Disfluencies signal theee,um, new information

Speakers are often disfluent, for example, saying theee uh candle instead of the candle. Production data show that disfluencies occur more often during references to things that are discourse-new, rather than given. An eyetracking experiment shows that this correlation between disfluency and discourse status affects speech comprehension. Subjects viewed scenes containing four objects, including two cohort competitors (e.g., camel, candle), and followed spoken instructions to move the objects. The first instruction established one cohort as discourse-given; the other was discourse-new. The second instruction was either fluent or disfluent, and referred to either the given or new cohort. Fluent instructions led to more initial fixations on the given cohort object (replicating Dahan et al., 2002). By contrast, disfluent instructions resulted in more fixations on the new cohort. This shows that discourse-new information can be accessible under some circumstances. More generally, it suggests that disfluency affects core language comprehension processes.     

If you say thee uh you are describing something hard: the on-line attribution of disfluency during reference comprehension

Eye-tracking and gating experiments examined reference comprehension with fluent (Click on the red. . .) and disfluent (Click on [pause] thee uh red . . .) instructions while listeners viewed displays with 2 familiar (e.g., ice cream cones) and 2 unfamiliar objects (e.g., squiggly shapes). Disfluent instructions made unfamiliar objects more expected, which influenced listeners' on-line hypotheses from the onset of the color word. The unfamiliarity bias was sharply reduced by instructions that the speaker had object agnosia, and thus difficulty naming familiar objects (Experiment 2), but was not affected by intermittent sources of speaker distraction (beeps and construction noises; Experiments 3). The authors conclude that listeners can make situation-specific inferences about likely sources of disfluency, but there are some limitations to these attributions.     

Thee,uhh disfluency effect in preschoolers: A cue to discourse status

Speech disfluencies, such as filled pauses (ummm, uhhh), are increasingly recognized as an informative element of the speech stream. Here, we examined whether 2‐ and 3‐year‐olds expected that the presence of filled pause would signal reference to objects that are new to a discourse. Children viewed pairs of familiar objects on a screen and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects twice in succession. Next, children heard a critical utterance and were asked to look and point at either the discourse‐given (i.e., previously mentioned) or discourse‐new (i.e., previously unmentioned) object using a fluent (‘Look at the ball!’) or disfluent (‘Look at thee uh ball!’) expression. The results indicated that 3‐year‐old children, but not 2‐year‐old children, initially expected the speaker to continue to refer to given information in the critical utterance. Upon hearing a filled pause, however, both 2‐ and 3‐year‐old children's looking patterns reflected increased looks to discourse‐new objects, although the timing of the effect differed between the age groups. Together, these findings demonstrate that young children have an emerging understanding of the role of filled pauses in speech.     

Factors affecting judgments of fluency: I. interjections

Six speech samples containing varying amounts of schwa interjections were tape-recorded and presented to 36 male and 36 female listeners. For each sample, listeners were asked to make judgments of fluent, disfluent, and stuttered speech, and to answer the question “Would you recommend speech therapy?” Results indicated that speech samples containing 5% or more interjections evoked a judgment of disfluent speech by a majority of listeners. The sample containing 20% interjections, however, was found to evoke judgments of disfluent and stuttered speech about equally. Varying numbers of listeners recommended clinical services for disfluent speech. In general, the results indicated that (1) the presence of interjections in connected speech is not normal regardless of frequency, (2) fluent speech may not contain interjections in excess of 5%, and (3) with 20% interjections in speech, the distinction between disfluency and stuttering may be blurred.     

It's the way that you, er, say it: hesitations in speech affect language comprehension

Everyday speech is littered with disfluency, often correlated with the production of less predictable words (e.g., Beattie & Butterworth [Beattie, G., & Butterworth, B. (1979). Contextual probability and word frequency as determinants of pauses in spontaneous speech. Language and Speech, 22, 201-211.]). But what are the effects of disfluency on listeners? In an ERP experiment which compared fluent to disfluent utterances, we established an N400 effect for unpredictable compared to predictable words. This effect, reflecting the difference in ease of integrating words into their contexts, was reduced in cases where the target words were preceded by a hesitation marked by the word er. Moreover, a subsequent recognition memory test showed that words preceded by disfluency were more likely to be remembered. The study demonstrates that hesitation affects the way in which listeners process spoken language, and that these changes are associated with longer-term consequences for the representation of the message.     

