-year-olds were insensitive to tone variation. Experiment 1b demonstrated that 3-year-olds could use tones to learn new words when additional support was provided, and additionally, that Tone 3 words were exceptionally difficult to learn. Experiment 2 confirmed a similar pattern of results when children were presented with familiar words. This study is the first to show that despite the importance of tones in tone languages, vowels maintain primacy over tones in young children's word recognition and that tone sensitivity in word learning and recognition changes between 2 and 3years of age. The findings suggest that early lexical processes are more tightly constrained by variation in vowels than by tones. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Relationship between Intrinsic Couplings of the Visual Word Form Area with Spoken Language Network and Reading Ability in Children and Adults

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Yu Li

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Reading plays a key role in education and communication in modern society. Learning to read establishes the connections between the visual word form area (VWFA and language areas responsible for speech processing. Using resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC and Granger Causality Analysis (GCA methods, the current developmental study aimed to identify the difference in the relationship between the connections of VWFA-language areas and reading performance in both adults and children. The results showed that: (1 the spontaneous connectivity between VWFA and the spoken language areas, i.e., the left inferior frontal gyrus/supramarginal gyrus (LIFG/LSMG, was stronger in adults compared with children; (2 the spontaneous functional patterns of connectivity between VWFA and language network were negatively correlated with reading ability in adults but not in children; (3 the causal influence from LIFG to VWFA was negatively correlated with reading ability only in adults but not in children; (4 the RSFCs between left posterior middle frontal gyrus (LpMFG and VWFA/LIFG were positively correlated with reading ability in both adults and children; and (5 the causal influence from LIFG to LSMG was positively correlated with reading ability in both groups. These findings provide insights into the relationship between VWFA and the language network for reading, and the role of the unique features of Chinese in the neural circuits of reading.

TEACHING TURKISH AS SPOKEN IN TURKEY TO TURKIC SPEAKERS - TÜRK DİLLİLERE TÜRKİYE TÜRKÇESİ ÖĞRETİMİ NASIL OLMALIDIR?

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Ali TAŞTEKİN

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Attributing different titles to the activity of teaching Turkish to non-native speakers is related to the perspective of those who conduct this activity. If Turkish Language teaching centres are sub-units of Schools of Foreign Languages and Departments of Foreign Languages of our Universities or teachers have a foreign language background, then the title “Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language” is adopted and claimed to be universal. In determining success at teaching and learning, the psychological perception of the educational activity and the associational power of the words used are far more important factors than the teacher, students, educational environment and educational tools. For this reason, avoiding the negative connotations of the adjective “foreign” in the activity of teaching foreigners Turkish as spoken in Turkey would be beneficial. In order for the activity of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers to be successful, it is crucial to dwell on the formal and contextual quality of the books written for this purpose. Almost none of the course books and supplementary books in the field of teaching Turkish to non-native speakers has taken Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers into consideration. The books written for the purpose of teaching Turkish to non-speakers should be examined thoroughly in terms of content and method and should be organized in accordance with the purpose and level of readiness of the target audience. Activities of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers are still conducted at public and private primary and secondary schools and colleges as well as private courses by self-educated teachers who are trained within a master-apprentice relationship. Turkic populations who had long been parted by necessity have found the opportunity to reunite and turn towards common objectives after the dissolution of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This recent

High Frequency rTMS over the Left Parietal Lobule Increases Non-Word Reading Accuracy

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Costanzo, Floriana; Menghini, Deny; Caltagirone, Carlo; Oliveri, Massimiliano; Vicari, Stefano

2012-01-01

Increasing evidence in the literature supports the usefulness of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) in studying reading processes. Two brain regions are primarily involved in phonological decoding: the left superior temporal gyrus (STG), which is associated with the auditory representation of spoken words, and the left inferior parietal lobe…

Semantic Richness and Word Learning in Children with Hearing Loss Who Are Developing Spoken Language: A Single Case Design Study

Science.gov (United States)

Lund, Emily; Douglas, W. Michael; Schuele, C. Melanie

2015-01-01

Children with hearing loss who are developing spoken language tend to lag behind children with normal hearing in vocabulary knowledge. Thus, researchers must validate instructional practices that lead to improved vocabulary outcomes for children with hearing loss. The purpose of this study was to investigate how semantic richness of instruction…

Resting-state low-frequency fluctuations reflect individual differences in spoken language learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Deng, Zhizhou; Chandrasekaran, Bharath; Wang, Suiping; Wong, Patrick C M

2016-03-01

A major challenge in language learning studies is to identify objective, pre-training predictors of success. Variation in the low-frequency fluctuations (LFFs) of spontaneous brain activity measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) has been found to reflect individual differences in cognitive measures. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the extent to which initial spontaneous brain activity is related to individual differences in spoken language learning. We acquired RS-fMRI data and subsequently trained participants on a sound-to-word learning paradigm in which they learned to use foreign pitch patterns (from Mandarin Chinese) to signal word meaning. We performed amplitude of spontaneous low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) analysis, graph theory-based analysis, and independent component analysis (ICA) to identify functional components of the LFFs in the resting-state. First, we examined the ALFF as a regional measure and showed that regional ALFFs in the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance, whereas ALFFs in the default mode network (DMN) regions were negatively correlated with learning performance. Furthermore, the graph theory-based analysis indicated that the degree and local efficiency of the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance. Finally, the default mode network and several task-positive resting-state networks (RSNs) were identified via the ICA. The "competition" (i.e., negative correlation) between the DMN and the dorsal attention network was negatively correlated with learning performance. Our results demonstrate that a) spontaneous brain activity can predict future language learning outcome without prior hypotheses (e.g., selection of regions of interest--ROIs) and b) both regional dynamics and network-level interactions in the resting brain can account for individual differences in future spoken language learning success

Resting-state low-frequency fluctuations reflect individual differences in spoken language learning

Science.gov (United States)

Deng, Zhizhou; Chandrasekaran, Bharath; Wang, Suiping; Wong, Patrick C.M.

2016-01-01

A major challenge in language learning studies is to identify objective, pre-training predictors of success. Variation in the low-frequency fluctuations (LFFs) of spontaneous brain activity measured by resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) has been found to reflect individual differences in cognitive measures. In the present study, we aimed to investigate the extent to which initial spontaneous brain activity is related to individual differences in spoken language learning. We acquired RS-fMRI data and subsequently trained participants on a sound-to-word learning paradigm in which they learned to use foreign pitch patterns (from Mandarin Chinese) to signal word meaning. We performed amplitude of spontaneous low-frequency fluctuation (ALFF) analysis, graph theory-based analysis, and independent component analysis (ICA) to identify functional components of the LFFs in the resting-state. First, we examined the ALFF as a regional measure and showed that regional ALFFs in the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance, whereas ALFFs in the default mode network (DMN) regions were negatively correlated with learning performance. Furthermore, the graph theory-based analysis indicated that the degree and local efficiency of the left superior temporal gyrus were positively correlated with learning performance. Finally, the default mode network and several task-positive resting-state networks (RSNs) were identified via the ICA. The “competition” (i.e., negative correlation) between the DMN and the dorsal attention network was negatively correlated with learning performance. Our results demonstrate that a) spontaneous brain activity can predict future language learning outcome without prior hypotheses (e.g., selection of regions of interest – ROIs) and b) both regional dynamics and network-level interactions in the resting brain can account for individual differences in future spoken language learning success

Suprasegmental lexical stress cues in visual speech can guide spoken-word recognition

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Jesse, A.; McQueen, J.M.

2014-01-01

Visual cues to the individual segments of speech and to sentence prosody guide speech recognition. The present study tested whether visual suprasegmental cues to the stress patterns of words can also constrain recognition. Dutch listeners use acoustic suprasegmental cues to lexical stress (changes

Spoken Grammar and Its Role in the English Language Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Hilliard, Amanda

2014-01-01

This article addresses key issues and considerations for teachers wanting to incorporate spoken grammar activities into their own teaching and also focuses on six common features of spoken grammar, with practical activities and suggestions for teaching them in the language classroom. The hope is that this discussion of spoken grammar and its place…

Textual, Genre and Social Features of Spoken Grammar: A Corpus-Based Approach

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Carmen Pérez-Llantada

2009-02-01

Full Text Available This paper describes a corpus-based approach to teaching and learning spoken grammar for English for Academic Purposes with reference to Bhatia’s (2002 multi-perspective model for discourse analysis: a textual perspective, a genre perspective and a social perspective. From a textual perspective, corpus-informed instruction helps students identify grammar items through statistical frequencies, collocational patterns, context-sensitive meanings and discoursal uses of words. From a genre perspective, corpus observation provides students with exposure to recurrent lexico-grammatical patterns across different academic text types (genres. From a social perspective, corpus models can be used to raise learners’ awareness of how speakers’ different discourse roles, discourse privileges and power statuses are enacted in their grammar choices. The paper describes corpus-based instructional procedures, gives samples of learners’ linguistic output, and provides comments on the students’ response to this method of instruction. Data resulting from the assessment process and student production suggest that corpus-informed instruction grounded in Bhatia’s multi-perspective model can constitute a pedagogical approach in order to i obtain positive student responses from input and authentic samples of grammar use, ii help students identify and understand the textual, genre and social aspects of grammar in real contexts of use, and therefore iii help develop students’ ability to use grammar accurately and appropriately.

Gated Word Recognition by Postlingually Deafened Adults with Cochlear Implants: Influence of Semantic Context

Science.gov (United States)

Patro, Chhayakanta; Mendel, Lisa Lucks

2018-01-01

Purpose: The main goal of this study was to investigate the minimum amount of sensory information required to recognize spoken words (isolation points [IPs]) in listeners with cochlear implants (CIs) and investigate facilitative effects of semantic contexts on the IPs. Method: Listeners with CIs as well as those with normal hearing (NH)…

Cognitive, Linguistic and Print-Related Predictors of Preschool Children's Word Spelling and Name Writing

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Milburn, Trelani F.; Hipfner-Boucher, Kathleen; Weitzman, Elaine; Greenberg, Janice; Pelletier, Janette; Girolametto, Luigi

2017-01-01

Preschool children begin to represent spoken language in print long before receiving formal instruction in spelling and writing. The current study sought to identify the component skills that contribute to preschool children's ability to begin to spell words and write their name. Ninety-five preschool children (mean age = 57 months) completed a…

Evaluating the spoken English proficiency of graduates of foreign medical schools.

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Boulet, J R; van Zanten, M; McKinley, D W; Gary, N E

2001-08-01

The purpose of this study was to gather additional evidence for the validity and reliability of spoken English proficiency ratings provided by trained standardized patients (SPs) in high-stakes clinical skills examination. Over 2500 candidates who took the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates' (ECFMG) Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA) were studied. The CSA consists of 10 or 11 timed clinical encounters. Standardized patients evaluate spoken English proficiency and interpersonal skills in every encounter. Generalizability theory was used to estimate the consistency of spoken English ratings. Validity coefficients were calculated by correlating summary English ratings with CSA scores and other external criterion measures. Mean spoken English ratings were also compared by various candidate background variables. The reliability of the spoken English ratings, based on 10 independent evaluations, was high. The magnitudes of the associated variance components indicated that the evaluation of a candidate's spoken English proficiency is unlikely to be affected by the choice of cases or SPs used in a given assessment. Proficiency in spoken English was related to native language (English versus other) and scores from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). The pattern of the relationships, both within assessment components and with external criterion measures, suggests that valid measures of spoken English proficiency are obtained. This result, combined with the high reproducibility of the ratings over encounters and SPs, supports the use of trained SPs to measure spoken English skills in a simulated medical environment.

Words, Shape, Visual Search and Visual Working Memory in 3-Year-Old Children

Science.gov (United States)

Vales, Catarina; Smith, Linda B.

2015-01-01

Do words cue children's visual attention, and if so, what are the relevant mechanisms? Across four experiments, 3-year-old children (N = 163) were tested in visual search tasks in which targets were cued with only a visual preview versus a visual preview and a spoken name. The experiments were designed to determine whether labels facilitated…

When does word frequency influence written production?

Science.gov (United States)

Baus, Cristina; Strijkers, Kristof; Costa, Albert

2013-01-01

The aim of the present study was to explore the central (e.g., lexical processing) and peripheral processes (motor preparation and execution) underlying word production during typewriting. To do so, we tested non-professional typers in a picture typing task while continuously recording EEG. Participants were instructed to write (by means of a standard keyboard) the corresponding name for a given picture. The lexical frequency of the words was manipulated: half of the picture names were of high-frequency while the remaining were of low-frequency. Different measures were obtained: (1) first keystroke latency and (2) keystroke latency of the subsequent letters and duration of the word. Moreover, ERPs locked to the onset of the picture presentation were analyzed to explore the temporal course of word frequency in typewriting. The results showed an effect of word frequency for the first keystroke latency but not for the duration of the word or the speed to which letter were typed (interstroke intervals). The electrophysiological results showed the expected ERP frequency effect at posterior sites: amplitudes for low-frequency words were more positive than those for high-frequency words. However, relative to previous evidence in the spoken modality, the frequency effect appeared in a later time-window. These results demonstrate two marked differences in the processing dynamics underpinning typing compared to speaking: First, central processing dynamics between speaking and typing differ already in the manner that words are accessed; second, central processing differences in typing, unlike speaking, do not cascade to peripheral processes involved in response execution.

When does word frequency influence written production?

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Cristina eBaus

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The aim of the present study was to explore the central (e.g., lexical processing and peripheral processes (motor preparation and execution underlying word production during typewriting. To do so, we tested non-professional typers in a picture typing task while continuously recording EEG. Participants were instructed to write (by means of a standard keyboard the corresponding name for a given picture. The lexical frequency of the words was manipulated: half of the picture names were of high-frequency while the remaining were of low-frequency. Different measures were obtained: 1 first keystroke latency and 2 keystroke latency of the subsequent letters and duration of the word. Moreover, ERPs locked to the onset of the picture presentation were analysed to explore the temporal course of word frequency in typewriting. The results showed an effect of word frequency for the first keystroke latency but not for the duration of the word or the speed to which letter were typed (interstroke intervals. The electrophysiological results showed the expected ERP frequency effect at posterior sites: amplitudes for low-frequency words were more positive than those for high-frequency words. However, relative to previous evidence in the spoken modality, the frequency effect appeared in a later time-window. These results demonstrate two marked differences in the processing dynamics underpinning typing compared to speaking: First, central processing dynamics between speaking and typing differ already in the manner that words are accessed; second, central processing differences in typing, unlike speaking, do not cascade to peripheral processes involved in response execution.

Affective Congruence between Sound and Meaning of Words Facilitates Semantic Decision.

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Aryani, Arash; Jacobs, Arthur M

2018-05-31

A similarity between the form and meaning of a word (i.e., iconicity) may help language users to more readily access its meaning through direct form-meaning mapping. Previous work has supported this view by providing empirical evidence for this facilitatory effect in sign language, as well as for onomatopoetic words (e.g., cuckoo) and ideophones (e.g., zigzag). Thus, it remains largely unknown whether the beneficial role of iconicity in making semantic decisions can be considered a general feature in spoken language applying also to "ordinary" words in the lexicon. By capitalizing on the affective domain, and in particular arousal, we organized words in two distinctive groups of iconic vs. non-iconic based on the congruence vs. incongruence of their lexical (meaning) and sublexical (sound) arousal. In a two-alternative forced choice task, we asked participants to evaluate the arousal of printed words that were lexically either high or low arousing. In line with our hypothesis, iconic words were evaluated more quickly and more accurately than their non-iconic counterparts. These results indicate a processing advantage for iconic words, suggesting that language users are sensitive to sound-meaning mappings even when words are presented visually and read silently.

Right word making sense of the words that confuse

CERN Document Server

Morrison, Elizabeth

2012-01-01

'Affect' or 'effect'? 'Right', 'write' or 'rite'? English can certainly be a confusing language, whether you're a native speaker or learning it as a second language. 'The Right Word' is the essential reference to help people master its subtleties and avoid making mistakes. Divided into three sections, it first examines homophones - those tricky words that sound the same but are spelled differently - then looks at words that often confuse before providing a list of commonly misspelled words.

Linguistic Context Versus Semantic Competition in Word Recognition by Younger and Older Adults With Cochlear Implants.

Science.gov (United States)

Amichetti, Nicole M; Atagi, Eriko; Kong, Ying-Yee; Wingfield, Arthur

The increasing numbers of older adults now receiving cochlear implants raises the question of how the novel signal produced by cochlear implants may interact with cognitive aging in the recognition of words heard spoken within a linguistic context. The objective of this study was to pit the facilitative effects of a constraining linguistic context against a potential age-sensitive negative effect of response competition on effectiveness of word recognition. Younger (n = 8; mean age = 22.5 years) and older (n = 8; mean age = 67.5 years) adult implant recipients heard 20 target words as the final words in sentences that manipulated the target word's probability of occurrence within the sentence context. Data from published norms were also used to measure response entropy, calculated as the total number of different responses and the probability distribution of the responses suggested by the sentence context. Sentence-final words were presented to participants using a word-onset gating paradigm, in which a target word was presented with increasing amounts of its onset duration in 50 msec increments until the word was correctly identified. Results showed that for both younger and older adult implant users, the amount of word-onset information needed for correct recognition of sentence-final words was inversely proportional to their likelihood of occurrence within the sentence context, with older adults gaining differential advantage from the contextual constraints offered by a sentence context. On the negative side, older adults' word recognition was differentially hampered by high response entropy, with this effect being driven primarily by the number of competing responses that might also fit the sentence context. Consistent with previous research with normal-hearing younger and older adults, the present results showed older adult implant users' recognition of spoken words to be highly sensitive to linguistic context. This sensitivity, however, also resulted in a

Children of Few Words: Relations Among Selective Mutism, Behavioral Inhibition, and (Social) Anxiety Symptoms in 3- to 6-Year-Olds.

Science.gov (United States)

Muris, Peter; Hendriks, Eline; Bot, Suili

2016-02-01

Children with selective mutism (SM) fail to speak in specific public situations (e.g., school), despite speaking normally in other situations (e.g., at home). The current study explored the phenomenon of SM in a sample of 57 non-clinical children aged 3-6 years. Children performed two speech tasks to assess their absolute amount of spoken words, while their parents completed questionnaires for measuring children's levels of SM, social anxiety and non-social anxiety symptoms as well as the temperament characteristic of behavioral inhibition. The results indicated that high levels of parent-reported SM were primarily associated with high levels of social anxiety symptoms. The number of spoken words was negatively related to behavioral inhibition: children with a more inhibited temperament used fewer words during the speech tasks. Future research is necessary to test whether the temperament characteristic of behavioral inhibition prompts children to speak less in novel social situations, and whether it is mainly social anxiety that turns this taciturnity into the psychopathology of SM.

Development of the Visual Word Form Area Requires Visual Experience: Evidence from Blind Braille Readers.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Judy S; Kanjlia, Shipra; Merabet, Lotfi B; Bedny, Marina

2017-11-22

Learning to read causes the development of a letter- and word-selective region known as the visual word form area (VWFA) within the human ventral visual object stream. Why does a reading-selective region develop at this anatomical location? According to one hypothesis, the VWFA develops at the nexus of visual inputs from retinotopic cortices and linguistic input from the frontotemporal language network because reading involves extracting linguistic information from visual symbols. Surprisingly, the anatomical location of the VWFA is also active when blind individuals read Braille by touch, suggesting that vision is not required for the development of the VWFA. In this study, we tested the alternative prediction that VWFA development is in fact influenced by visual experience. We predicted that in the absence of vision, the "VWFA" is incorporated into the frontotemporal language network and participates in high-level language processing. Congenitally blind ( n = 10, 9 female, 1 male) and sighted control ( n = 15, 9 female, 6 male), male and female participants each took part in two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments: (1) word reading (Braille for blind and print for sighted participants), and (2) listening to spoken sentences of different grammatical complexity (both groups). We find that in blind, but not sighted participants, the anatomical location of the VWFA responds both to written words and to the grammatical complexity of spoken sentences. This suggests that in blindness, this region takes on high-level linguistic functions, becoming less selective for reading. More generally, the current findings suggest that experience during development has a major effect on functional specialization in the human cortex. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The visual word form area (VWFA) is a region in the human cortex that becomes specialized for the recognition of written letters and words. Why does this particular brain region become specialized for reading? We

News from the Library: You need never be lost for words again - Oxford Reference Online and Oxford Dictionaries Pro

CERN Multimedia

CERN Library

2012-01-01

Whether you are looking for an English word definition or want to check the correct usage of a word, we can offer you a solution: Oxford Reference Online.   It includes a wide range of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, but also subject-specific reference books on physics, astronomy or mathematics. All these works are fully indexed and cross-searchable. Two highlights from this vast collection of reference works are the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and the Oxford Dictionary of English, which is the online counterpart of the compact, single-volume dictionary of current English language. As the name says, Oxford Dictionaries Pro focuses on language dictionaries. Particularly noteworthy are the dictionaries for writers and editors. On a dedicated web page you will find access to: - The "New Hart's Rules", providing information on all aspects of writing and preparing copy for publication, whether in print or electronically - The New Oxford Dictionary for Wri...

Word final schwa is driven by intonation-The case of Bari Italian.

Science.gov (United States)

Grice, Martine; Savino, Michelina; Roettger, Timo B

2018-04-01

In order to convey pragmatic functions, a speaker has to select an intonation contour (the tune) in addition to the words that are to be spoken (the text). The tune and text are assumed to be independent of each other, such that any one intonation contour can be produced on different phrases, regardless of the number and nature of the segments they are made up of. However, if the segmental string is too short, certain tunes-especially those with a rising component-call for adjustments to the text. In Italian, for instance, loan words such as "chat" can be produced with a word final schwa when this word occurs at the end of a question. This paper investigates this word final schwa in the Bari variety in a number of different intonation contours. Although its presence and duration is to some extent dependent on idiosyncratic properties of speakers and words, schwa is largely conditioned by intonation. Schwa cannot thus be considered a mere phonetic artefact, since it is relevant for phonology, in that it facilitates the production of communicatively relevant intonation contours.

Psycholinguistic norms for action photographs in French and their relationships with spoken and written latencies.

Science.gov (United States)

Bonin, Patrick; Boyer, Bruno; Méot, Alain; Fayol, Michel; Droit, Sylvie

2004-02-01

A set of 142 photographs of actions (taken from Fiez & Tranel, 1997) was standardized in French on name agreement, image agreement, conceptual familiarity, visual complexity, imageability, age of acquisition, and duration of the depicted actions. Objective word frequency measures were provided for the infinitive modal forms of the verbs and for the cumulative frequency of the verbal forms associated with the photographs. Statistics on the variables collected for action items were provided and compared with the statistics on the same variables collected for object items. The relationships between these variables were analyzed, and certain comparisons between the current database and other similar published databases of pictures of actions are reported. Spoken and written naming latencies were also collected for the photographs of actions, and multiple regression analyses revealed that name agreement, image agreement, and age of acquisition are the major determinants of action naming speed. Finally, certain analyses were performed to compare object and action naming times. The norms and the spoken and written naming latencies corresponding to the pictures are available on the Internet (http://www.psy.univ-bpclermont.fr/~pbonin/pbonin-eng.html) and should be of great use to researchers interested in the processing of actions.

Early access to lexical-level phonological representations of Mandarin word-forms : evidence from auditory N1 habituation

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Yue, Jinxing; Alter, Kai; Howard, David; Bastiaanse, Roelien

2017-01-01

An auditory habituation design was used to investigate whether lexical-level phonological representations in the brain can be rapidly accessed after the onset of a spoken word. We studied the N1 component of the auditory event-related electrical potential, and measured the amplitude decrements of N1

How sensory-motor systems impact the neural organization for language: direct contrasts between spoken and signed language

Science.gov (United States)

Emmorey, Karen; McCullough, Stephen; Mehta, Sonya; Grabowski, Thomas J.

2014-01-01

To investigate the impact of sensory-motor systems on the neural organization for language, we conducted an H215O-PET study of sign and spoken word production (picture-naming) and an fMRI study of sign and audio-visual spoken language comprehension (detection of a semantically anomalous sentence) with hearing bilinguals who are native users of American Sign Language (ASL) and English. Directly contrasting speech and sign production revealed greater activation in bilateral parietal cortex for signing, while speaking resulted in greater activation in bilateral superior temporal cortex (STC) and right frontal cortex, likely reflecting auditory feedback control. Surprisingly, the language production contrast revealed a relative increase in activation in bilateral occipital cortex for speaking. We speculate that greater activation in visual cortex for speaking may actually reflect cortical attenuation when signing, which functions to distinguish self-produced from externally generated visual input. Directly contrasting speech and sign comprehension revealed greater activation in bilateral STC for speech and greater activation in bilateral occipital-temporal cortex for sign. Sign comprehension, like sign production, engaged bilateral parietal cortex to a greater extent than spoken language. We hypothesize that posterior parietal activation in part reflects processing related to spatial classifier constructions in ASL and that anterior parietal activation may reflect covert imitation that functions as a predictive model during sign comprehension. The conjunction analysis for comprehension revealed that both speech and sign bilaterally engaged the inferior frontal gyrus (with more extensive activation on the left) and the superior temporal sulcus, suggesting an invariant bilateral perisylvian language system. We conclude that surface level differences between sign and spoken languages should not be dismissed and are critical for understanding the neurobiology of language

Word-length effect in verbal short-term memory in individuals with Down's syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Kanno, K; Ikeda, Y

2002-11-01

Many studies have indicated that individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) show a specific deficit in short-term memory for verbal information. The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of the length of words on verbal short-term memory in individuals with DS. Twenty-eight children with DS and 10 control participants matched for memory span were tested on verbal serial recall and speech rate, which are thought to involve rehearsal and output speed. Although a significant word-length effect was observed in both groups for the recall of a larger number of items with a shorter spoken duration than for those with a longer spoken duration, the number of correct recalls in the group with DS was reduced compared to the control subjects. The results demonstrating poor short-term memory in children with DS were irrelevant to speech rate. In addition, the proportion of repetition-gained errors in serial recall was higher in children with DS than in control subjects. The present findings suggest that poor access to long-term lexical knowledge, rather than overt articulation speed, constrains verbal short-term memory functions in individuals with DS.

Selectivity of lexical-semantic disorders in Polish-speaking patients with aphasia: evidence from single-word comprehension.

Science.gov (United States)

Jodzio, Krzysztof; Biechowska, Daria; Leszniewska-Jodzio, Barbara

2008-09-01

Several neuropsychological studies have shown that patients with brain damage may demonstrate selective category-specific deficits of auditory comprehension. The present paper reports on an investigation of aphasic patients' preserved ability to perform a semantic task on spoken words despite severe impairment in auditory comprehension, as shown by failure in matching spoken words to pictured objects. Twenty-six aphasic patients (11 women and 15 men) with impaired speech comprehension due to a left-hemisphere ischaemic stroke were examined; all were right-handed and native speakers of Polish. Six narrowly defined semantic categories for which dissociations have been reported are colors, body parts, animals, food, objects (mostly tools), and means of transportation. An analysis using one-way ANOVA with repeated measures in conjunction with the Lambda-Wilks Test revealed significant discrepancies among these categories in aphasic patients, who had much more difficulty comprehending names of colors than they did comprehending names of other objects (F((5,21))=13.15; pexplanation in terms of word frequency and/or visual complexity was ruled out. Evidence from the present study support the position that so called "global" aphasia is an imprecise term and should be redefined. These results are discussed within the connectionist and modular perspectives on category-specific deficits in aphasia.

Tracing attention and the activation flow in spoken word planning using eye-movements

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Roelofs, A.P.A.

2008-01-01

The flow of activation from concepts to phonological forms within the word production system was examined in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures while ignoring superimposed distractor pictures that were semantically related, phonologically related, or unrelated. Eye movements

Promoting Word Consciousness to Close the Vocabulary Gap in Young Word Learners

Science.gov (United States)

Neugebauer, Sabina Rak; Gámez, Perla B.; Coyne, Michael D.; McCoach, D. Betsy; Cólon, Ingrid T.; Ware, Sharon

2017-01-01

A proposed avenue for increasing students' vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is instruction that promotes students' enthusiasm and attention to words, referred to as "word consciousness". This study seeks to investigate, at the utterance level, whether and how word consciousness talk is used in classrooms with young word…

CROATIAN ADULT SPOKEN LANGUAGE CORPUS (HrAL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jelena Kuvač Kraljević

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Interest in spoken-language corpora has increased over the past two decades leading to the development of new corpora and the discovery of new facets of spoken language. These types of corpora represent the most comprehensive data source about the language of ordinary speakers. Such corpora are based on spontaneous, unscripted speech defined by a variety of styles, registers and dialects. The aim of this paper is to present the Croatian Adult Spoken Language Corpus (HrAL, its structure and its possible applications in different linguistic subfields. HrAL was built by sampling spontaneous conversations among 617 speakers from all Croatian counties, and it comprises more than 250,000 tokens and more than 100,000 types. Data were collected during three time slots: from 2010 to 2012, from 2014 to 2015 and during 2016. HrAL is today available within TalkBank, a large database of spoken-language corpora covering different languages (https://talkbank.org, in the Conversational Analyses corpora within the subsection titled Conversational Banks. Data were transcribed, coded and segmented using the transcription format Codes for Human Analysis of Transcripts (CHAT and the Computerised Language Analysis (CLAN suite of programmes within the TalkBank toolkit. Speech streams were segmented into communication units (C-units based on syntactic criteria. Most transcripts were linked to their source audios. The TalkBank is public free, i.e. all data stored in it can be shared by the wider community in accordance with the basic rules of the TalkBank. HrAL provides information about spoken grammar and lexicon, discourse skills, error production and productivity in general. It may be useful for sociolinguistic research and studies of synchronic language changes in Croatian.

Do you remember where sounds, pictures and words came from? The role of the stimulus format in object location memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Delogu, Franco; Lilla, Christopher C

2017-11-01

Contrasting results in visual and auditory spatial memory stimulate the debate over the role of sensory modality and attention in identity-to-location binding. We investigated the role of sensory modality in the incidental/deliberate encoding of the location of a sequence of items. In 4 separated blocks, 88 participants memorised sequences of environmental sounds, spoken words, pictures and written words, respectively. After memorisation, participants were asked to recognise old from new items in a new sequence of stimuli. They were also asked to indicate from which side of the screen (visual stimuli) or headphone channel (sounds) the old stimuli were presented in encoding. In the first block, participants were not aware of the spatial requirement while, in blocks 2, 3 and 4 they knew that their memory for item location was going to be tested. Results show significantly lower accuracy of object location memory for the auditory stimuli (environmental sounds and spoken words) than for images (pictures and written words). Awareness of spatial requirement did not influence localisation accuracy. We conclude that: (a) object location memory is more effective for visual objects; (b) object location is implicitly associated with item identity during encoding and (c) visual supremacy in spatial memory does not depend on the automaticity of object location binding.

Dynamics of large-scale cortical interactions at high gamma frequencies during word production: event related causality (ERC) analysis of human electrocorticography (ECoG).

Science.gov (United States)

Korzeniewska, Anna; Franaszczuk, Piotr J; Crainiceanu, Ciprian M; Kuś, Rafał; Crone, Nathan E

2011-06-15

Intracranial EEG studies in humans have shown that functional brain activation in a variety of functional-anatomic domains of human cortex is associated with an increase in power at a broad range of high gamma (>60Hz) frequencies. Although these electrophysiological responses are highly specific for the location and timing of cortical processing and in animal recordings are highly correlated with increased population firing rates, there has been little direct empirical evidence for causal interactions between different recording sites at high gamma frequencies. Such causal interactions are hypothesized to occur during cognitive tasks that activate multiple brain regions. To determine whether such causal interactions occur at high gamma frequencies and to investigate their functional significance, we used event-related causality (ERC) analysis to estimate the dynamics, directionality, and magnitude of event-related causal interactions using subdural electrocorticography (ECoG) recorded during two word production tasks: picture naming and auditory word repetition. A clinical subject who had normal hearing but was skilled in American Signed Language (ASL) provided a unique opportunity to test our hypothesis with reference to a predictable pattern of causal interactions, i.e. that language cortex interacts with different areas of sensorimotor cortex during spoken vs. signed responses. Our ERC analyses confirmed this prediction. During word production with spoken responses, perisylvian language sites had prominent causal interactions with mouth/tongue areas of motor cortex, and when responses were gestured in sign language, the most prominent interactions involved hand and arm areas of motor cortex. Furthermore, we found that the sites from which the most numerous and prominent causal interactions originated, i.e. sites with a pattern of ERC "divergence", were also sites where high gamma power increases were most prominent and where electrocortical stimulation mapping

Interaction between episodic and semantic memory networks in the acquisition and consolidation of novel spoken words

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Takashima, A.; Bakker, I.; Hell, J.G. van; Janzen, G.; McQueen, J.M.

2017-01-01

When a novel word is learned, its memory representation is thought to undergo a process of consolidation and integration. In this study, we tested whether the neural representations of novel words change as a function of consolidation by observing brain activation patterns just after learning and

Diminutives facilitate word segmentation in natural speech: cross-linguistic evidence.

Science.gov (United States)

Kempe, Vera; Brooks, Patricia J; Gillis, Steven; Samson, Graham

2007-06-01

Final-syllable invariance is characteristic of diminutives (e.g., doggie), which are a pervasive feature of the child-directed speech registers of many languages. Invariance in word endings has been shown to facilitate word segmentation (Kempe, Brooks, & Gillis, 2005) in an incidental-learning paradigm in which synthesized Dutch pseudonouns were used. To broaden the cross-linguistic evidence for this invariance effect and to increase its ecological validity, adult English speakers (n=276) were exposed to naturally spoken Dutch or Russian pseudonouns presented in sentence contexts. A forced choice test was given to assess target recognition, with foils comprising unfamiliar syllable combinations in Experiments 1 and 2 and syllable combinations straddling word boundaries in Experiment 3. A control group (n=210) received the recognition test with no prior exposure to targets. Recognition performance improved with increasing final-syllable rhyme invariance, with larger increases for the experimental group. This confirms that word ending invariance is a valid segmentation cue in artificial, as well as naturalistic, speech and that diminutives may aid segmentation in a number of languages.

Tracing Attention and the Activation Flow of Spoken Word Planning Using Eye Movements

Science.gov (United States)

Roelofs, Ardi

2008-01-01

The flow of activation from concepts to phonological forms within the word production system was examined in 3 experiments. In Experiment 1, participants named pictures while ignoring superimposed distractor pictures that were semantically related, phonologically related, or unrelated. Eye movements and naming latencies were recorded. The…

Neurophysiological evidence for the interplay of speech segmentation and word-referent mapping during novel word learning.

Science.gov (United States)

François, Clément; Cunillera, Toni; Garcia, Enara; Laine, Matti; Rodriguez-Fornells, Antoni

2017-04-01

Learning a new language requires the identification of word units from continuous speech (the speech segmentation problem) and mapping them onto conceptual representation (the word to world mapping problem). Recent behavioral studies have revealed that the statistical properties found within and across modalities can serve as cues for both processes. However, segmentation and mapping have been largely studied separately, and thus it remains unclear whether both processes can be accomplished at the same time and if they share common neurophysiological features. To address this question, we recorded EEG of 20 adult participants during both an audio alone speech segmentation task and an audiovisual word-to-picture association task. The participants were tested for both the implicit detection of online mismatches (structural auditory and visual semantic violations) as well as for the explicit recognition of words and word-to-picture associations. The ERP results from the learning phase revealed a delayed learning-related fronto-central negativity (FN400) in the audiovisual condition compared to the audio alone condition. Interestingly, while online structural auditory violations elicited clear MMN/N200 components in the audio alone condition, visual-semantic violations induced meaning-related N400 modulations in the audiovisual condition. The present results support the idea that speech segmentation and meaning mapping can take place in parallel and act in synergy to enhance novel word learning. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

It's a Mad, Mad Wordle: For a New Take on Text, Try This Fun Word Cloud Generator

Science.gov (United States)

Foote, Carolyn

2009-01-01

Nation. New. Common. Generation. These are among the most frequently used words spoken by President Barack Obama in his January 2009 inauguration speech as seen in a fascinating visual display called a Wordle. Educators, too, can harness the power of Wordle to enhance learning. Imagine providing students with a whole new perspective on…

Auditory comprehension: from the voice up to the single word level

OpenAIRE

Jones, Anna Barbara

2016-01-01

Auditory comprehension, the ability to understand spoken language, consists of a number of different auditory processing skills. In the five studies presented in this thesis I investigated both intact and impaired auditory comprehension at different levels: voice versus phoneme perception, as well as single word auditory comprehension in terms of phonemic and semantic content. In the first study, using sounds from different continua of ‘male’-/pæ/ to ‘female’-/tæ/ and ‘male’...

Recurrent Partial Words

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Francine Blanchet-Sadri

2011-08-01

Full Text Available Partial words are sequences over a finite alphabet that may contain wildcard symbols, called holes, which match or are compatible with all letters; partial words without holes are said to be full words (or simply words. Given an infinite partial word w, the number of distinct full words over the alphabet that are compatible with factors of w of length n, called subwords of w, refers to a measure of complexity of infinite partial words so-called subword complexity. This measure is of particular interest because we can construct partial words with subword complexities not achievable by full words. In this paper, we consider the notion of recurrence over infinite partial words, that is, we study whether all of the finite subwords of a given infinite partial word appear infinitely often, and we establish connections between subword complexity and recurrence in this more general framework.