Fostering Analytic Metacognitive Processes and Reducing Overconfidence by Disfluency: The Role of Contrast Effects

Overconfidence leads to premature termination of study and, thus, to decreased performance. The aim of the present study is to improve students' monitoring and control. We assume that disfluency fosters analytic metacognitive processes and thus reduces overconfidence. However, we expect that contrast effects moderate the fluency effects on metacognitive processes because disfluency activates analytic metacognitive processes not only for disfluent but also for succeeding fluent learning material. To test our hypotheses, university students (N = 75) learned either with a fluent text first and afterward a disfluent text or with a disfluent text first and afterward a fluent text. The results show fluency effects on control, monitoring, and monitoring accuracy only when students learned with a fluent and afterward a disfluent text. Performance was worse for disfluent than for fluent texts in both conditions. Therefore, instructional settings that help students to implement accurate monitoring into better control and better performance are required. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Not all disfluencies are are equal: The effects of disfluent repetitions on language comprehension

Disfluencies can affect language comprehension, but to date, most studies have focused on disfluent pauses such as er. We investigated whether disfluent repetitions in speech have discernible effects on listeners during language comprehension, and whether repetitions affect the linguistic processing of subsequent words in speech in ways which have been previously observed with ers. We used event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure participants’ neural responses to disfluent repetitions of words relative to acoustically identical words in fluent contexts, as well as to unpredictable and predictable words that occurred immediately post-disfluency and in fluent utterances. We additionally measured participants’ recognition memories for the predictable and unpredictable words. Repetitions elicited an early onsetting relative positivity (100–400 ms post-stimulus), clearly demonstrating listeners’ sensitivity to the presence of disfluent repetitions. Unpredictable words elicited an N400 effect. Importantly, there was no evidence that this effect, thought to reflect the difficulty of semantically integrating unpredictable compared to predictable words, differed quantitatively between fluent and disfluent utterances. Furthermore there was no evidence that the memorability of words was affected by the presence of a preceding repetition. These findings contrast with previous research which demonstrated an N400 attenuation of, and an increase in memorability for, words that were preceded by an er. However, in a later (600–900 ms) time window, unpredictable words following a repetition elicited a relative positivity. Reanalysis of previous data confirmed the presence of a similar effect following an er. The effect may reflect difficulties in resuming linguistic processing following any disruption to speech.     

The impact of open and closed mindsets on evaluative priming

In the present research, we argue that open versus closed mindsets, accompanying ongoing versus completed mental jobs on the prime, determine the size of congruity effects in the evaluative priming paradigm. More specifically, we hypothesised that disfluent primes that resist an easily completed encoding process should induce an open mindset and thereby result in stronger congruity effects than fluent primes that induce closed mindsets. Across two experiments, we applied two different manipulations of prime fluency: gradual demasking (Experiment 1) and colour contrast (Experiment 2). As expected, in both experiments we found robust congruity effects, but only on trials with disfluent (vs. fluent) primes. Results of a follow-up experiment suggest that these effects are not due to attentional processes. We conclude that the mindsets resulting from individuals' activities during encoding are crucial in determining the outcome of evaluative priming effects.     

Attention orienting effects of hesitations in speech: evidence from ERPs

Filled-pause disfluencies such as um and er affect listeners' comprehension, possibly mediated by attentional mechanisms (J. E. Fox Tree, 2001). However, there is little direct evidence that hesitations affect attention. The current study used an acoustic manipulation of continuous speech to induce event-related potential components associated with attention (mismatch negativity [MMN] and P300) during the comprehension of fluent and disfluent utterances. In fluent cases, infrequently occurring acoustically manipulated target words gave rise to typical MMN and P300 components when compared to nonmanipulated controls. In disfluent cases, where targets were preceded by natural sounding hesitations culminating in the filled pause er, an MMN (reflecting a detection of deviance) was still apparent for manipulated words, but there was little evidence of a subsequent P300. This suggests that attention was not reoriented to deviant words in disfluent cases. A subsequent recognition test showed that nonmanipulated words were more likely to be remembered if they had been preceded by a hesitation. Taken together, these results strongly implicate attention in an account of disfluency processing: Hesitations orient listeners' attention, with consequences for the immediate processing and later representation of an utterance.     

The impact of open and closed mindsets on evaluative priming

In the present research, we argue that open versus closed mindsets, accompanying ongoing versus completed mental jobs on the prime, determine the size of congruity effects in the evaluative priming paradigm. More specifically, we hypothesised that disfluent primes that resist an easily completed encoding process should induce an open mindset and thereby result in stronger congruity effects than fluent primes that induce closed mindsets. Across two experiments, we applied two different manipulations of prime fluency: gradual demasking (experiment 1) and colour contrast (experiment 2). As expected, in both experiments we found robust congruity effects, but only on trials with disfluent (vs. fluent) primes. Results of a follow-up experiment suggest that these effects are not due to attentional processes. We conclude that the mindsets resulting from individuals' activities during encoding are crucial in determining the outcome of evaluative priming effects.     

Lecturer fluency can impact students' judgments of learning and actual learning performance

The way in which information is presented can influence students' judgments of learning (JOLs). Carpenter, Wilford, Kornell, and Mullaney (2013) found that students reported higher JOLs after viewing a fluent lecturer (good speaker) versus a disfluent lecturer, whereas actual learning performance was unaffected by lecturer fluency. The current research sought to replicate Carpenter et al. (2013) and examine whether students could improve calibration of their JOLs if provided a second opportunity to do so over a different video. In three experiments, participants watched a video of a fluent or disfluent lecturer, made a JOL, completed a free-recall test, and then repeated this procedure with a second video. The fluent lecturer generally produced higher JOLs than the disfluent lecturer (for both videos) across all three experiments. However, fluency also had a positive impact on actual learning performance. These diverging results further illuminate the impact lecturer fluency can have on student learning.     