Age differences and format effects in working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Foos, Paul W; Goolkasian, Paula

2010-07-01

Format effects refer to lower recall of printed words from working memory when compared to spoken words or pictures. These effects have been attributed to an attenuation of attention to printed words. The present experiment compares younger and older adults' recall of three or six items presented as pictures, spoken words, printed words, and alternating case WoRdS. The latter stimuli have been shown to increase attention to printed words and, thus, reduce format effects. The question of interest was whether these stimuli would also reduce format effects for older adults whose working memory capacity has fewer attentional resources to allocate. Results showed that older adults performed as well as younger adults with three items but less well with six and that format effects were reduced for both age groups, but more for young, when alternating case words were used. Other findings regarding executive control of working memory are discussed. The obtained differences support models of reduced capacity in older adult working memory.

Code-switched English pronunciation modeling for Swahili spoken term detection

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Kleynhans, N

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Computer Science 81 ( 2016 ) 128 – 135 5th Workshop on Spoken Language Technology for Under-resourced Languages, SLTU 2016, 9-12 May 2016, Yogyakarta, Indonesia Code-switched English Pronunciation Modeling for Swahili Spoken Term Detection Neil...

The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning.

Science.gov (United States)

Nygaard, Lynne C; Herold, Debora S; Namy, Laura L

2009-01-01

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language. Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Social Markers of Mild Cognitive Impairment: Proportion of Word Counts in Free Conversational Speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Dodge, Hiroko H; Mattek, Nora; Gregor, Mattie; Bowman, Molly; Seelye, Adriana; Ybarra, Oscar; Asgari, Meysam; Kaye, Jeffrey A

2015-01-01

identifying MCI (vs. normals) was 0.71 (95% Confidence Interval: 0.54 - 0.89) when average proportion of word counts spoken by subjects was included univariately into the model. An ecologically valid social marker such as the proportion of spoken words produced during spontaneous conversations may be sensitive to transitions from normal cognition to MCI.

The Potential of Automatic Word Comparison for Historical Linguistics.

Science.gov (United States)

List, Johann-Mattis; Greenhill, Simon J; Gray, Russell D

2017-01-01

The amount of data from languages spoken all over the world is rapidly increasing. Traditional manual methods in historical linguistics need to face the challenges brought by this influx of data. Automatic approaches to word comparison could provide invaluable help to pre-analyze data which can be later enhanced by experts. In this way, computational approaches can take care of the repetitive and schematic tasks leaving experts to concentrate on answering interesting questions. Here we test the potential of automatic methods to detect etymologically related words (cognates) in cross-linguistic data. Using a newly compiled database of expert cognate judgments across five different language families, we compare how well different automatic approaches distinguish related from unrelated words. Our results show that automatic methods can identify cognates with a very high degree of accuracy, reaching 89% for the best-performing method Infomap. We identify the specific strengths and weaknesses of these different methods and point to major challenges for future approaches. Current automatic approaches for cognate detection-although not perfect-could become an important component of future research in historical linguistics.

Processing Electromyographic Signals to Recognize Words

Science.gov (United States)

Jorgensen, C. C.; Lee, D. D.

2009-01-01

A recently invented speech-recognition method applies to words that are articulated by means of the tongue and throat muscles but are otherwise not voiced or, at most, are spoken sotto voce. This method could satisfy a need for speech recognition under circumstances in which normal audible speech is difficult, poses a hazard, is disturbing to listeners, or compromises privacy. The method could also be used to augment traditional speech recognition by providing an additional source of information about articulator activity. The method can be characterized as intermediate between (1) conventional speech recognition through processing of voice sounds and (2) a method, not yet developed, of processing electroencephalographic signals to extract unspoken words directly from thoughts. This method involves computational processing of digitized electromyographic (EMG) signals from muscle innervation acquired by surface electrodes under a subject's chin near the tongue and on the side of the subject s throat near the larynx. After preprocessing, digitization, and feature extraction, EMG signals are processed by a neural-network pattern classifier, implemented in software, that performs the bulk of the recognition task as described.

"Now We Have Spoken."

Science.gov (United States)

Zimmer, Patricia Moore

2001-01-01

Describes the author's experiences directing a play translated and acted in Korean. Notes that she had to get familiar with the sound of the language spoken fluently, to see how an actor's thought is discerned when the verbal language is not understood. Concludes that so much of understanding and communication unfolds in ways other than with…

Distinct Patterns of Brain Activity Characterise Lexical Activation and Competition in Spoken Word Production

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Piai, V.; Roelofs, A.P.A.; Jensen, O.; Schoffelen, J.M.; Bonnefond, M.

2014-01-01

According to a prominent theory of language production, concepts activate multiple associated words in memory, which enter into competition for selection. However, only a few electrophysiological studies have identified brain responses reflecting competition. Here, we report a magnetoencephalography

ROMANCE LOAN WORDS IN HRELJIĆ BEDROOM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lina Pliško

2016-01-01

Full Text Available In this paper we present the immediate etymology (etymologia proxima of twenty words of Romance origin belonging to the semantic field of furniture (5, bed parts (4, bed linen (5 and decorations and certain objects found (6 in the bedroom. The words have been obtained through field work in the Hreljići area, and attestations of these words were sought in dictionaries of the speech of the north Adriatic (Boljun, Grobnik, Labin, Medulin, Roveria dialects as well as the south Adriatic, primarily island, regions (Ugljan, Pag, Brač, Hvar. On the basis of the analysis of all the words obtained, it may be concluded that only two words from the questionnaire are of Slavic origin: postelja and punjava, and that, according to the immediate etymology, twenty words are of Istro-Venetian origin, i.e. from the Istrian variants of the Venetian dialect, which has been spoken in the region of Istria for centuries. This idiom is still spoken by many today, although it no longer serves as a lingua franca among the several ethnic and language groups living in the area as it once did: nowadays its role has been taken over by the standard Croatian language. By comparing the words obtained from Hreljići with those from other Čakavian dialects in Istria (in Medulin, Labin, Boljun and Roverian dialects, in Grobnik, as well as those from the southern Adriatic islands (Novlja on the island of Pag, Kukljica on the island of Ugljan, Brač, as well as Pitava and Zavala on Hvar, we have concluded that many words are used and have been preserved in the same form and with the same meanings that can be found in the dialect of Hreljići. In all the dictionaries we have consulted, nine words and their variants corresponding to those in Hreljići have been attested: armar/armarun/ormarun, lampadina/lampa, koltrina, šusta/šušta, kučeta/kočeta, štramac, lancun, kušin, intima/intimela. Two attested words of Venetian origin have only been found in certain Istrian idioms: �

DOCUMENTARY: A CREATIVE TREATMENT OF ACTUALITY ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Mitch

studios and on condition that the film represents a free artistic creation. ... television programme types, only the documentary documents and presents actualities. ... SPEECH: This refers to spoken word by the subject, commentary by the.

Ins-Robust Primitive Words

OpenAIRE

Srivastava, Amit Kumar; Kapoor, Kalpesh

2017-01-01

Let Q be the set of primitive words over a finite alphabet with at least two symbols. We characterize a class of primitive words, Q_I, referred to as ins-robust primitive words, which remain primitive on insertion of any letter from the alphabet and present some properties that characterizes words in the set Q_I. It is shown that the language Q_I is dense. We prove that the language of primitive words that are not ins-robust is not context-free. We also present a linear time algorithm to reco...

Development of Infrared Lip Movement Sensor for Spoken Word Recognition

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Takahiro Yoshida

2007-12-01

Full Text Available Lip movement of speaker is very informative for many application of speech signal processing such as multi-modal speech recognition and password authentication without speech signal. However, in collecting multi-modal speech information, we need a video camera, large amount of memory, video interface, and high speed processor to extract lip movement in real time. Such a system tends to be expensive and large. This is one reasons of preventing the use of multi-modal speech processing. In this study, we have developed a simple infrared lip movement sensor mounted on a headset, and made it possible to acquire lip movement by PDA, mobile phone, and notebook PC. The sensor consists of an infrared LED and an infrared photo transistor, and measures the lip movement by the reflected light from the mouth region. From experiment, we achieved 66% successfully word recognition rate only by lip movement features. This experimental result shows that our developed sensor can be utilized as a tool for multi-modal speech processing by combining a microphone mounted on the headset.

Attention, gaze shifting, and dual-task interference from phonological encoding in spoken word planning

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Roelofs, A.P.A.

2008-01-01

Controversy exists about whether dual-task interference from word planning reflects structural bottleneck or attentional control factors. Here, participants named pictures whose names could or could not be phonologically prepared. and they manually responded to arrows presented away from (Experiment

Analysis of word number and content in discourse of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease

Science.gov (United States)

de Lira, Juliana Onofre; Minett, Thaís Soares Cianciarullo; Bertolucci, Paulo Henrique Ferreira; Ortiz, Karin Zazo

2014-01-01

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by impairments in memory and other cognitive functions such as language, which can be affected in all aspects including discourse. A picture description task is considered an effective way of obtaining a discourse sample whose key feature is the ability to retrieve appropriate lexical items. There is no consensus on findings showing that performance in content processing of spoken discourse deteriorates from the mildest phase of AD. Objective To compare the quantity and quality of discourse among patients with mild to moderate AD and controls. Methods A cross-sectional study was designed. Subjects aged 50 years and older of both sexes, with one year or more of education, were divided into three groups: control (CG), mild AD (ADG1) and moderate AD (ADG2). Participants were asked to describe the "cookie theft" picture. The total number of complete words spoken and information units (IU) were included in the analysis. Results There was no significant difference among groups in terms of age, schooling and sex. For number of words spoken, the CG performed significantly better than both the ADG 1 and ADG2, but no difference between the two latter groups was found. CG produced almost twice as many information units as the ADG1 and more than double that of the ADG2. Moreover, ADG2 patients had worse performance on IUs compared to the ADG1. Conclusion Decreased performance in quantity and content of discourse was evident in patients with AD from the mildest phase, but only content (IU) continued to worsen with disease progression. PMID:29213912

Analysis of word number and content in discourse of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease

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Juliana Onofre de Lira

Full Text Available Alzheimer's disease (AD is characterized by impairments in memory and other cognitive functions such as language, which can be affected in all aspects including discourse. A picture description task is considered an effective way of obtaining a discourse sample whose key feature is the ability to retrieve appropriate lexical items. There is no consensus on findings showing that performance in content processing of spoken discourse deteriorates from the mildest phase of AD.OBJECTIVE:To compare the quantity and quality of discourse among patients with mild to moderate AD and controls.METHODS: A cross-sectional study was designed. Subjects aged 50 years and older of both sexes, with one year or more of education, were divided into three groups: control (CG, mild AD (ADG1 and moderate AD (ADG2. Participants were asked to describe the "cookie theft" picture. The total number of complete words spoken and information units (IU were included in the analysis.RESULTSThere was no significant difference among groups in terms of age, schooling and sex. For number of words spoken, the CG performed significantly better than both the ADG 1 and ADG2, but no difference between the two latter groups was found. CG produced almost twice as many information units as the ADG1 and more than double that of the ADG2. Moreover, ADG2 patients had worse performance on IUs compared to the ADG1.CONCLUSIONDecreased performance in quantity and content of discourse was evident in patients with AD from the mildest phase, but only content (IU continued to worsen with disease progression.

Analysis of word number and content in discourse of patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.

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de Lira, Juliana Onofre; Minett, Thaís Soares Cianciarullo; Bertolucci, Paulo Henrique Ferreira; Ortiz, Karin Zazo

2014-01-01

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is characterized by impairments in memory and other cognitive functions such as language, which can be affected in all aspects including discourse. A picture description task is considered an effective way of obtaining a discourse sample whose key feature is the ability to retrieve appropriate lexical items. There is no consensus on findings showing that performance in content processing of spoken discourse deteriorates from the mildest phase of AD. To compare the quantity and quality of discourse among patients with mild to moderate AD and controls. A cross-sectional study was designed. Subjects aged 50 years and older of both sexes, with one year or more of education, were divided into three groups: control (CG), mild AD (ADG1) and moderate AD (ADG2). Participants were asked to describe the "cookie theft" picture. The total number of complete words spoken and information units (IU) were included in the analysis. There was no significant difference among groups in terms of age, schooling and sex. For number of words spoken, the CG performed significantly better than both the ADG 1 and ADG2, but no difference between the two latter groups was found. CG produced almost twice as many information units as the ADG1 and more than double that of the ADG2. Moreover, ADG2 patients had worse performance on IUs compared to the ADG1. Decreased performance in quantity and content of discourse was evident in patients with AD from the mildest phase, but only content (IU) continued to worsen with disease progression.

Acoustic Masking Disrupts Time-Dependent Mechanisms of Memory Encoding in Word-List Recall

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Cousins, Katheryn A.Q.; Dar, Jonathan; Wingfield, Arthur; Miller, Paul

2013-01-01

Recall of recently heard words is affected by the clarity of presentation: even if all words are presented with sufficient clarity for successful recognition, those that are more difficult to hear are less likely to be recalled. Such a result demonstrates that memory processing depends on more than whether a word is simply “recognized” versus “not-recognized”. More surprising is that when a single item in a list of spoken words is acoustically masked, prior words that were heard with full clarity are also less likely to be recalled. To account for such a phenomenon, we developed the Linking by Active Maintenance Model (LAMM). This computational model of perception and encoding predicts that these effects are time dependent. Here we challenge our model by investigating whether and how the impact of acoustic masking on memory depends on presentation rate. We find that a slower presentation rate causes a more disruptive impact of stimulus degradation on prior, clearly heard words than does a fast rate. These results are unexpected according to prior theories of effortful listening, but we demonstrate that they can be accounted for by LAMM. PMID:24838269

The word disgust may refer to more than one emotion.

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Yoder, Anne M; Widen, Sherri C; Russell, James A

2016-04-01

Contrary to a common presupposition, the word disgust may refer to more than one emotion. From an array of 3 facial expressions (produced in our lab), participants (N = 44) in Study 1 selected the one that best matched 11 types of emotion-eliciting events: anger, sadness, and 9 types of disgust (7 types of physical disgust plus moral disgust and simply feeling ill). From an array of 4 facial expressions (two from Matsumoto & Ekman, 1988; two produced in lab), participants (N = 120) in Study 2 selected the one that best matched 14 types of disgust-eliciting events (8 physical and 6 moral). In both studies, the modal facial expression for physical disgust was the "sick face" developed by Widen, Pochedly, Pieloch, and Russell (2013), which shows someone about to vomit. The modal facial expression for the moral violations was the standard disgust face or, when available, an anger face. If facial expression is a constituent of an emotion, physical disgust and moral disgust are separate emotions. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Distance-dependent processing of pictures and words.

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Amit, Elinor; Algom, Daniel; Trope, Yaacov

2009-08-01

A series of 8 experiments investigated the association between pictorial and verbal representations and the psychological distance of the referent objects from the observer. The results showed that people better process pictures that represent proximal objects and words that represent distal objects than pictures that represent distal objects and words that represent proximal objects. These results were obtained with various psychological distance dimensions (spatial, temporal, and social), different tasks (classification and categorization), and different measures (speed of processing and selective attention). The authors argue that differences in the processing of pictures and words emanate from the physical similarity of pictures, but not words, to the referents. Consequently, perceptual analysis is commonly applied to pictures but not to words. Pictures thus impart a sense of closeness to the referent objects and are preferably used to represent such objects, whereas words do not convey proximity and are preferably used to represent distal objects in space, time, and social perspective.

Important considerations in lesion-symptom mapping: Illustrations from studies of word comprehension.

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Shahid, Hinna; Sebastian, Rajani; Schnur, Tatiana T; Hanayik, Taylor; Wright, Amy; Tippett, Donna C; Fridriksson, Julius; Rorden, Chris; Hillis, Argye E

2017-06-01

Lesion-symptom mapping is an important method of identifying networks of brain regions critical for functions. However, results might be influenced substantially by the imaging modality and timing of assessment. We tested the hypothesis that brain regions found to be associated with acute language deficits depend on (1) timing of behavioral measurement, (2) imaging sequences utilized to define the "lesion" (structural abnormality only or structural plus perfusion abnormality), and (3) power of the study. We studied 191 individuals with acute left hemisphere stroke with MRI and language testing to identify areas critical for spoken word comprehension. We use the data from this study to examine the potential impact of these three variables on lesion-symptom mapping. We found that only the combination of structural and perfusion imaging within 48 h of onset identified areas where more abnormal voxels was associated with more severe acute deficits, after controlling for lesion volume and multiple comparisons. The critical area identified with this methodology was the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, consistent with other methods that have identified an important role of this area in spoken word comprehension. Results have implications for interpretation of other lesion-symptom mapping studies, as well as for understanding areas critical for auditory word comprehension in the healthy brain. We propose that lesion-symptom mapping at the acute stage of stroke addresses a different sort of question about brain-behavior relationships than lesion-symptom mapping at the chronic stage, but that timing of behavioral measurement and imaging modalities should be considered in either case. Hum Brain Mapp 38:2990-3000, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Attention for speaking: domain-general control from the anterior cingulate cortex in spoken word production

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Vitoria ePiai

2013-12-01

Full Text Available Accumulating evidence suggests that some degree of attentional control is required to regulate and monitor processes underlying speaking. Although progress has been made in delineating the neural substrates of the core language processes involved in speaking, substrates associated with regulatory and monitoring processes have remained relatively underspecified. We report the results of an fMRI study examining the neural substrates related to performance in three attention-demanding tasks varying in the amount of linguistic processing: vocal picture naming while ignoring distractors (picture-word interference, PWI; vocal colour naming while ignoring distractors (Stroop; and manual object discrimination while ignoring spatial position (Simon task. All three tasks had congruent and incongruent stimuli, while PWI and Stroop also had neutral stimuli. Analyses focusing on common activation across tasks identified a portion of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex that was active in incongruent trials for all three tasks, suggesting that this region subserves a domain-general attentional control function. In the language tasks, this area showed increased activity for incongruent relative to congruent stimuli, consistent with the involvement of domain-general mechanisms of attentional control in word production. The two language tasks also showed activity in anterior-superior temporal gyrus. Activity increased for neutral PWI stimuli (picture and word did not share the same semantic category relative to incongruent (categorically related and congruent stimuli. This finding is consistent with the involvement of language-specific areas in word production, possibly related to retrieval of lexical-semantic information from memory. The current results thus suggest that in addition to engaging language-specific areas for core linguistic processes, speaking also engages the anterior cingulate cortex, a region that is likely implementing domain

Individual language experience modulates rapid formation of cortical memory circuits for novel words

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Kimppa, Lilli; Kujala, Teija; Shtyrov, Yury

2016-01-01

Mastering multiple languages is an increasingly important ability in the modern world; furthermore, multilingualism may affect human learning abilities. Here, we test how the brain’s capacity to rapidly form new representations for spoken words is affected by prior individual experience in non-native language acquisition. Formation of new word memory traces is reflected in a neurophysiological response increase during a short exposure to novel lexicon. Therefore, we recorded changes in electrophysiological responses to phonologically native and non-native novel word-forms during a perceptual learning session, in which novel stimuli were repetitively presented to healthy adults in either ignore or attend conditions. We found that larger number of previously acquired languages and earlier average age of acquisition (AoA) predicted greater response increase to novel non-native word-forms. This suggests that early and extensive language experience is associated with greater neural flexibility for acquiring novel words with unfamiliar phonology. Conversely, later AoA was associated with a stronger response increase for phonologically native novel word-forms, indicating better tuning of neural linguistic circuits to native phonology. The results suggest that individual language experience has a strong effect on the neural mechanisms of word learning, and that it interacts with the phonological familiarity of the novel lexicon. PMID:27444206

Spoken grammar awareness raising: Does it affect the listening ability of Iranian EFL learners?

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Mojgan Rashtchi

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Advances in spoken corpora analysis have brought about new insights into language pedagogy and have led to an awareness of the characteristics of spoken language. Current findings have shown that grammar of spoken language is different from written language. However, most listening and speaking materials are concocted based on written grammar and lack core spoken language features. The aim of the present study was to explore the question whether awareness of spoken grammar features could affect learners’ comprehension of real-life conversations. To this end, 45 university students in two intact classes participated in a listening course employing corpus-based materials. The instruction of the spoken grammar features to the experimental group was done overtly through awareness raising tasks, whereas the control group, though exposed to the same materials, was not provided with such tasks for learning the features. The results of the independent samples t tests revealed that the learners in the experimental group comprehended everyday conversations much better than those in the control group. Additionally, the highly positive views of spoken grammar held by the learners, which was elicited by means of a retrospective questionnaire, were generally comparable to those reported in the literature.

Ragnar Rommetveit's Approach to Everyday Spoken Dialogue from Within.

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Kowal, Sabine; O'Connell, Daniel C

2016-04-01

The following article presents basic concepts and methods of Ragnar Rommetveit's (born 1924) hermeneutic-dialogical approach to everyday spoken dialogue with a focus on both shared consciousness and linguistically mediated meaning. He developed this approach originally in his engagement of mainstream linguistic and psycholinguistic research of the 1960s and 1970s. He criticized this research tradition for its individualistic orientation and its adherence to experimental methodology which did not allow the engagement of interactively established meaning and understanding in everyday spoken dialogue. As a social psychologist influenced by phenomenological philosophy, Rommetveit opted for an alternative conceptualization of such dialogue as a contextualized, partially private world, temporarily co-established by interlocutors on the basis of shared consciousness. He argued that everyday spoken dialogue should be investigated from within, i.e., from the perspectives of the interlocutors and from a psychology of the second person. Hence, he developed his approach with an emphasis on intersubjectivity, perspectivity and perspectival relativity, meaning potential of utterances, and epistemic responsibility of interlocutors. In his methods, he limited himself for the most part to casuistic analyses, i.e., logical analyses of fictitious examples to argue for the plausibility of his approach. After many years of experimental research on language, he pursued his phenomenologically oriented research on dialogue in English-language publications from the late 1980s up to 2003. During that period, he engaged psycholinguistic research on spoken dialogue carried out by Anglo-American colleagues only occasionally. Although his work remained unfinished and open to development, it provides both a challenging alternative and supplement to current Anglo-American research on spoken dialogue and some overlap therewith.

Lexical Tone Variation and Spoken Word Recognition in Preschool Children: Effects of Perceptual Salience

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Singh, Leher; Tan, Aloysia; Wewalaarachchi, Thilanga D.

2017-01-01

Children undergo gradual progression in their ability to differentiate correct and incorrect pronunciations of words, a process that is crucial to establishing a native vocabulary. For the most part, the development of mature phonological representations has been researched by investigating children's sensitivity to consonant and vowel variation,…

Spoken Grammar: Where Are We and Where Are We Going?

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Carter, Ronald; McCarthy, Michael

2017-01-01

This article synthesises progress made in the description of spoken (especially conversational) grammar over the 20 years since the authors published a paper in this journal arguing for a re-thinking of grammatical description and pedagogy based on spoken corpus evidence. We begin with a glance back at the 16th century and the teaching of Latin…

Basic speech recognition for spoken dialogues

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Van Heerden, C

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Spoken dialogue systems (SDSs) have great potential for information access in the developing world. However, the realisation of that potential requires the solution of several challenging problems, including the development of sufficiently accurate...

Non-intentional but not automatic: reduction of word- and arrow-based compatibility effects by sound distractors in the same categorical domain.

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Miles, James D; Proctor, Robert W

2009-10-01

In the current study, we show that the non-intentional processing of visually presented words and symbols can be attenuated by sounds. Importantly, this attenuation is dependent on the similarity in categorical domain between the sounds and words or symbols. Participants performed a task in which left or right responses were made contingent on the color of a centrally presented target that was either a location word (LEFT or RIGHT) or a left or right arrow. Responses were faster when they were on the side congruent with the word or arrow. This bias was reduced for location words by a neutral spoken word and for arrows by a tone series, but not vice versa. We suggest that words and symbols are processed with minimal attentional requirements until they are categorized into specific knowledge domains, but then become sensitive to other information within the same domain regardless of the similarity between modalities.

Domain-specific and domain-general constraints on word and sequence learning.

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Archibald, Lisa M D; Joanisse, Marc F

2013-02-01

The relative influences of language-related and memory-related constraints on the learning of novel words and sequences were examined by comparing individual differences in performance of children with and without specific deficits in either language or working memory. Children recalled lists of words in a Hebbian learning protocol in which occasional lists repeated, yielding improved recall over the course of the task on the repeated lists. The task involved presentation of pictures of common nouns followed immediately by equivalent presentations of the spoken names. The same participants also completed a paired-associate learning task involving word-picture and nonword-picture pairs. Hebbian learning was observed for all groups. Domain-general working memory constrained immediate recall, whereas language abilities impacted recall in the auditory modality only. In addition, working memory constrained paired-associate learning generally, whereas language abilities disproportionately impacted novel word learning. Overall, all of the learning tasks were highly correlated with domain-general working memory. The learning of nonwords was additionally related to general intelligence, phonological short-term memory, language abilities, and implicit learning. The results suggest that distinct associations between language- and memory-related mechanisms support learning of familiar and unfamiliar phonological forms and sequences.

Spoken language outcomes after hemispherectomy: factoring in etiology.

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Curtiss, S; de Bode, S; Mathern, G W

2001-12-01

We analyzed postsurgery linguistic outcomes of 43 hemispherectomy patients operated on at UCLA. We rated spoken language (Spoken Language Rank, SLR) on a scale from 0 (no language) to 6 (mature grammar) and examined the effects of side of resection/damage, age at surgery/seizure onset, seizure control postsurgery, and etiology on language development. Etiology was defined as developmental (cortical dysplasia and prenatal stroke) and acquired pathology (Rasmussen's encephalitis and postnatal stroke). We found that clinical variables were predictive of language outcomes only when they were considered within distinct etiology groups. Specifically, children with developmental etiologies had lower SLRs than those with acquired pathologies (p =.0006); age factors correlated positively with higher SLRs only for children with acquired etiologies (p =.0006); right-sided resections led to higher SLRs only for the acquired group (p =.0008); and postsurgery seizure control correlated positively with SLR only for those with developmental etiologies (p =.0047). We argue that the variables considered are not independent predictors of spoken language outcome posthemispherectomy but should be viewed instead as characteristics of etiology. Copyright 2001 Elsevier Science.

Phonological Analysis of University Students’ Spoken Discourse

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Clara Herlina

2011-04-01

Full Text Available The study of discourse is the study of using language in actual use. In this article, the writer is trying to investigate the phonological features, either segmental or supra-segmental, in the spoken discourse of Indonesian university students. The data were taken from the recordings of 15 conversations by 30 students of Bina Nusantara University who are taking English Entrant subject (TOEFL –IBT. Finally, the writer is in opinion that the students are still influenced by their first language in their spoken discourse. This results in English with Indonesian accent. Even though it does not cause misunderstanding at the moment, this may become problematic if they have to communicate in the real world.  

METONYMY BASED ON CULTURAL BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE AND PRAGMATIC INFERENCING: EVIDENCE FROM SPOKEN DISCOURSE

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Arijana Krišković

2009-01-01

Full Text Available Th e characterization of metonymy as a conceptual tool for guiding inferencing in language has opened a new fi eld of study in cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. To appreciate the value of metonymy for pragmatic inferencing, metonymy should not be viewed as performing only its prototypical referential function. Metonymic mappings are operative in speech acts at the level of reference, predication, proposition and illocution. Th e aim of this paper is to study the role of metonymy in pragmatic inferencing in spoken discourse in televison interviews. Case analyses of authentic utterances classifi ed as illocutionary metonymies following the pragmatic typology of metonymic functions are presented. Th e inferencing processes are facilitated by metonymic connections existing between domains or subdomains in the same functional domain. It has been widely accepted by cognitive linguists that universal human knowledge and embodiment are essential for the interpretation of metonymy. Th is analysis points to the role of cultural background knowledge in understanding target meanings. All these aspects of metonymic connections are exploited in complex inferential processes in spoken discourse. In most cases, metaphoric mappings are also a part of utterance interpretation.

Perception of words and pitch patterns in song and speech

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Julia eMerrill

2012-03-01

Full Text Available This fMRI study examines shared and distinct cortical areas involved in the auditory perception of song and speech at the level of their underlying constituents: words, pitch and rhythm. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed on the brain activity patterns of six conditions, arranged in a subtractive hierarchy: sung sentences including words, pitch and rhythm; hummed speech prosody and song melody containing only pitch patterns and rhythm; as well as the pure musical or speech rhythm.Systematic contrasts between these balanced conditions following their hierarchical organization showed a great overlap between song and speech at all levels in the bilateral temporal lobe, but suggested a differential role of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG and intraparietal sulcus (IPS in processing song and speech. The left IFG was involved in word- and pitch-related processing in speech, the right IFG in processing pitch in song.Furthermore, the IPS showed sensitivity to discrete pitch relations in song as opposed to the gliding pitch in speech. Finally, the superior temporal gyrus and premotor cortex coded for general differences between words and pitch patterns, irrespective of whether they were sung or spoken. Thus, song and speech share many features which are reflected in a fundamental similarity of brain areas involved in their perception. However, fine-grained acoustic differences on word and pitch level are reflected in the activity of IFG and IPS.

Recognizing Young Readers' Spoken Questions

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Chen, Wei; Mostow, Jack; Aist, Gregory

2013-01-01

Free-form spoken input would be the easiest and most natural way for young children to communicate to an intelligent tutoring system. However, achieving such a capability poses a challenge both to instruction design and to automatic speech recognition. To address the difficulties of accepting such input, we adopt the framework of predictable…

Flexible Word Classes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

• First major publication on the phenomenon • Offers cross-linguistic, descriptive, and diverse theoretical approaches • Includes analysis of data from different language families and from lesser studied languages This book is the first major cross-linguistic study of 'flexible words', i.e. words...... that cannot be classified in terms of the traditional lexical categories Verb, Noun, Adjective or Adverb. Flexible words can - without special morphosyntactic marking - serve in functions for which other languages must employ members of two or more of the four traditional, 'specialised' word classes. Thus......, flexible words are underspecified for communicative functions like 'predicating' (verbal function), 'referring' (nominal function) or 'modifying' (a function typically associated with adjectives and e.g. manner adverbs). Even though linguists have been aware of flexible world classes for more than...

Selective attention to phonology dynamically modulates initial encoding of auditory words within the left hemisphere.

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Yoncheva, Yuliya; Maurer, Urs; Zevin, Jason D; McCandliss, Bruce D

2014-08-15

Selective attention to phonology, i.e., the ability to attend to sub-syllabic units within spoken words, is a critical precursor to literacy acquisition. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence has demonstrated that a left-lateralized network of frontal, temporal, and posterior language regions, including the visual word form area, supports this skill. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated the temporal dynamics of selective attention to phonology during spoken word perception. We tested the hypothesis that selective attention to phonology dynamically modulates stimulus encoding by recruiting left-lateralized processes specifically while the information critical for performance is unfolding. Selective attention to phonology was captured by manipulating listening goals: skilled adult readers attended to either rhyme or melody within auditory stimulus pairs. Each pair superimposed rhyming and melodic information ensuring identical sensory stimulation. Selective attention to phonology produced distinct early and late topographic ERP effects during stimulus encoding. Data-driven source localization analyses revealed that selective attention to phonology led to significantly greater recruitment of left-lateralized posterior and extensive temporal regions, which was notably concurrent with the rhyme-relevant information within the word. Furthermore, selective attention effects were specific to auditory stimulus encoding and not observed in response to cues, arguing against the notion that they reflect sustained task setting. Collectively, these results demonstrate that selective attention to phonology dynamically engages a left-lateralized network during the critical time-period of perception for achieving phonological analysis goals. These findings suggest a key role for selective attention in on-line phonological computations. Furthermore, these findings motivate future research on the role that neural mechanisms of attention may

Selective attention to phonology dynamically modulates initial encoding of auditory words within the left hemisphere

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Yoncheva; Maurer, Urs; Zevin, Jason; McCandliss, Bruce

2015-01-01

Selective attention to phonology, i.e., the ability to attend to sub-syllabic units within spoken words, is a critical precursor to literacy acquisition. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence has demonstrated that a left-lateralized network of frontal, temporal, and posterior language regions, including the visual word form area, supports this skill. The current event-related potential (ERP) study investigated the temporal dynamics of selective attention to phonology during spoken word perception. We tested the hypothesis that selective atten tion to phonology dynamically modulates stimulus encoding by recruiting left-lateralized processes specifically while the information critical for performance is unfolding. Selective attention to phonology was captured by ma nipulating listening goals: skilled adult readers attended to either rhyme or melody within auditory stimulus pairs. Each pair superimposed rhyming and melodic information ensuring identical sensory stimulation. Selective attention to phonology produced distinct early and late topographic ERP effects during stimulus encoding. Data- driven source localization analyses revealed that selective attention to phonology led to significantly greater re cruitment of left-lateralized posterior and extensive temporal regions, which was notably concurrent with the rhyme-relevant information within the word. Furthermore, selective attention effects were specific to auditory stimulus encoding and not observed in response to cues, arguing against the notion that they reflect sustained task setting. Collectively, these results demonstrate that selective attention to phonology dynamically engages a left-lateralized network during the critical time-period of perception for achieving phonological analysis goals. These findings support the key role of selective attention to phonology in the development of literacy and motivate future research on the neural bases of the interaction between phonological

Augmented Input Reveals Word Deafness in a Man with Frontotemporal Dementia

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Chris Gibbons

2012-01-01

Full Text Available We describe a 57 year old, right handed, English speaking man initially diagnosed with progressive aphasia. Language assessment revealed inconsistent performance in key areas. Expressive language was reduced to a few short, perseverative phrases. Speech was severely apraxic. Primary modes of communication included gesture, pointing, gaze, physical touch and leading. Responses were 100% accurate when he was provided with written words, with random or inaccurate responses for strictly auditory/verbal input. When instructions to subsequent neuropsychological tests were written instead of spoken, performance improved markedly. A comprehensive audiology assessment revealed no hearing impairment. Neuroimaging was unremarkable. Neurobehavioral evaluation utilizing written input led to diagnoses of word deafness and frontotemporal dementia, resulting in very different management. We highlight the need for alternative modes of language input for assessment and treatment of patients with language comprehension symptoms.

Nurturing a lexical legacy: reading experience is critical for the development of word reading skill

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Nation, Kate

2017-12-01

The scientific study of reading has taught us much about the beginnings of reading in childhood, with clear evidence that the gateway to reading opens when children are able to decode, or `sound out' written words. Similarly, there is a large evidence base charting the cognitive processes that characterise skilled word recognition in adults. Less understood is how children develop word reading expertise. Once basic reading skills are in place, what factors are critical for children to move from novice to expert? This paper outlines the role of reading experience in this transition. Encountering individual words in text provides opportunities for children to refine their knowledge about how spelling represents spoken language. Alongside this, however, reading experience provides much more than repeated exposure to individual words in isolation. According to the lexical legacy perspective, outlined in this paper, experiencing words in diverse and meaningful language environments is critical for the development of word reading skill. At its heart is the idea that reading provides exposure to words in many different contexts, episodes and experiences which, over time, sum to a rich and nuanced database about their lexical history within an individual's experience. These rich and diverse encounters bring about local variation at the word level: a lexical legacy that is measurable during word reading behaviour, even in skilled adults.

The Malay Lexicon Project: a database of lexical statistics for 9,592 words.

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Yap, Melvin J; Liow, Susan J Rickard; Jalil, Sajlia Binte; Faizal, Siti Syuhada Binte

2010-11-01

Malay, a language spoken by 250 million people, has a shallow alphabetic orthography, simple syllable structures, and transparent affixation--characteristics that contrast sharply with those of English. In the present article, we first compare the letter-phoneme and letter-syllable ratios for a sample of alphabetic orthographies to highlight the importance of separating language-specific from language-universal reading processes. Then, in order to develop a better understanding of word recognition in orthographies with more consistent mappings to phonology than English, we compiled a database of lexical variables (letter length, syllable length, phoneme length, morpheme length, word frequency, orthographic and phonological neighborhood sizes, and orthographic and phonological Levenshtein distances) for 9,592 Malay words. Separate hierarchical regression analyses for Malay and English revealed how the consistency of orthography-phonology mappings selectively modulates the effects of different lexical variables on lexical decision and speeded pronunciation performance. The database of lexical and behavioral measures for Malay is available at http://brm.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Different neurophysiological mechanisms underlying word and rule extraction from speech.

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Ruth De Diego Balaguer

Full Text Available The initial process of identifying words from spoken language and the detection of more subtle regularities underlying their structure are mandatory processes for language acquisition. Little is known about the cognitive mechanisms that allow us to extract these two types of information and their specific time-course of acquisition following initial contact with a new language. We report time-related electrophysiological changes that occurred while participants learned an artificial language. These changes strongly correlated with the discovery of the structural rules embedded in the words. These changes were clearly different from those related to word learning and occurred during the first minutes of exposition. There is a functional distinction in the nature of the electrophysiological signals during acquisition: an increase in negativity (N400 in the central electrodes is related to word-learning and development of a frontal positivity (P2 is related to rule-learning. In addition, the results of an online implicit and a post-learning test indicate that, once the rules of the language have been acquired, new words following the rule are processed as words of the language. By contrast, new words violating the rule induce syntax-related electrophysiological responses when inserted online in the stream (an early frontal negativity followed by a late posterior positivity and clear lexical effects when presented in isolation (N400 modulation. The present study provides direct evidence suggesting that the mechanisms to extract words and structural dependencies from continuous speech are functionally segregated. When these mechanisms are engaged, the electrophysiological marker associated with rule-learning appears very quickly, during the earliest phases of exposition to a new language.