Click location in sentences: A test of the linguistic competence of seven-year-old fluent and disfluent males

Ten fluent and ten disfluent 7-yr-old males were presented simple and complex fully grammatical, anomalous and scrambled sentences. A click (35-msec 1-kHz tone burst) had been superimposed within three positions to the right or left of the major syntactic boundary in each sentence. The subjects heard the sentence, repeated the sentence, and marked on a preprinted version of the sentence where they heard the click. It was expected that children with greater language facility would more probably locate the click veridically. By the same reasoning, less complex syntactic structures should be expected to influence click placement less than more complex utterances. The following results were obtained: (a) the disfluent group gave a greater number of correct responses than the fluent group; (b) more correct responses were observed for simple sentences than for complex sentences for both groups; and (c) fewer correct responses were observed for both simple and complex grammatical sentences than for anomalous and scrambled sentence types.     

The acquisition of the label “stuttering” by primary level schoolchildren

Two groups of primary level schoolchildren were asked to listen to recordings of a familiar story. One recording was of fluent speech and the second of stuttered speech. Group I, composed of 30 children in the first and second grades, was able to differentiate between stuttered and fluent speech, but did not label disfluent behavior as “stuttering.” Group II, composed of 30 children in the third and fourth grades, not only differentiated the samples, but showed a tendency to label the disfluent behavior “stuttering.” Both groups indicated a preference for the fluent sample.     

Effect of threat of shock for being disfluent of fluency of normal speakers.

Each of 20 adult nonstutterers read a 330-word passage six times with a one minute pause between readings. Between the third and fourth reading or the fifth and sixth reading (determined by a table of random numbers) Ss were informed that at the conclusion of the next reading an electric shock would be administered for each instance of disfluency detected by E during that reading. Ss did not become less fluent as a consequence of the experimental condition. Their mean disfluency frequency during the threat-of-shock reading was lower than during the preceding one. Thus, threat of shock for being disfluent may be a condition which differentiates stutterers from nonstutterers since stutterers have been reported to become less fluent under this condition.     

Manual disfluency in drawing while producing and listening to disfluent speech

This study investigated the extent to which manual fluency was associated with speech fluency in fluent speakers engaged in dual motor tasks. Thirteen right-handed adult females repeatedly drew circles with a pen on a digitizer tablet under five conditions: (1) a baseline (without reading or listening to speech), (2) reading fluently, (3) reading disfluently, (4) listening to fluent speech, and (5) listening to disfluent speech. The primary measure of disfluency was normalized mean squared jerk (NJ) in the pen strokes. Pen stroke time (ST) and pressure (PP) were also measured. NJ of the circle movements was significantly increased in both the disfluent reading and the disfluent listening conditions (p < 0.05), compared to the baseline condition. In the fluent listening and reading conditions, NJ in circle drawing was unaltered compared to the baseline condition. Relative to baseline, ST increased significantly (p < 0.05), but to a similar extent in all experimental conditions. Significantly (p < .05) greater pen pressure were also found in the disfluent versus fluent conditions. Positive correlations (r = 0.33–0.63) were found between NJ and ST across conditions. These findings demonstrate that in dual-tasks, speech fluency can influence manual fluency. This is consistent with the corpus of data showing neural connectivity between manual and speech tasks, as well between perception and production. The mirror neuron system is implicated as a mechanism involved in forging these links.     

知觉模糊度影响学习的延迟效应

基于迁移适当加工理论,采用连续识别任务范式,通过操纵字词和图片的模糊度来考察知觉模糊非流畅的延迟效应。结果发现：（1）模糊不流畅的材料学习判断值更低;（2） 知觉模糊程度对即时的再认成绩没有影响,但在延迟再认测试中流畅性较低的模糊材料成绩更好。该结果表明实验操纵方式所引发的编码过程和记忆测试所需的检索过程性质上相匹配,而且延迟测试时,知觉非流畅可以促进学习,说明该效应存在边界。     

Feature assignment in perception of auditory figure

Because the environment often includes multiple sounds that overlap in time, listeners must segregate a sound of interest (the auditory figure) from other co-occurring sounds (the unattended auditory ground). We conducted a series of experiments to clarify the principles governing the extraction of auditory figures. We distinguish between auditory "objects" (relatively punctate events, such as a dog's bark) and auditory "streams" (sounds involving a pattern over time, such as a galloping rhythm). In Experiments 1 and 2, on each trial 2 sounds-an object (a vowel) and a stream (a series of tones)-were presented with 1 target feature that could be perceptually grouped with either source. In each block of these experiments, listeners were required to attend to 1 of the 2 sounds, and report its perceived category. Across several experimental manipulations, listeners were more likely to allocate the feature to an impoverished object if the result of the grouping was a good, identifiable object. Perception of objects was quite sensitive to feature variation (noise masking), whereas perception of streams was more robust to feature variation. In Experiment 3, the number of sound sources competing for the feature was increased to 3. This produced a shift toward relying more on spatial cues than on the potential contribution of the feature to an object's perceptual quality. The results support a distinction between auditory objects and streams, and provide new information about the way that the auditory world is parsed.