The Listening and Spoken Language Data Repository: Design and Project Overview

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Bradham, Tamala S.; Fonnesbeck, Christopher; Toll, Alice; Hecht, Barbara F.

2018-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of the Listening and Spoken Language Data Repository (LSL-DR) was to address a critical need for a systemwide outcome data-monitoring program for the development of listening and spoken language skills in highly specialized educational programs for children with hearing loss highlighted in Goal 3b of the 2007 Joint Committee…

Does "a picture is worth 1000 words" apply to iconic Chinese words? Relationship of Chinese words and pictures.

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Lo, Shih-Yu; Yeh, Su-Ling

2018-05-29

The meaning of a picture can be extracted rapidly, but the form-to-meaning relationship is less obvious for printed words. In contrast to English words that follow grapheme-to-phoneme correspondence rule, the iconic nature of Chinese words might predispose them to activate their semantic representations more directly from their orthographies. By using the paradigm of repetition blindness (RB) that taps into the early level of word processing, we examined whether Chinese words activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do. RB refers to the failure to detect the second occurrence of an item when it is presented twice in temporal proximity. Previous studies showed RB for semantically related pictures, suggesting that pictures activate their semantic representations directly from their shapes and thus two semantically related pictures are represented as repeated. However, this does not apply to English words since no RB was found for English synonyms. In this study, we replicated the semantic RB effect for pictures, and further showed the absence of semantic RB for Chinese synonyms. Based on our findings, it is suggested that Chinese words are processed like English words, which do not activate their semantic representations as directly as pictures do.

The determinants of spoken and written picture naming latencies.

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Bonin, Patrick; Chalard, Marylène; Méot, Alain; Fayol, Michel

2002-02-01

The influence of nine variables on the latencies to write down or to speak aloud the names of pictures taken from Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980) was investigated in French adults. The major determinants of both written and spoken picture naming latencies were image variability, image agreement and age of acquisition. To a lesser extent, name agreement was also found to have an impact in both production modes. The implications of the findings for theoretical views of both spoken and written picture naming are discussed.

From spoken narratives to domain knowledge: mining linguistic data for medical image understanding.

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Guo, Xuan; Yu, Qi; Alm, Cecilia Ovesdotter; Calvelli, Cara; Pelz, Jeff B; Shi, Pengcheng; Haake, Anne R

2014-10-01

Extracting useful visual clues from medical images allowing accurate diagnoses requires physicians' domain knowledge acquired through years of systematic study and clinical training. This is especially true in the dermatology domain, a medical specialty that requires physicians to have image inspection experience. Automating or at least aiding such efforts requires understanding physicians' reasoning processes and their use of domain knowledge. Mining physicians' references to medical concepts in narratives during image-based diagnosis of a disease is an interesting research topic that can help reveal experts' reasoning processes. It can also be a useful resource to assist with design of information technologies for image use and for image case-based medical education systems. We collected data for analyzing physicians' diagnostic reasoning processes by conducting an experiment that recorded their spoken descriptions during inspection of dermatology images. In this paper we focus on the benefit of physicians' spoken descriptions and provide a general workflow for mining medical domain knowledge based on linguistic data from these narratives. The challenge of a medical image case can influence the accuracy of the diagnosis as well as how physicians pursue the diagnostic process. Accordingly, we define two lexical metrics for physicians' narratives--lexical consensus score and top N relatedness score--and evaluate their usefulness by assessing the diagnostic challenge levels of corresponding medical images. We also report on clustering medical images based on anchor concepts obtained from physicians' medical term usage. These analyses are based on physicians' spoken narratives that have been preprocessed by incorporating the Unified Medical Language System for detecting medical concepts. The image rankings based on lexical consensus score and on top 1 relatedness score are well correlated with those based on challenge levels (Spearman correlation>0.5 and Kendall

Asian/Pacific Islander Languages Spoken by English Learners (ELs). Fast Facts

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Office of English Language Acquisition, US Department of Education, 2015

2015-01-01

The Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) has synthesized key data on English learners (ELs) into two-page PDF sheets, by topic, with graphics, plus key contacts. The topics for this report on Asian/Pacific Islander languages spoken by English Learners (ELs) include: (1) Top 10 Most Common Asian/Pacific Islander Languages Spoken Among ELs:…

The Penefit of Salience: Salient Accented, but Not Unaccented Words Reveal Accent Adaptation Effects.

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Grohe, Ann-Kathrin; Weber, Andrea

2016-01-01

In two eye-tracking experiments, the effects of salience in accent training and speech accentedness on spoken-word recognition were investigated. Salience was expected to increase a stimulus' prominence and therefore promote learning. A training-test paradigm was used on native German participants utilizing an artificial German accent. Salience was elicited by two different criteria: production and listening training as a subjective criterion and accented (Experiment 1) and canonical test words (Experiment 2) as an objective criterion. During training in Experiment 1, participants either read single German words out loud and deliberately devoiced initial voiced stop consonants (e.g., Balken-"beam" pronounced as (*) Palken), or they listened to pre-recorded words with the same accent. In a subsequent eye-tracking experiment, looks to auditorily presented target words with the accent were analyzed. Participants from both training conditions fixated accented target words more often than a control group without training. Training was identical in Experiment 2, but during test, canonical German words that overlapped in onset with the accented words from training were presented as target words (e.g., Palme-"palm tree" overlapped in onset with the training word (*) Palken) rather than accented words. This time, no training effect was observed; recognition of canonical word forms was not affected by having learned the accent. Therefore, accent learning was only visible when the accented test tokens in Experiment 1, which were not included in the test of Experiment 2, possessed sufficient salience based on the objective criterion "accent." These effects were not modified by the subjective criterion of salience from the training modality.

Mapping Students' Spoken Conceptions of Equality

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Anakin, Megan

2013-01-01

This study expands contemporary theorising about students' conceptions of equality. A nationally representative sample of New Zealand students' were asked to provide a spoken numerical response and an explanation as they solved an arithmetic additive missing number problem. Students' responses were conceptualised as acts of communication and…

In a Manner of Speaking: Assessing Frequent Spoken Figurative Idioms to Assist ESL/EFL Teachers

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Grant, Lynn E.

2007-01-01

This article outlines criteria to define a figurative idiom, and then compares the frequent figurative idioms identified in two sources of spoken American English (academic and contemporary) to their frequency in spoken British English. This is done by searching the spoken part of the British National Corpus (BNC), to see whether they are frequent…

The role of tone and segmental information in visual-word recognition in Thai.

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Winskel, Heather; Ratitamkul, Theeraporn; Charoensit, Akira

2017-07-01

Tone languages represent a large proportion of the spoken languages of the world and yet lexical tone is understudied. Thai offers a unique opportunity to investigate the role of lexical tone processing during visual-word recognition, as tone is explicitly expressed in its script. We used colour words and their orthographic neighbours as stimuli to investigate facilitation (Experiment 1) and interference (Experiment 2) Stroop effects. Five experimental conditions were created: (a) the colour word (e.g., ขาว /k h ã:w/ [white]), (b) tone different word (e.g., ข่าว /k h à:w/[news]), (c) initial consonant phonologically same word (e.g., คาว /k h a:w/ [fishy]), where the initial consonant of the word was phonologically the same but orthographically different, (d) initial consonant different, tone same word (e.g., หาว /hã:w/ yawn), where the initial consonant was orthographically different but the tone of the word was the same, and (e) initial consonant different, tone different word (e.g., กาว /ka:w/ glue), where the initial consonant was orthographically different, and the tone was different. In order to examine whether tone information per se had a facilitative effect, we also included a colour congruent word condition where the segmental (S) information was different but the tone (T) matched the colour word (S-T+) in Experiment 2. Facilitation/interference effects were found for all five conditions when compared with a neutral control word. Results of the critical comparisons revealed that tone information comes into play at a later stage in lexical processing, and orthographic information contributes more than phonological information.

Crossmodal Activation of Visual Object Regions for Auditorily Presented Concrete Words

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Jasper J F van den Bosch

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Dual-coding theory (Paivio, 1986 postulates that the human mind represents objects not just with an analogous, or semantic code, but with a perceptual representation as well. Previous studies (eg, Fiebach & Friederici, 2004 indicated that the modality of this representation is not necessarily the one that triggers the representation. The human visual cortex contains several regions, such as the Lateral Occipital Complex (LOC, that respond specifically to object stimuli. To investigate whether these principally visual representations regions are also recruited for auditory stimuli, we presented subjects with spoken words with specific, concrete meanings (‘car’ as well as words with abstract meanings (‘hope’. Their brain activity was measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Whole-brain contrasts showed overlap between regions differentially activated by words for concrete objects compared to words for abstract concepts with visual regions activated by a contrast of object versus non-object visual stimuli. We functionally localized LOC for individual subjects and a preliminary analysis showed a trend for a concreteness effect in this region-of-interest on the group level. Appropriate further analysis might include connectivity and classification measures. These results can shed light on the role of crossmodal representations in cognition.

Noise Hampers Children's Expressive Word Learning

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Riley, Kristine Grohne; McGregor, Karla K.

2012-01-01

Purpose: To determine the effects of noise and speech style on word learning in typically developing school-age children. Method: Thirty-one participants ages 9;0 (years;months) to 10;11 attempted to learn 2 sets of 8 novel words and their referents. They heard all of the words 13 times each within meaningful narrative discourse. Signal-to-noise…

Reinforcement and inference in cross-situational word learning.

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Tilles, Paulo F C; Fontanari, José F

2013-01-01

Cross-situational word learning is based on the notion that a learner can determine the referent of a word by finding something in common across many observed uses of that word. Here we propose an adaptive learning algorithm that contains a parameter that controls the strength of the reinforcement applied to associations between concurrent words and referents, and a parameter that regulates inference, which includes built-in biases, such as mutual exclusivity, and information of past learning events. By adjusting these parameters so that the model predictions agree with data from representative experiments on cross-situational word learning, we were able to explain the learning strategies adopted by the participants of those experiments in terms of a trade-off between reinforcement and inference. These strategies can vary wildly depending on the conditions of the experiments. For instance, for fast mapping experiments (i.e., the correct referent could, in principle, be inferred in a single observation) inference is prevalent, whereas for segregated contextual diversity experiments (i.e., the referents are separated in groups and are exhibited with members of their groups only) reinforcement is predominant. Other experiments are explained with more balanced doses of reinforcement and inference.

Presentation format effects in working memory: the role of attention.

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Foos, Paul W; Goolkasian, Paula

2005-04-01

Four experiments are reported in which participants attempted to remember three or six concrete nouns, presented as pictures, spoken words, or printed words, while also verifying the accuracy of sentences. Hypotheses meant to explain the higher recall of pictures and spoken words over printed words were tested. Increasing the difficulty and changing the type of processing task from arithmetic to a visual/spatial reasoning task did not influence recall. An examination of long-term modality effects showed that those effects were not sufficient to explain the superior performance with spoken words and pictures. Only when we manipulated the allocation of attention to the items in the storage task by requiring the participants to articulate the items and by presenting the stimulus items under a degraded condition were we able to reduce or remove the effect of presentation format. The findings suggest that the better recall of pictures and spoken words over printed words result from the fact that under normal presentation conditions, printed words receive less processing attention than pictures and spoken words do.

Correlations between vocabulary and phonological acquisition: number of words produced versus acquired consonants.

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Wiethan, Fernanda Marafiga; Mota, Helena Bolli; Moraes, Anaelena Bragança de

2016-01-01

To verify the probable correlations between the number of word types and the number of consonants in the general phonological system in children with typical language development. Study participants were 186 children aged one year and six months to five years, 11 months and 29 days who were monolingual Brazilian Portuguese speakers with typical language development. Data collection involved speech, language and hearing assessments and spontaneous speech recordings. Phonology was assessed with regard to the number of acquired consonants in the general phonological system, in each syllable structure and in Implicational Model of Feature Complexity (IMFC) levels. Vocabulary was assessed with regard to number of word types produced. These data were compared across age groups. After that, correlations between the word types produced and the variables established for the phonological system were analyzed. The significance level adopted was 5%. All phonological aspects evaluated presented gradual growth. Word types produced showed a similar behavior, though with a small regression at the age of five years. Different positive correlations occurred between the spoken word types and the variables analyzed in the phonological system. Only one negative correlation occurred with respect to the production of complex onset in the last age group analyzed. The phonology and vocabulary of the study participants present similar behaviors. There are many positive correlations between the word types produced and the different aspects of phonology, except regarding complex onset.

Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Šimáčková, Š.; Podlipský, V.J.; Chládková, K.

2012-01-01

As a western Slavic language of the Indo-European family, Czech is closest to Slovak and Polish. It is spoken as a native language by nearly 10 million people in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office n.d.). About two million people living abroad, mostly in the USA, Canada, Austria, Germany,

The Plausibility of Tonal Evolution in the Malay Dialect Spoken in Thailand: Evidence from an Acoustic Study

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Phanintra Teeranon

2007-12-01

Full Text Available The F0 values of vowels following voiceless consonants are higher than those of vowels following voiced consonants; high vowels have a higher F0 than low vowels. It has also been found that when high vowels follow voiced consonants, the F0 values decrease. In contrast, low vowels following voiceless consonants show increasing F0 values. In other words, the voicing of initial consonants has been found to counterbalance the intrinsic F0 values of high and low vowels (House and Fairbanks 1953, Lehiste and Peterson 1961, Lehiste 1970, Laver 1994, Teeranon 2006. To test whether these three findings are applicable to a disyllabic language, the F0 values of high and low vowels following voiceless and voiced consonants were studied in a Malay dialect of the Austronesian language family spoken in Pathumthani Province, Thailand. The data was collected from three male informants, aged 30-35. The Praat program was used for acoustic analysis. The findings revealed the influence of the voicing of initial consonants on the F0 of vowels to be greater than that of the influence of vowel height. Evidence from this acoustic study shows the plausibility for the Malay dialect spoken in Pathumthani to become a tonal language by the influence of initial consonants rather by the influence of the high-low vowel dimension.

Changing word usage predicts changing word durations in New Zealand English.

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Sóskuthy, Márton; Hay, Jennifer

2017-09-01

This paper investigates the emergence of lexicalized effects of word usage on word duration by looking at parallel changes in usage and duration over 130years in New Zealand English. Previous research has found that frequent words are shorter, informative words are longer, and words in utterance-final position are also longer. It has also been argued that some of these patterns are not simply online adjustments, but are incorporated into lexical representations. While these studies tend to focus on the synchronic aspects of such patterns, our corpus shows that word-usage patterns and word durations are not static over time. Many words change in duration and also change with respect to frequency, informativity and likelihood of occurring utterance-finally. Analysis of changing word durations over this time period shows substantial patterns of co-adaptation between word usage and word durations. Words that are increasing in frequency are becoming shorter. Words that are increasing/decreasing in informativity show a change in the same direction in duration (e.g. increasing informativity is associated with increasing duration). And words that are increasingly appearing utterance-finally are lengthening. These effects exist independently of the local effects of the predictors. For example, words that are increasing utterance-finally lengthen in all positions, including utterance-medially. We show that these results are compatible with a number of different views about lexical representations, but they cannot be explained without reference to a production-perception loop that allows speakers to update their representations dynamically on the basis of their experience. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of metric hierarchy and rhyme predictability on word duration in The Cat in the Hat.

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Breen, Mara

2018-05-01

Word durations convey many types of linguistic information, including intrinsic lexical features like length and frequency and contextual features like syntactic and semantic structure. The current study was designed to investigate whether hierarchical metric structure and rhyme predictability account for durational variation over and above other features in productions of a rhyming, metrically-regular children's book: The Cat in the Hat (Dr. Seuss, 1957). One-syllable word durations and inter-onset intervals were modeled as functions of segment number, lexical frequency, word class, syntactic structure, repetition, and font emphasis. Consistent with prior work, factors predicting longer word durations and inter-onset intervals included more phonemes, lower frequency, first mention, alignment with a syntactic boundary, and capitalization. A model parameter corresponding to metric grid height improved model fit of word durations and inter-onset intervals. Specifically, speakers realized five levels of metric hierarchy with inter-onset intervals such that interval duration increased linearly with increased height in the metric hierarchy. Conversely, speakers realized only three levels of metric hierarchy with word duration, demonstrating that they shortened the highly predictable rhyme resolutions. These results further understanding of the factors that affect spoken word duration, and demonstrate the myriad cues that children receive about linguistic structure from nursery rhymes. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Neural correlates of conflict between gestures and words: A domain-specific role for a temporal-parietal complex.

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Noah, J Adam; Dravida, Swethasri; Zhang, Xian; Yahil, Shaul; Hirsch, Joy

2017-01-01

The interpretation of social cues is a fundamental function of human social behavior, and resolution of inconsistencies between spoken and gestural cues plays an important role in successful interactions. To gain insight into these underlying neural processes, we compared neural responses in a traditional color/word conflict task and to a gesture/word conflict task to test hypotheses of domain-general and domain-specific conflict resolution. In the gesture task, recorded spoken words ("yes" and "no") were presented simultaneously with video recordings of actors performing one of the following affirmative or negative gestures: thumbs up, thumbs down, head nodding (up and down), or head shaking (side-to-side), thereby generating congruent and incongruent communication stimuli between gesture and words. Participants identified the communicative intent of the gestures as either positive or negative. In the color task, participants were presented the words "red" and "green" in either red or green font and were asked to identify the color of the letters. We observed a classic "Stroop" behavioral interference effect, with participants showing increased response time for incongruent trials relative to congruent ones for both the gesture and color tasks. Hemodynamic signals acquired using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were increased in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) for incongruent trials relative to congruent trials for both tasks consistent with a common, domain-general mechanism for detecting conflict. However, activity in the left DLPFC and frontal eye fields and the right temporal-parietal junction (TPJ), superior temporal gyrus (STG), supramarginal gyrus (SMG), and primary and auditory association cortices was greater for the gesture task than the color task. Thus, in addition to domain-general conflict processing mechanisms, as suggested by common engagement of right DLPFC, socially specialized neural modules localized to the left

Neural correlates of conflict between gestures and words: A domain-specific role for a temporal-parietal complex.

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J Adam Noah

Full Text Available The interpretation of social cues is a fundamental function of human social behavior, and resolution of inconsistencies between spoken and gestural cues plays an important role in successful interactions. To gain insight into these underlying neural processes, we compared neural responses in a traditional color/word conflict task and to a gesture/word conflict task to test hypotheses of domain-general and domain-specific conflict resolution. In the gesture task, recorded spoken words ("yes" and "no" were presented simultaneously with video recordings of actors performing one of the following affirmative or negative gestures: thumbs up, thumbs down, head nodding (up and down, or head shaking (side-to-side, thereby generating congruent and incongruent communication stimuli between gesture and words. Participants identified the communicative intent of the gestures as either positive or negative. In the color task, participants were presented the words "red" and "green" in either red or green font and were asked to identify the color of the letters. We observed a classic "Stroop" behavioral interference effect, with participants showing increased response time for incongruent trials relative to congruent ones for both the gesture and color tasks. Hemodynamic signals acquired using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS were increased in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC for incongruent trials relative to congruent trials for both tasks consistent with a common, domain-general mechanism for detecting conflict. However, activity in the left DLPFC and frontal eye fields and the right temporal-parietal junction (TPJ, superior temporal gyrus (STG, supramarginal gyrus (SMG, and primary and auditory association cortices was greater for the gesture task than the color task. Thus, in addition to domain-general conflict processing mechanisms, as suggested by common engagement of right DLPFC, socially specialized neural modules localized to

SPOKEN CUZCO QUECHUA, UNITS 7-12.

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SOLA, DONALD F.; AND OTHERS

THIS SECOND VOLUME OF AN INTRODUCTORY COURSE IN SPOKEN CUZCO QUECHUA ALSO COMPRISES ENOUGH MATERIAL FOR ONE INTENSIVE SUMMER SESSION COURSE OR ONE SEMESTER OF SEMI-INTENSIVE INSTRUCTION (120 CLASS HOURS). THE METHOD OF PRESENTATION IS ESSENTIALLY THE SAME AS IN THE FIRST VOLUME WITH FURTHER CONTRASTIVE, LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH-QUECHUA…

SPOKEN COCHABAMBA QUECHUA, UNITS 13-24.

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LASTRA, YOLANDA; SOLA, DONALD F.

UNITS 13-24 OF THE SPOKEN COCHABAMBA QUECHUA COURSE FOLLOW THE GENERAL FORMAT OF THE FIRST VOLUME (UNITS 1-12). THIS SECOND VOLUME IS INTENDED FOR USE IN AN INTERMEDIATE OR ADVANCED COURSE AND INCLUDES MORE COMPLEX DIALOGS, CONVERSATIONS, "LISTENING-INS," AND DICTATIONS, AS WELL AS GRAMMAR AND EXERCISE SECTIONS COVERING ADDITIONAL…

P2-13: Location word Cues' Effect on Location Discrimination Task: Cross-Modal Study

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Satoko Ohtsuka

2012-10-01

Full Text Available As is well known, participants are slower and make more errors in responding to the display color of an incongruent color word than a congruent one. This traditional stroop effect is often accounted for with relatively automatic and dominant word processing. Although the word dominance account has been widely supported, it is not clear in what extent of perceptual tasks it is valid. Here we aimed to examine whether the word dominance effect is observed in location stroop tasks and in audio-visual situations. The participants were required to press a key according to the location of visual (Experiment 1 and audio (Experiment 2 targets, left or right, as soon as possible. A cue of written (Experiments 1a and 2a or spoken (Experiments 1b and 2b location words, “left” or “right”, was presented on the left or right side of the fixation with cue lead times (CLT of 200 ms and 1200 ms. Reaction time from target presentation to key press was recorded as a dependent variable. The results were that the location validity effect was marked in within-modality but less so in cross-modality trials. The word validity effect was strong in within- but not in cross-modality trials. The CLT gave some effect of inhibition of return. So the word dominance could be less effective in location tasks and in cross-modal situations. The spatial correspondence seems to overcome the word effect.

Spoken Spanish Language Development at the High School Level: A Mixed-Methods Study

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Moeller, Aleidine J.; Theiler, Janine

2014-01-01

Communicative approaches to teaching language have emphasized the centrality of oral proficiency in the language acquisition process, but research investigating oral proficiency has been surprisingly limited, yielding an incomplete understanding of spoken language development. This study investigated the development of spoken language at the high…

Representation Learning of Logic Words by an RNN: From Word Sequences to Robot Actions

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Tatsuro Yamada

2017-12-01

Full Text Available An important characteristic of human language is compositionality. We can efficiently express a wide variety of real-world situations, events, and behaviors by compositionally constructing the meaning of a complex expression from a finite number of elements. Previous studies have analyzed how machine-learning models, particularly neural networks, can learn from experience to represent compositional relationships between language and robot actions with the aim of understanding the symbol grounding structure and achieving intelligent communicative agents. Such studies have mainly dealt with the words (nouns, adjectives, and verbs that directly refer to real-world matters. In addition to these words, the current study deals with logic words, such as “not,” “and,” and “or” simultaneously. These words are not directly referring to the real world, but are logical operators that contribute to the construction of meaning in sentences. In human–robot communication, these words may be used often. The current study builds a recurrent neural network model with long short-term memory units and trains it to learn to translate sentences including logic words into robot actions. We investigate what kind of compositional representations, which mediate sentences and robot actions, emerge as the network's internal states via the learning process. Analysis after learning shows that referential words are merged with visual information and the robot's own current state, and the logical words are represented by the model in accordance with their functions as logical operators. Words such as “true,” “false,” and “not” work as non-linear transformations to encode orthogonal phrases into the same area in a memory cell state space. The word “and,” which required a robot to lift up both its hands, worked as if it was a universal quantifier. The word “or,” which required action generation that looked apparently random, was represented as an

On the role of object knowledge in reference production : Effects of color typicality on content determination

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Westerbeek, H.G.W.; Koolen, R.M.F.; Maes, A.A.; Bello, Paul; Guarini, Marcello; McShane, Marjorie; Scassellati, Brian

2014-01-01

In two language production experiments, we investigated whether stored knowledge of the typical color of objects affects spoken reference. In experiment 1, human speakers referred to objects with colors ranging from very typical (e.g., red tomato) to very atypical (e.g., blue pepper). The

Biomechanically Preferred Consonant-Vowel Combinations Fail to Appear in Adult Spoken Corpora

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Whalen, D. H.; Giulivi, Sara; Nam, Hosung; Levitt, Andrea G.; Hallé, Pierre; Goldstein, Louis M.

2012-01-01

Certain consonant/vowel (CV) combinations are more frequent than would be expected from the individual C and V frequencies alone, both in babbling and, to a lesser extent, in adult language, based on dictionary counts: Labial consonants co-occur with central vowels more often than chance would dictate; coronals co-occur with front vowels, and velars with back vowels (Davis & MacNeilage, 1994). Plausible biomechanical explanations have been proposed, but it is also possible that infants are mirroring the frequency of the CVs that they hear. As noted, previous assessments of adult language were based on dictionaries; these “type” counts are incommensurate with the babbling measures, which are necessarily “token” counts. We analyzed the tokens in two spoken corpora for English, two for French and one for Mandarin. We found that the adult spoken CV preferences correlated with the type counts for Mandarin and French, not for English. Correlations between the adult spoken corpora and the babbling results had all three possible outcomes: significantly positive (French), uncorrelated (Mandarin), and significantly negative (English). There were no correlations of the dictionary data with the babbling results when we consider all nine combinations of consonants and vowels. The results indicate that spoken frequencies of CV combinations can differ from dictionary (type) counts and that the CV preferences apparent in babbling are biomechanically driven and can ignore the frequencies of CVs in the ambient spoken language. PMID:23420980

SPOKEN AYACUCHO QUECHUA, UNITS 11-20.

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PARKER, GARY J.; SOLA, DONALD F.

THE ESSENTIALS OF AYACUCHO GRAMMAR WERE PRESENTED IN THE FIRST VOLUME OF THIS SERIES, SPOKEN AYACUCHO QUECHUA, UNITS 1-10. THE 10 UNITS IN THIS VOLUME (11-20) ARE INTENDED FOR USE IN AN INTERMEDIATE OR ADVANCED COURSE, AND PRESENT THE STUDENT WITH LENGTHIER AND MORE COMPLEX DIALOGS, CONVERSATIONS, "LISTENING-INS," AND DICTATIONS AS WELL…

Spoken Sentence Production in College Students with Dyslexia: Working Memory and Vocabulary Effects

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Wiseheart, Rebecca; Altmann, Lori J. P.

2018-01-01

Background: Individuals with dyslexia demonstrate syntactic difficulties on tasks of language comprehension, yet little is known about spoken language production in this population. Aims: To investigate whether spoken sentence production in college students with dyslexia is less proficient than in typical readers, and to determine whether group…

Lacquered Words: The Evolution of Vietnamese under Sinitic Influences from the 1st Century B.C.E. through the 17th Century C.E.

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Phan, John Duong

2013-01-01

As much as three quarters of the modern Vietnamese lexicon is of Chinese origin. The majority of these words are often assumed to have originated in much the same manner as late Sino-Korean and Sino-Japanese borrowed forms: by rote memorization of reading glosses that were acquired through limited exposure to spoken Sinitic. However, under closer…

ELSIE: The Quick Reaction Spoken Language Translation (QRSLT)

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Montgomery, Christine

2000-01-01

The objective of this effort was to develop a prototype, hand-held or body-mounted spoken language translator to assist military and law enforcement personnel in interacting with non-English-speaking people...

Using Spoken Language to Facilitate Military Transportation Planning

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Bates, Madeleine; Ellard, Dan; Peterson, Pat; Shaked, Varda

1991-01-01

.... In an effort to demonstrate the relevance of SIS technology to real-world military applications, BBN has undertaken the task of providing a spoken language interface to DART, a system for military...

A Grammar of Spoken Brazilian Portuguese.

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Thomas, Earl W.

This is a first-year text of Portuguese grammar based on the Portuguese of moderately educated Brazilians from the area around Rio de Janeiro. Spoken idiomatic usage is emphasized. An important innovation is found in the presentation of verb tenses; they are presented in the order in which the native speaker learns them. The text is intended to…

SSCS'10 : Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Workshop on Searching Spontaneous Conversational Speech

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Larson, Martha; Ordelman, Roeland; Metze, Florian; Kraaij, Wessel; de Jong, Franciska

2010-01-01

The spoken word is a valuable source of semantic information. Techniques that exploit the spoken word by making use of speech recognition or spoken audio analysis hold clear potential for improving multimedia search. Nonetheless, speech technology remains underexploited by systems that provide

Learning Words through Multimedia Application

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zhang, Chun

2007-01-01

  This study explores the relevance of multimedia application in relation to vocabulary acquisition in the classroom of Chinese as a foreign language. The herein depicted application refers to the computer-assisted implicit word-learning, wherein the Danish students built hypertexts to acquire...... meanings of unknown words aiming to research and to enlarging Chinese vocabulary.  ...

SPOKEN-LANGUAGE FEATURES IN CASUAL CONVERSATION A Case of EFL Learners‘ Casual Conversation

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Aris Novi

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Spoken text differs from written one in its features of context dependency, turn-taking organization, and dynamic structure. EFL learners; however, sometime find it difficult to produce typical characteristics of spoken language, particularly in casual talk. When they are asked to conduct a conversation, some of them tend to be script-based which is considered unnatural. Using the theory of Thornburry (2005, this paper aims to analyze characteristics of spoken language in casual conversation which cover spontaneity, interactivity, interpersonality, and coherence. This study used discourse analysis to reveal four features in turns and moves of three casual conversations. The findings indicate that not all sub-features used in the conversation. In this case, the spontaneity features were used 132 times; the interactivity features were used 1081 times; the interpersonality features were used 257 times; while the coherence features (negotiation features were used 526 times. Besides, the results also present that some participants seem to dominantly produce some sub-features naturally and vice versa. Therefore, this finding is expected to be beneficial to provide a model of how spoken interaction should be carried out. More importantly, it could raise English teachers or lecturers‘ awareness in teaching features of spoken language, so that, the students could develop their communicative competence as the native speakers of English do.

Towards Affordable Disclosure of Spoken Heritage Archives

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Larson, M; Ordelman, Roeland J.F.; Heeren, W.F.L.; Fernie, K; de Jong, Franciska M.G.; Huijbregts, M.A.H.; Oomen, J; Hiemstra, Djoerd

2009-01-01

This paper presents and discusses ongoing work aiming at affordable disclosure of real-world spoken heritage archives in general, and in particular of a collection of recorded interviews with Dutch survivors of World War II concentration camp Buchenwald. Given such collections, we at least want to

Little Words, Big Impact: Determiners Begin to Bootstrap Reference by 12 Months

Science.gov (United States)

Kedar, Yarden; Casasola, Marianella; Lust, Barbara; Parmet, Yisrael

2017-01-01

We tested 12- and 18-month-old English-learning infants on a preferential-looking task which contrasted grammatically correct sentences using the determiner "the" vs. three ungrammatical conditions in which "the" was substituted by another English function word, a nonsense word, or omitted. Our design involved strict controls…

Auditory and verbal memory predictors of spoken language skills in children with cochlear implants

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoog, B.E. de; Langereis, M.C.; Weerdenburg, M. van; Keuning, J.; Knoors, H.; Verhoeven, L.

2016-01-01

BACKGROUND: Large variability in individual spoken language outcomes remains a persistent finding in the group of children with cochlear implants (CIs), particularly in their grammatical development. AIMS: In the present study, we examined the extent of delay in lexical and morphosyntactic spoken

Auditory and verbal memory predictors of spoken language skills in children with cochlear implants

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hoog, B.E. de; Langereis, M.C.; Weerdenburg, M.W.C. van; Keuning, J.; Knoors, H.E.T.; Verhoeven, L.T.W.

2016-01-01

Background: Large variability in individual spoken language outcomes remains a persistent finding in the group of children with cochlear implants (CIs), particularly in their grammatical development. Aims: In the present study, we examined the extent of delay in lexical and morphosyntactic spoken

SPOKEN AYACUCHO QUECHUA. UNITS 1-10.

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PARKER, GARY J.; SOLA, DONALD F.

THIS BEGINNING COURSE IN AYACUCHO QUECHUA, SPOKEN BY ABOUT A MILLION PEOPLE IN SOUTH-CENTRAL PERU, WAS PREPARED TO INTRODUCE THE PHONOLOGY AND GRAMMAR OF THIS DIALECT TO SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH. THE FIRST OF TWO VOLUMES, IT SERVES AS A TEXT FOR A 6-WEEK INTENSIVE COURSE OF 20 CLASS HOURS A WEEK. THE AUTHORS COMPARE AND CONTRAST SIGNIFICANT FEATURES OF…

Evaluating the Performance of a Visually Guided Hearing Aid Using a Dynamic Auditory-Visual Word Congruence Task.

Science.gov (United States)

Roverud, Elin; Best, Virginia; Mason, Christine R; Streeter, Timothy; Kidd, Gerald

2017-12-15

The "visually guided hearing aid" (VGHA), consisting of a beamforming microphone array steered by eye gaze, is an experimental device being tested for effectiveness in laboratory settings. Previous studies have found that beamforming without visual steering can provide significant benefits (relative to natural binaural listening) for speech identification in spatialized speech or noise maskers when sound sources are fixed in location. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the performance of the VGHA in listening conditions in which target speech could switch locations unpredictably, requiring visual steering of the beamforming. To address this aim, the present study tested an experimental simulation of the VGHA in a newly designed dynamic auditory-visual word congruence task. Ten young normal-hearing (NH) and 11 young hearing-impaired (HI) adults participated. On each trial, three simultaneous spoken words were presented from three source positions (-30, 0, and 30 azimuth). An auditory-visual word congruence task was used in which participants indicated whether there was a match between the word printed on a screen at a location corresponding to the target source and the spoken target word presented acoustically from that location. Performance was compared for a natural binaural condition (stimuli presented using impulse responses measured on KEMAR), a simulated VGHA condition (BEAM), and a hybrid condition that combined lowpass-filtered KEMAR and highpass-filtered BEAM information (BEAMAR). In some blocks, the target remained fixed at one location across trials, and in other blocks, the target could transition in location between one trial and the next with a fixed but low probability. Large individual variability in performance was observed. There were significant benefits for the hybrid BEAMAR condition relative to the KEMAR condition on average for both NH and HI groups when the targets were fixed. Although not apparent in the averaged data, some

Embodiment and second-language: automatic activation of motor responses during processing spatially associated L2 words and emotion L2 words in a vertical Stroop paradigm.

Science.gov (United States)

Dudschig, Carolin; de la Vega, Irmgard; Kaup, Barbara

2014-05-01

Converging evidence suggests that understanding our first-language (L1) results in reactivation of experiential sensorimotor traces in the brain. Surprisingly, little is known regarding the involvement of these processes during second-language (L2) processing. Participants saw L1 or L2 words referring to entities with a typical location (e.g., star, mole) (Experiment 1 & 2) or to an emotion (e.g., happy, sad) (Experiment 3). Participants responded to the words' ink color with an upward or downward arm movement. Despite word meaning being fully task-irrelevant, L2 automatically activated motor responses similar to L1 even when L2 was acquired rather late in life (age >11). Specifically, words such as star facilitated upward, and words such as root facilitated downward responses. Additionally, words referring to positive emotions facilitated upward, and words referring to negative emotions facilitated downward responses. In summary our study suggests that reactivation of experiential traces is not limited to L1 processing. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

What Comes First, What Comes Next: Information Packaging in Written and Spoken Language

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Vladislav Smolka

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The paper explores similarities and differences in the strategies of structuring information at sentence level in spoken and written language, respectively. In particular, it is concerned with the position of the rheme in the sentence in the two different modalities of language, and with the application and correlation of the end-focus and the end-weight principles. The assumption is that while there is a general tendency in both written and spoken language to place the focus in or close to the final position, owing to the limitations imposed by short-term memory capacity (and possibly by other factors, for the sake of easy processibility, it may occasionally be more felicitous in spoken language to place the rhematic element in the initial position or at least close to the beginning of the sentence. The paper aims to identify differences in the function of selected grammatical structures in written and spoken language, respectively, and to point out circumstances under which initial focus is a convenient alternative to the usual end-focus principle.

Semantic involvement of initial and final lexical embeddings during sense-making: the advantage of starting late

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Alphen, P.M.; van Berkum, J.J.A.

2012-01-01

During spoken language interpretation, listeners rapidly relate the meaning of each individual word to what has been said before. However, spoken words often contain spurious other words, like day in daisy, or dean in sardine. Do listeners also relate the meaning of such unintended, spurious words

Mobile Information Access with Spoken Query Answering

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brøndsted, Tom; Larsen, Henrik Legind; Larsen, Lars Bo

2006-01-01

window focused over the part which most likely contains an answer to the query. The two systems are integrated into a full spoken query answering system. The prototype can answer queries and questions within the chosen football (soccer) test domain, but the system has the flexibility for being ported...

Error detection in spoken human-machine interaction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Krahmer, E.J.; Swerts, M.G.J.; Theune, M.; Weegels, M.F.

2001-01-01

Given the state of the art of current language and speech technology, errors are unavoidable in present-day spoken dialogue systems. Therefore, one of the main concerns in dialogue design is how to decide whether or not the system has understood the user correctly. In human-human communication,

Error detection in spoken human-machine interaction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Krahmer, E.; Swerts, M.; Theune, Mariet; Weegels, M.

Given the state of the art of current language and speech technology, errors are unavoidable in present-day spoken dialogue systems. Therefore, one of the main concerns in dialogue design is how to decide whether or not the system has understood the user correctly. In human-human communication,

Visual Word Recognition in Deaf Readers: Lexicality Is Modulated by Communication Mode

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects. PMID:23554976

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Laura Barca

Full Text Available Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Visual word recognition in deaf readers: lexicality is modulated by communication mode.

Science.gov (United States)

Barca, Laura; Pezzulo, Giovanni; Castrataro, Marianna; Rinaldi, Pasquale; Caselli, Maria Cristina

2013-01-01

Evidence indicates that adequate phonological abilities are necessary to develop proficient reading skills and that later in life phonology also has a role in the covert visual word recognition of expert readers. Impairments of acoustic perception, such as deafness, can lead to atypical phonological representations of written words and letters, which in turn can affect reading proficiency. Here, we report an experiment in which young adults with different levels of acoustic perception (i.e., hearing and deaf individuals) and different modes of communication (i.e., hearing individuals using spoken language, deaf individuals with a preference for sign language, and deaf individuals using the oral modality with less or no competence in sign language) performed a visual lexical decision task, which consisted of categorizing real words and consonant strings. The lexicality effect was restricted to deaf signers who responded faster to real words than consonant strings, showing over-reliance on whole word lexical processing of stimuli. No effect of stimulus type was found in deaf individuals using the oral modality or in hearing individuals. Thus, mode of communication modulates the lexicality effect. This suggests that learning a sign language during development shapes visuo-motor representations of words, which are tuned to the actions used to express them (phono-articulatory movements vs. hand movements) and to associated perceptions. As these visuo-motor representations are elicited during on-line linguistic processing and can overlap with the perceptual-motor processes required to execute the task, they can potentially produce interference or facilitation effects.

Research on the Relationship between English Majors’ Learning Motivation and Spoken English in Chinese Context

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

陆佳佳

2014-01-01

With the increasing importance attached to spoken English, it is of great significance to find how the motivation of English majors affects their oral English learning outcomes. Based on the research results and theoretical frameworks of the previous studies on this area, this paper carries out research in Zhujiang College of South China Agricultural University trying to find out the types of motivation and the correlation between motivation factors of English majors and their spoken English, and thus to guide spoken English learning and teaching.

47 CFR 80.1117 - Procedure for receipt and acknowledgement of distress alerts.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-01

..._locations.html. The ITU-R Recommendation can be purchased from the International Telecommunication Union... identification of the station sending the distress message, spoken three times; (3) The words THIS IS (or DE... station acknowledging receipt, spoken three times; (5) The word RECEIVED (or RRR spoken as ROMEO ROMEO...

Coaching Parents to Use Naturalistic Language and Communication Strategies

Science.gov (United States)

Akamoglu, Yusuf; Dinnebeil, Laurie

2017-01-01

Naturalistic language and communication strategies (i.e., naturalistic teaching strategies) refer to practices that are used to promote the child's language and communication skills either through verbal (e.g., spoken words) or nonverbal (e.g., gestures, signs) interactions between an adult (e.g., parent, teacher) and a child. Use of naturalistic…

Spoken sentence comprehension in aphasia: Event-related potential evidence for a lexical integration deficit

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Swaab, T.Y.; Brown, C.; Hagoort, P.

1997-01-01

In this study the N400 component of the event-related potential was used to investigate spoken sentence understanding in Broca's and Wernicke's aphasics. The aim of the study was to determine whether spoken sentence comprehension problems in these patients might result from a deficit in the on-line

Impressive Words: Linguistic Predictors of Public Approval of the U.S. Congress.

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Decter-Frain, Ari; Frimer, Jeremy A

2016-01-01

What type of language makes the most positive impression within a professional setting? Is competent/agentic language or warm/communal language more effective at eliciting social approval? We examined this basic social cognitive question in a real world context using a "big data" approach-the recent record-low levels of public approval of the U.S. Congress. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we text analyzed all 123+ million words spoken by members of the U.S. House of Representatives during floor debates between 1996 and 2014 and compared their usage of various classes of words to their public approval ratings over the same time period. We found that neither agentic nor communal language positively predicted public approval. However, this may be because communion combines two disparate social motives (belonging and helping). A follow-up analysis found that the helping form of communion positively predicted public approval, and did so more strongly than did agentic language. Next, we conducted an exploratory analysis, examining which of the 63 standard LIWC categories predict public approval. We found that the public approval of Congress was highest when politicians used tentative language, expressed both positive emotion and anxiety, and used human words, numbers, prepositions, numbers, and avoided conjunctions and the use of second-person pronouns. These results highlight the widespread primacy of warmth over competence as the primary dimensions of social cognition.

Impressive Words: Linguistic Predictors of Public Approval of the U.S. Congress

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ari eDecter-Frain

2016-02-01

Full Text Available What type of language makes the most positive impression within a professional setting? Is competent/agentic language or warm/communal language more effective at eliciting social approval? We examined this basic social cognitive question in a real world context using a big data approach—the recent record-low levels of public approval of the U.S. Congress. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, we text analyzed all 123+ million words spoken by members of the U.S. House of Representatives during floor debates between 1996-2014 and compared their usage of various classes of words to their public approval ratings over the same time period. We found that neither agentic nor communal language positively predicted public approval. However, this may be because communion combines two disparate social motives (belonging and helping. A follow-up analysis found that the helping form of communion positively predicted public approval, and did so more strongly than did agentic language. Next, we conducted an exploratory analysis, examining which of the 63 standard LIWC categories predict public approval. We found that the public approval of Congress was highest when politicians used tentative language, expressed both positive emotion and anxiety, and used human words, numbers, prepositions, numbers, and avoided conjunctions and the use of second-person pronouns. These results highlight the widespread primacy of warmth over competence as the primary dimensions of social cognition.

Neural Response After a Single ECT Session During Retrieval of Emotional Self-Referent Words in Depression: A Randomized, Sham-Controlled fMRI Study

Science.gov (United States)

Miskowiak, Kamilla W; Macoveanu, Julian; Jørgensen, Martin B; Støttrup, Mette M; Ott, Caroline V; Jensen, Hans M; Jørgensen, Anders; Harmer, J; Paulson, Olaf B; Kessing, Lars V; Siebner, Hartwig R

2018-01-01

Abstract Background Negative neurocognitive bias is a core feature of depression that is reversed by antidepressant drug treatment. However, it is unclear whether modulation of neurocognitive bias is a common mechanism of distinct biological treatments. This randomized controlled functional magnetic resonance imaging study explored the effects of a single electroconvulsive therapy session on self-referent emotional processing. Methods Twenty-nine patients with treatment-resistant major depressive disorder were randomized to one active or sham electroconvulsive therapy session at the beginning of their electroconvulsive therapy course in a double-blind, between-groups design. The following day, patients were given a self-referential emotional word categorization test and a free recall test. This was followed by an incidental word recognition task during whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3T. Mood was assessed at baseline, on the functional magnetic resonance imaging day, and after 6 electroconvulsive therapy sessions. Data were complete and analyzed for 25 patients (electroconvulsive therapy: n = 14, sham: n = 11). The functional magnetic resonance imaging data were analyzed using the FMRIB Software Library randomize algorithm, and the Threshold-Free Cluster Enhancement method was used to identify significant clusters (corrected at P words. However, electroconvulsive therapy reduced the retrieval-specific neural response for positive words in the left frontopolar cortex. This effect occurred in the absence of differences between groups in behavioral performance or mood symptoms. Conclusions The observed effect of electroconvulsive therapy on prefrontal response may reflect early facilitation of memory for positive self-referent information, which could contribute to improvements in depressive symptoms including feelings of self-worth with repeated treatments. PMID:29718333

Language-mediated visual orienting behavior in low and high literates

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Falk eHuettig

2011-10-01

Full Text Available The influence of formal literacy on spoken language-mediated visual orienting was investigated by using a simple look and listen task (cf. Huettig & Altmann, 2005 which resembles every day behavior. In Experiment 1, high and low literates listened to spoken sentences containing a target word (e.g., 'magar', crocodile while at the same time looking at a visual display of four objects (a phonological competitor of the target word, e.g., 'matar', peas; a semantic competitor, e.g., 'kachuwa', turtle, and two unrelated distractors. In Experiment 2 the semantic competitor was replaced with another unrelated distractor. Both groups of participants shifted their eye gaze to the semantic competitors (Experiment 1. In both experiments high literates shifted their eye gaze towards phonological competitors as soon as phonological information became available and moved their eyes away as soon as the acoustic information mismatched. Low literates in contrast only used phonological information when semantic matches between spoken word and visual referent were impossible (Experiment 2 but in contrast to high literates these phonologically-mediated shifts in eye gaze were not closely time-locked to the speech input. We conclude that in high literates language-mediated shifts in overt attention are co-determined by the type of information in the visual environment, the timing of cascaded processing in the word- and object-recognition systems, and the temporal unfolding of the spoken language. Our findings indicate that low literates exhibit a similar cognitive behavior but instead of participating in a tug-of-war among multiple types of cognitive representations, word-object mapping is achieved primarily at the semantic level. If forced, for instance by a situation in which semantic matches are not present (Experiment 2, low literates may on occasion have to rely on phonological information but do so in a much less proficient manner than their highly literate

A Mother Tongue Spoken Mainly by Fathers.

Science.gov (United States)

Corsetti, Renato

1996-01-01

Reviews what is known about Esperanto as a home language and first language. Recorded cases of Esperanto-speaking families are known since 1919, and in nearly all of the approximately 350 families documented, the language is spoken to the children by the father. The data suggests that this "artificial bilingualism" can be as successful…

Audiovisual spoken word training can promote or impede auditory-only perceptual learning: prelingually deafened adults with late-acquired cochlear implants versus normal hearing adults.

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Bernstein, Lynne E; Eberhardt, Silvio P; Auer, Edward T

2014-01-01

Training with audiovisual (AV) speech has been shown to promote auditory perceptual learning of vocoded acoustic speech by adults with normal hearing. In Experiment 1, we investigated whether AV speech promotes auditory-only (AO) perceptual learning in prelingually deafened adults with late-acquired cochlear implants. Participants were assigned to learn associations between spoken disyllabic C(=consonant)V(=vowel)CVC non-sense words and non-sense pictures (fribbles), under AV and then AO (AV-AO; or counter-balanced AO then AV, AO-AV, during Periods 1 then 2) training conditions. After training on each list of paired-associates (PA), testing was carried out AO. Across all training, AO PA test scores improved (7.2 percentage points) as did identification of consonants in new untrained CVCVC stimuli (3.5 percentage points). However, there was evidence that AV training impeded immediate AO perceptual learning: During Period-1, training scores across AV and AO conditions were not different, but AO test scores were dramatically lower in the AV-trained participants. During Period-2 AO training, the AV-AO participants obtained significantly higher AO test scores, demonstrating their ability to learn the auditory speech. Across both orders of training, whenever training was AV, AO test scores were significantly lower than training scores. Experiment 2 repeated the procedures with vocoded speech and 43 normal-hearing adults. Following AV training, their AO test scores were as high as or higher than following AO training. Also, their CVCVC identification scores patterned differently than those of the cochlear implant users. In Experiment 1, initial consonants were most accurate, and in Experiment 2, medial consonants were most accurate. We suggest that our results are consistent with a multisensory reverse hierarchy theory, which predicts that, whenever possible, perceivers carry out perceptual tasks immediately based on the experience and biases they bring to the task. We

Semantic involvement of initial and final lexical embeddings during sense-making: the advantage of starting late.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Alphen, P.M.; van Berkum, J.J.A.

2012-01-01

During spoken language interpretation, listeners rapidly relate the meaning of each individual word to what has been said before. However, spoken words often contain spurious other words, like 'day' in 'daisy', or 'dean' in 'sardine'. Do listeners also relate the meaning of such unintended, spurious

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT TO TEACH SPOKEN RECOUNTS IN SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eri Rusnawati

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Tujuan dari penelitian ini adalah untuk menggambarkan penerapan metode Communicative Language Teaching/CLT untuk pembelajaran spoken recount. Penelitian ini menelaah data yang kualitatif. Penelitian ini mengambarkan fenomena yang terjadi di dalam kelas. Data studi ini adalah perilaku dan respon para siswa dalam pembelajaran spoken recount dengan menggunakan metode CLT. Subjek penelitian ini adalah para siswa kelas X SMA Negeri 1 Kuaro yang terdiri dari 34 siswa. Observasi dan wawancara dilakukan dalam rangka untuk mengumpulkan data dalam mengajarkan spoken recount melalui tiga aktivitas (presentasi, bermain-peran, serta melakukan prosedur. Dalam penelitian ini ditemukan beberapa hal antara lain bahwa CLT meningkatkan kemampuan berbicara siswa dalam pembelajaran recount. Berdasarkan pada grafik peningkatan, disimpulkan bahwa tata bahasa, kosakata, pengucapan, kefasihan, serta performa siswa mengalami peningkatan. Ini berarti bahwa performa spoken recount dari para siswa meningkat. Andaikata presentasi ditempatkan di bagian akhir dari langkah-langkah aktivitas, peforma spoken recount para siswa bahkan akan lebih baik lagi. Kesimpulannya adalah bahwa implementasi metode CLT beserta tiga praktiknya berkontribusi pada peningkatan kemampuan berbicara para siswa dalam pembelajaran recount dan bahkan metode CLT mengarahkan mereka untuk memiliki keberanian dalam mengonstruksi komunikasi yang bermakna dengan percaya diri. Kata kunci: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT, recount, berbicara, respon siswa

Discourse Bootstrapping: Preschoolers Use Linguistic Discourse to Learn New Words

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Sullivan, Jessica; Barner, David

2016-01-01

When children acquire language, they often learn words in the absence of direct instruction (e.g. "This is a ball!") or even social cues to reference (e.g. eye gaze, pointing). However, there are few accounts of how children do this, especially in cases where the referent of a new word is ambiguous. Across two experiments, we test…

Producing complex spoken numerals for time and space

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Meeuwissen, M.H.W.

2004-01-01

This thesis addressed the spoken production of complex numerals for time and space. The production of complex numerical expressions like those involved in telling time (e.g., 'quarter to four') or producing house numbers (e.g., 'two hundred forty-five') has been almost completely ignored. Yet, adult

Adults' Self-Directed Learning of an Artificial Lexicon: The Dynamics of Neighborhood Reorganization

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Bardhan, Neil Prodeep

2010-01-01

Artificial lexicons have previously been used to examine the time course of the learning and recognition of spoken words, the role of segment type in word learning, and the integration of context during spoken word recognition. However, in all of these studies the experimenter determined the frequency and order of the words to be learned. In three…

Grounding word learning in space.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Larissa K Samuelson

Full Text Available Humans and objects, and thus social interactions about objects, exist within space. Words direct listeners' attention to specific regions of space. Thus, a strong correspondence exists between where one looks, one's bodily orientation, and what one sees. This leads to further correspondence with what one remembers. Here, we present data suggesting that children use associations between space and objects and space and words to link words and objects--space binds labels to their referents. We tested this claim in four experiments, showing that the spatial consistency of where objects are presented affects children's word learning. Next, we demonstrate that a process model that grounds word learning in the known neural dynamics of spatial attention, spatial memory, and associative learning can capture the suite of results reported here. This model also predicts that space is special, a prediction supported in a fifth experiment that shows children do not use color as a cue to bind words and objects. In a final experiment, we ask whether spatial consistency affects word learning in naturalistic word learning contexts. Children of parents who spontaneously keep objects in a consistent spatial location during naming interactions learn words more effectively. Together, the model and data show that space is a powerful tool that can effectively ground word learning in social contexts.

THE CONTRAST OF THE COMPOUND WORDS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND ALBANIAN LANGUAGE

OpenAIRE

Shkelqim Millaku

2017-01-01

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word-formation that creates compound lexemes (the other word-formation process being derivation). Compounding or Word-compounding refers to the faculty and device of language to form new words by combining or putting together old words. In other words, compound, compounding or word-compounding occurs when a person attaches two or more words together to make th...

Acquisition of graphic communication by a young girl without comprehension of spoken language.

Science.gov (United States)

von Tetzchner, S; Øvreeide, K D; Jørgensen, K K; Ormhaug, B M; Oxholm, B; Warme, R

To describe a graphic-mode communication intervention involving a girl with intellectual impairment and autism who did not develop comprehension of spoken language. The aim was to teach graphic-mode vocabulary that reflected her interests, preferences, and the activities and routines of her daily life, by providing sufficient cues to the meanings of the graphic representations so that she would not need to comprehend spoken instructions. An individual case study design was selected, including the use of written records, participant observation, and registration of the girl's graphic vocabulary and use of graphic signs and other communicative expressions. While the girl's comprehension (and hence use) of spoken language remained lacking over a 3-year period, she acquired an active use of over 80 photographs and pictograms. The girl was able to cope better with the cognitive and attentional requirements of graphic communication than those of spoken language and manual signs, which had been focused in earlier interventions. Her achievements demonstrate that it is possible for communication-impaired children to learn to use an augmentative and alternative communication system without speech comprehension, provided the intervention utilizes functional strategies and non-language cues to the meaning of the graphic representations that are taught.

The embodiment of beauty: Evidence from viewing Chinese concrete words and pictographs.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Wei; He, Xianyou; Zhao, Xueru; Lai, Siyan; Lai, Shuxian; Situ, Suiyan

2018-02-01

How is beauty embodied? According to the viewpoint of embodied cognition, the aesthetic processing of words or pictographs has roots in their referential archetypes. Four experiments tested whether the beauty of referential archetypes was routinely activated during the explicit and implicit aesthetic evaluations of the font structures of concrete Chinese words and pictographs in congruent or incongruent font colour. Results showed font structures of simplified Chinese words and pictographs were judged to be more beautiful when they referred to beautiful archetypes; and this pattern was reversed when they referred to ugly archetypes. Moreover, judgement was facilitated when font colour was congruent for Chinese words and pictographs referred to beautiful archetypes. For those referred to ugly archetypes, judgement was inhibited in congruent font colour but facilitated in incongruent font colour, suggesting aesthetic perceptions of the font structures of Chinese words and pictographs were derived from their referential natural objects. The spontaneous generation hypothesis of beauty is proposed to account for these findings. © 2016 International Union of Psychological Science.

Language Development in Children with Language Disorders: An Introduction to Skinner's Verbal Behavior and the Techniques for Initial Language Acquisition

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Casey, Laura Baylot; Bicard, David F.

2009-01-01

Language development in typically developing children has a very predictable pattern beginning with crying, cooing, babbling, and gestures along with the recognition of spoken words, comprehension of spoken words, and then one word utterances. This predictable pattern breaks down for children with language disorders. This article will discuss…

Depression reduces perceptual sensitivity for positive words and pictures.

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Atchley, Ruth Ann; Ilardi, Stephen S; Young, Keith M; Stroupe, Natalie N; O'Hare, Aminda J; Bistricky, Steven L; Collison, Elizabeth; Gibson, Linzi; Schuster, Jonathan; Lepping, Rebecca J

2012-01-01

There is evidence of maladaptive attentional biases for lexical information (e.g., Atchley, Ilardi, & Enloe, 2003; Atchley, Stringer, Mathias, Ilardi, & Minatrea, 2007) and for pictographic stimuli (e.g., Gotlib, Krasnoperova, Yue, & Joormann, 2004) among patients with depression. The current research looks for depressotypic processing biases among depressed out-patients and non-clinical controls, using both verbal and pictorial stimuli. A d' measure (sensitivity index) was used to examine each participant's perceptual sensitivity threshold. Never-depressed controls evidenced a detection bias for positive picture stimuli, while depressed participants had no such bias. With verbal stimuli, depressed individuals showed specific decrements in the detection of positive person-referent words (WINNER), but not with positive non-person-referent words (SUNSHINE) or with negative words. Never-depressed participants showed no such differences across word types. In the current study, depression is characterised both by an absence of the normal positivistic biases seen in individuals without mood disorders (consistent with McCabe & Gotlib, 1995), and by a specific reduction in sensitivity for person-referent positive information that might be inconsistent with depressotypic self-schemas.

Word generalization by a dog (Canis familiaris: is shape important?

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Emile van der Zee

Full Text Available We investigated the presence of a key feature of human word comprehension in a five year old Border Collie: the generalization of a word referring to an object to other objects of the same shape, also known as shape bias. Our first experiment confirmed a solid history of word learning in the dog, thus making it possible for certain object features to have become central in his word comprehension. Using an experimental paradigm originally employed to establish shape bias in children and human adults we taught the dog arbitrary object names (e.g. dax for novel objects. Two experiments showed that when briefly familiarized with word-object mappings the dog did not generalize object names to object shape but to object size. A fourth experiment showed that when familiarized with a word-object mapping for a longer period of time the dog tended to generalize the word to objects with the same texture. These results show that the dog tested did not display human-like word comprehension, but word generalization and word reference development of a qualitatively different nature compared to humans. We conclude that a shape bias for word generalization in humans is due to the distinct evolutionary history of the human sensory system for object identification and that more research is necessary to confirm qualitative differences in word generalization between humans and dogs.

Word Generalization by a Dog (Canis familiaris): Is Shape Important?

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van der Zee, Emile; Zulch, Helen; Mills, Daniel

2012-01-01

We investigated the presence of a key feature of human word comprehension in a five year old Border Collie: the generalization of a word referring to an object to other objects of the same shape, also known as shape bias. Our first experiment confirmed a solid history of word learning in the dog, thus making it possible for certain object features to have become central in his word comprehension. Using an experimental paradigm originally employed to establish shape bias in children and human adults we taught the dog arbitrary object names (e.g. dax) for novel objects. Two experiments showed that when briefly familiarized with word-object mappings the dog did not generalize object names to object shape but to object size. A fourth experiment showed that when familiarized with a word-object mapping for a longer period of time the dog tended to generalize the word to objects with the same texture. These results show that the dog tested did not display human-like word comprehension, but word generalization and word reference development of a qualitatively different nature compared to humans. We conclude that a shape bias for word generalization in humans is due to the distinct evolutionary history of the human sensory system for object identification and that more research is necessary to confirm qualitative differences in word generalization between humans and dogs. PMID:23185321

Impressive Words: Linguistic Predictors of Public Approval of the U.S. Congress

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Decter-Frain, Ari; Frimer, Jeremy A.

2016-01-01

What type of language makes the most positive impression within a professional setting? Is competent/agentic language or warm/communal language more effective at eliciting social approval? We examined this basic social cognitive question in a real world context using a “big data” approach—the recent record-low levels of public approval of the U.S. Congress. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we text analyzed all 123+ million words spoken by members of the U.S. House of Representatives during floor debates between 1996 and 2014 and compared their usage of various classes of words to their public approval ratings over the same time period. We found that neither agentic nor communal language positively predicted public approval. However, this may be because communion combines two disparate social motives (belonging and helping). A follow-up analysis found that the helping form of communion positively predicted public approval, and did so more strongly than did agentic language. Next, we conducted an exploratory analysis, examining which of the 63 standard LIWC categories predict public approval. We found that the public approval of Congress was highest when politicians used tentative language, expressed both positive emotion and anxiety, and used human words, numbers, prepositions, numbers, and avoided conjunctions and the use of second-person pronouns. These results highlight the widespread primacy of warmth over competence as the primary dimensions of social cognition. PMID:26941691

From the Spoken Word to Video: Orality, Literacy, Mediated Orality, and the Amazigh (Berber Cultural Production

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Daniela Merolla

2005-08-01

Full Text Available This article presents new directions in Tamazight/Berber artistic productions. The development of theatre, films and videos in Tamazight are set in the framework of the historical and literary background in the Maghreb and in the lands of Amazigh Diaspora.  It also includes the interview with the video-maker and director Agouram Salout. Key Words: tamazight, berber, theatre, videos, film, taqbaylit, tarifit, tachelhit, new cultural production, writing, orality

A memory-based shallow parser for spoken Dutch

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Canisius, S.V.M.; van den Bosch, A.; Decadt, B.; Hoste, V.; De Pauw, G.

2004-01-01

We describe the development of a Dutch memory-based shallow parser. The availability of large treebanks for Dutch, such as the one provided by the Spoken Dutch Corpus, allows memory-based learners to be trained on examples of shallow parsing taken from the treebank, and act as a shallow parser after

By any other name: when will preschoolers produce several labels for a referent?

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Deák, G O; Yen, L; Pettit, J

2001-10-01

Two experiments investigated why preschool children sometimes produce multiple words for a referent (i.e. polynomy), but other times seem to allow only one word. In Experiment 1, 40 three- and four-year-olds completed a modification of Deák & Maratsos' (1998) naming task. Although social demands to produce multiple words were reduced, children produced, on average, more than two words per object. Number of words produced was predicted by receptive vocabulary. Lexical insight (i.e. knowing that a word refers to function or appearance) and metalexical beliefs (i.e. that a hypothetical referent has one label, or more than one) were not preconditions of polynomy. Polynomy was independent of bias to map novel words to unfamiliar referents. In Experiment 2, 40 three- and four-year-olds learned new words for nameable objects. Children showed a correction effect, yet produced more than two words per object. Children do not have a generalized one-word-per-object bias, even during word learning. Other explanations (e.g. contextual restriction of lexical access) are discussed.

Cross-situational word learning in aphasia.

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Peñaloza, Claudia; Mirman, Daniel; Cardona, Pedro; Juncadella, Montserrat; Martin, Nadine; Laine, Matti; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni

2017-08-01

Human learners can resolve referential ambiguity and discover the relationships between words and meanings through a cross-situational learning (CSL) strategy. Some people with aphasia (PWA) can learn word-referent pairings under referential uncertainty supported by online feedback. However, it remains unknown whether PWA can learn new words cross-situationally and if such learning ability is supported by statistical learning (SL) mechanisms. The present study examined whether PWA can learn novel word-referent mappings in a CSL task without feedback. We also studied whether CSL is related to SL in PWA and neurologically healthy individuals. We further examined whether aphasia severity, phonological processing and verbal short-term memory (STM) predict CSL in aphasia, and also whether individual differences in verbal STM modulate CSL in healthy older adults. Sixteen people with chronic aphasia underwent a CSL task that involved exposure to a series of individually ambiguous learning trials and a SL task that taps speech segmentation. Their learning ability was compared to 18 older controls and 39 young adults recruited for task validation. CSL in the aphasia group was below the older controls and young adults and took place at a slower rate. Importantly, we found a strong association between SL and CSL performance in all three groups. CSL was modulated by aphasia severity in the aphasia group, and by verbal STM capacity in the older controls. Our findings indicate that some PWA can preserve the ability to learn new word-referent associations cross-situationally. We suggest that both PWA and neurologically intact individuals may rely on SL mechanisms to achieve CSL and that verbal STM also influences CSL. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the cognitive mechanisms underlying this learning ability. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Words, Words, Words: English, Vocabulary.

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Lamb, Barbara

The Quinmester course on words gives the student the opportunity to increase his proficiency by investigating word origins, word histories, morphology, and phonology. The course includes the following: dictionary skills and familiarity with the "Oxford,""Webster's Third," and "American Heritage" dictionaries; word…

Fourth International Workshop on Spoken Dialog Systems

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Rosset, Sophie; Garnier-Rizet, Martine; Devillers, Laurence; Natural Interaction with Robots, Knowbots and Smartphones : Putting Spoken Dialog Systems into Practice

2014-01-01

These proceedings presents the state-of-the-art in spoken dialog systems with applications in robotics, knowledge access and communication. It addresses specifically: 1. Dialog for interacting with smartphones; 2. Dialog for Open Domain knowledge access; 3. Dialog for robot interaction; 4. Mediated dialog (including crosslingual dialog involving Speech Translation); and, 5. Dialog quality evaluation. These articles were presented at the IWSDS 2012 workshop.

Aphasia

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... cannot find the words he needs. (2) Receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia) involves difficulty understanding spoken or written language. ... cannot find the words he needs. (2) Receptive aphasia (Wernicke's aphasia) involves difficulty understanding spoken or written language. ...

Benefits of augmentative signs in word learning: Evidence from children who are deaf/hard of hearing and children with specific language impairment.

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van Berkel-van Hoof, Lian; Hermans, Daan; Knoors, Harry; Verhoeven, Ludo

2016-12-01

Augmentative signs may facilitate word learning in children with vocabulary difficulties, for example, children who are Deaf/Hard of Hearing (DHH) and children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Despite the fact that augmentative signs may aid second language learning in populations with a typical language development, empirical evidence in favor of this claim is lacking. We aim to investigate whether augmentative signs facilitate word learning for DHH children, children with SLI, and typically developing (TD) children. Whereas previous studies taught children new labels for familiar objects, the present study taught new labels for new objects. In our word learning experiment children were presented with pictures of imaginary creatures and pseudo words. Half of the words were accompanied by an augmentative pseudo sign. The children were tested for their receptive word knowledge. The DHH children benefitted significantly from augmentative signs, but the children with SLI and TD age-matched peers did not score significantly different on words from either the sign or no-sign condition. These results suggest that using Sign-Supported speech in classrooms of bimodal bilingual DHH children may support their spoken language development. The difference between earlier research findings and the present results may be caused by a difference in methodology. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Vocabulary acquisition in aphasia: Modality can matter.

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Tuomiranta, Leena; Grönroos, Ann-Mari; Martin, Nadine; Laine, Matti

2014-11-01

The present case study investigated modality-specific aspects of novel word acquisition in aphasia. It was prompted by recent aphasia case studies indicating great interindividual variability in the ability to learn and maintain novel words in aphasia. Moreover, two previous case studies revealed a striking effect of input modality by showing effective word learning and re-learning via visual input only (Kohen, Sola, Tuomiranta, Laine, & Martin, 2012; Tuomiranta et al., 2014). The present participant TS with chronic nonfluent aphasia and post-semantic anomia was administered novel word-referent learning tasks. In the first experiment, the learning phase included simultaneous phonological and orthographic input, while the follow-up was probed separately for spoken and written responses. In the second experiment, we studied the effect of four different input and output modality combinations on her ability to learn to name the novel items. In the first experiment, TS's spoken naming performance during the learning phase was just within the range of healthy controls. Maintenance declined and remained outside that range during the whole 6-month follow-up. However, TS maintained the learned words better in written than in spoken naming throughout the follow-up, and in written naming, her maintenance stayed within the control's range up to 8 weeks post-training. The second experiment indicated that the best learning outcome was achieved with orthographic input. Orthographic input combined with orthographic output resulted in fast and accurate learning of the novel words. Interestingly, TS's test profile was opposite to her learning profile, as she repeated better than she read aloud in the linguistic background assessment. The results from the present case highlight the importance of multiple learning channels for word acquisition in individuals with aphasia. Probing the functionality of different input and output channels for learning may also prove valuable in tailoring

Support for an auto-associative model of spoken cued recall: evidence from fMRI.

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de Zubicaray, Greig; McMahon, Katie; Eastburn, Mathew; Pringle, Alan J; Lorenz, Lina; Humphreys, Michael S

2007-03-02

Cued recall and item recognition are considered the standard episodic memory retrieval tasks. However, only the neural correlates of the latter have been studied in detail with fMRI. Using an event-related fMRI experimental design that permits spoken responses, we tested hypotheses from an auto-associative model of cued recall and item recognition [Chappell, M., & Humphreys, M. S. (1994). An auto-associative neural network for sparse representations: Analysis and application to models of recognition and cued recall. Psychological Review, 101, 103-128]. In brief, the model assumes that cues elicit a network of phonological short term memory (STM) and semantic long term memory (LTM) representations distributed throughout the neocortex as patterns of sparse activations. This information is transferred to the hippocampus which converges upon the item closest to a stored pattern and outputs a response. Word pairs were learned from a study list, with one member of the pair serving as the cue at test. Unstudied words were also intermingled at test in order to provide an analogue of yes/no recognition tasks. Compared to incorrectly rejected studied items (misses) and correctly rejected (CR) unstudied items, correctly recalled items (hits) elicited increased responses in the left hippocampus and neocortical regions including the left inferior prefrontal cortex (LIPC), left mid lateral temporal cortex and inferior parietal cortex, consistent with predictions from the model. This network was very similar to that observed in yes/no recognition studies, supporting proposals that cued recall and item recognition involve common rather than separate mechanisms.

Early language development in children with profound hearing loss fitted with a device at a young age: part I--the time period taken to acquire first words and first word combinations.

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Nott, Pauline; Cowan, Robert; Brown, P Margaret; Wigglesworth, Gillian

2009-10-01

Increasing numbers of infants and young children are now presenting to implantation centers and early intervention programs as the impact of universal newborn hearing screening programs is felt worldwide. Although results of a number of studies have highlighted the benefit of early identification and early fitting of hearing devices, there is relatively little research on the impact of early fitting of these devices on first language milestones. The aim of this study was to investigate the early spoken language milestones of young children with hearing loss (HL) from two perspectives: first, the acquisition of the first lexicon (i.e., the first 100 words) and second, the emergence of the first word combinations. Two groups of participants, one comprising 24 participants with profound HL and a second comprising 16 participants with normal hearing, were compared. Twenty-three participants in the HL group were fitted with a cochlear implant and one with bilateral hearing aids. All of these were "switched-on" or fitted before 30 months of age and half at words and any word combinations produced while reaching this single-word target. Acquisition of single words was compared by using the time period (in days) taken to reach several single-word targets (e.g., 50 words, 100 words) from the date of production of the first word. The emergence of word combinations was analyzed from two perspectives: first, the time (in days) from the date of production of the first word to the emergence of the first word combinations and second, the size of the single-word lexicon when word combinations emerged. The normal-hearing group required a significantly shorter time period to acquire the first 50 (mean words than the HL group. Although both groups demonstrated acceleration in lexical acquisition, the hearing group took significantly fewer days to reach the second 50 words relative to the first 50 words than did the HL group. Finally, the hearing group produced word combinations

The Influence of Reference Corpus Size on Wordsmith Tools Keywords Extraction

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Tony Berber Sardinha

2012-05-01

Full Text Available A KeyWords analysis (using WordSmith Tools enables the discovery of lexical items which reveal the main lexical sets in a text or corpus. Such an analysis requires that a reference corpus be compared to the corpus the researcher intends to describe (the study corpus. This paper presents a mathematical method for finding out the influence of reference corpus size on the number of key words extracted by the program. The results reveal that a reference corpus that is at least five times as large as the study corpus allows for drawing an amount of key words that is statistically equivalent to larger reference corpora, thus suggesting five times (as larger as the study corpora as the minimum order of magnitude for reference corpora.

IMPROVING SPOKEN COMPETENCE BY MEANS OF MULTIMODAL ENVIRONMENTS IN A DISTANCE CONTEXT

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María Jordano de la Torre

2011-10-01

Full Text Available The outline below describes the implementation of a task-based project based on the collaborative work of students and teachers in four different countries with others studying tourism in an international distance university. By means of a mainly qualitative study, we will attempt to show if occasional written and spoken encounters with people with different L1 (either English or any other and different culture can help learners to improve different aspects of their spoken competence, such as fluency, pronunciation accuracy and cultural awareness, in the context of the European Space for Higher Education (ESHE.

Effects of visual familiarity for words on interhemispheric cooperation for lexical processing.

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Yoshizaki, K

2001-12-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of visual familiarity of words on interhemispheric lexical processing. Words and pseudowords were tachistoscopically presented in a left, a right, or bilateral visual fields. Two types of words, Katakana-familiar-type and Hiragana-familiar-type, were used as the word stimuli. The former refers to the words which are more frequently written with Katakana script, and the latter refers to the words which are written predominantly in Hiragana script. Two conditions for the words were set up in terms of visual familiarity for a word. In visually familiar condition, words were presented in familiar script form and in visually unfamiliar condition, words were presented in less familiar script form. The 32 right-handed Japanese students were asked to make a lexical decision. Results showed that a bilateral gain, which indicated that the performance in the bilateral visual fields was superior to that in the unilateral visual field, was obtained only in the visually familiar condition, not in the visually unfamiliar condition. These results suggested that the visual familiarity for a word had an influence on the interhemispheric lexical processing.

Intervention Effects on Spoken-Language Outcomes for Children with Autism: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

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Hampton, L. H.; Kaiser, A. P.

2016-01-01

Background: Although spoken-language deficits are not core to an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis, many children with ASD do present with delays in this area. Previous meta-analyses have assessed the effects of intervention on reducing autism symptomatology, but have not determined if intervention improves spoken language. This analysis…

Do domestic dogs learn words based on humans' referential behaviour?