Speech segmentation by statistical learning depends on attention

We addressed the hypothesis that word segmentation based on statistical regularities occurs without the need of attention. Participants were presented with a stream of artificial speech in which the only cue to extract the words was the presence of statistical regularities between syllables. Half of the participants were asked to passively listen to the speech stream, while the other half were asked to perform a concurrent task. In Experiment 1, the concurrent task was performed on a separate auditory stream (noises), in Experiment 2 it was performed on a visual stream (pictures), and in Experiment 3 it was performed on pitch changes in the speech stream itself. Invariably, passive listening to the speech stream led to successful word extraction (as measured by a recognition test presented after the exposure phase), whereas diverted attention led to a dramatic impairment in word segmentation performance. These findings demonstrate that when attentional resources are depleted, word segmentation based on statistical regularities is seriously compromised.     

Annoyance response of nonsmokers to cigarette smoke

In three experiments, nonsmoking subjects rated their annoyance by task environments while either exposed or not exposed to ambient tobacco smoke. In Exps. 1 and 2 subjects rated annoyance with the environment while exposed to three intensities of noise, and in Exp. 3 subjects rated annoyance while performing multiplication problems under conditions of high and low task motivation. The source of the ambient smoke in Exp. 1 was a smoke pump. For Exps. 2 and 3, the source of the smoke was confederate subjects. No differences in annoyance were obtained in Exps. 1 and 2 as a function of exposure to smoke. Exp. 3 showed that nonsmokers' annoyance to a task environment is dependent upon task motivation and exposure to ambient smoke. In Exp. 3 nonsmokers exposed to smoke were more annoyed than those not exposed under low motivating conditions. When nonsmokers were highly motivated in the task environment those exposed to smoke were significantly less annoyed than those not exposed.     

Irrelevant sound disrupts speech production: Exploring the relationship between short-term memory and experimentally induced slips of the tongue

To explore the relationship between short-term memory and speech production, we developed a speech error induction technique. The technique, which was adapted from a Japanese word game, exposed participants to an auditory distractor word immediately before the utterance of a target word. In Experiment 1, the distractor words that were phonologically similar to the target word led to a greater number of errors in speaking the target than did the dissimilar distractor words. Furthermore, the speech error scores were significantly correlated with memory span scores. In Experiment 2, memory span scores were again correlated with the rate of the speech errors that were induced from the task-irrelevant speech sounds. Experiment 3 showed a strong irrelevant-sound effect in the serial recall of nonwords. The magnitude of the irrelevant-sound effects was not affected by phonological similarity between the to-be-remembered nonwords and the irrelevant-sound materials. Analysis of recall errors in Experiment 3 also suggested that there were no essential differences in recall error patterns between the dissimilar and similar irrelevant-sound conditions. Weproposed two different underlying mechanisms in immediate memory, one operating via the phonological short-term memory store and the other via the processes underpinning speech production.     

Effects of training on interpretation of emotional ambiguity

In four experiments we investigated whether interpretative biases found in anxious patients and high-trait anxious individuals can be induced by training in unselected volunteers. Repeated exposure to emotionally valenced (threatening) meanings of homographs during training was followed by relatively faster resolution of word fragments and faster lexical decisions for targets that matched the trained valence. Similar effects were found whether participants generated the meanings themselves, or verified a particular meaning of the homograph. Finally, comparison with a baseline condition confirmed that systematic exposure to threatening-but not non-threatening-resolutions of ambiguous words led to generally faster access times for congruent meanings, thus resembling the interpretative bias seen in anxiety states.     

Emotion and Motor Control: Movement Attributes Following Affective Picture Processing

The authors investigated the impact of emotion on the performance of a square-tracing task after participants (N = 40) were exposed to pleasant (P), unpleasant (U), and neutral (N) pictures. Physiological and self-report measures indexed affective valence and arousal. In Experiment 1, greater error followed exposure to 4 consecutive U images than exposure to 4 consecutive P images. Speed of performance did not vary as a function of valence. In Experiment 2, participants viewed 1 slide per trial within a modified exposure protocol. Speed of performance varied as a function of valence; faster performance followed U relative to P stimuli. Accuracy of performance did not vary between conditions. Corresponding self-report and physiological measures generally corroborated previous evidence. Findings collectively indicated that the length of exposure to affective stimuli mediates speed and accuracy of motor performance; compared with P stimuli, U stimuli led to either increased error (short exposure) or increased speed (multiple exposures). The authors conclude that brief and extended exposures to affective pictures have direct behavioral consequences, and they discuss the implications of that finding.     

Emotion and motor control: movement attributes following affective picture processing

The authors investigated the impact of emotion on the performance of a square-tracing task after participants (N = 40) were exposed to pleasant (P), unpleasant (U), and neutral (N) pictures. Physiological and self-report measures indexed affective valence and arousal. In Experiment 1, greater error followed exposure to 4 consecutive U images than exposure to 4 consecutive P images. Speed of performance did not vary as a function of valence. In Experiment 2, participants viewed 1 slide per trial within a modified exposure protocol. Speed of performance varied as a function of valence; faster performance followed U relative to P stimuli. Accuracy of performance did not vary between conditions. Corresponding self-report and physiological measures generally corroborated previous evidence. Findings collectively indicated that the length of exposure to affective stimuli mediates speed and accuracy of motor performance; compared with P stimuli, U stimuli led to either increased error (short exposure) or increased speed (multiple exposures). The authors conclude that brief and extended exposures to affective pictures have direct behavioral consequences, and they discuss the implications of that finding.     

Emotions induced by operatic music: psychophysiological effects of music, plot, and acting: a scientist's tribute to Maria Callas

Operatic music involves both singing and acting (as well as rich audiovisual background arising from the orchestra and elaborate scenery and costumes) that multiply the mechanisms by which emotions are induced in listeners. The present study investigated the effects of music, plot, and acting performance on emotions induced by opera. There were three experimental conditions: (1) participants listened to a musically complex and dramatically coherent excerpt from Tosca; (2) they read a summary of the plot and listened to the same musical excerpt again; and (3) they re-listened to music while they watched the subtitled film of this acting performance. In addition, a control condition was included, in which an independent sample of participants succesively listened three times to the same musical excerpt. We measured subjective changes using both dimensional, and specific music-induced emotion questionnaires. Cardiovascular, electrodermal, and respiratory responses were also recorded, and the participants kept track of their musical chills. Music listening alone elicited positive emotion and autonomic arousal, seen in faster heart rate, but slower respiration rate and reduced skin conductance. Knowing the (sad) plot while listening to the music a second time reduced positive emotions (peacefulness, joyful activation), and increased negative ones (sadness), while high autonomic arousal was maintained. Watching the acting performance increased emotional arousal and changed its valence again (from less positive/sad to transcendent), in the context of continued high autonomic arousal. The repeated exposure to music did not by itself induce this pattern of modifications. These results indicate that the multiple musical and dramatic means involved in operatic performance specifically contribute to the genesis of music-induced emotions and their physiological correlates.     

The effects of presenting a click in syllable-initial position on the speech of stutterers: Comparison with a metronome click

The speech of ten stutterers, recorded while they were listening to a concurrent metronome click and with a click which was triggered so that it occurred at the beginning of every syllable, was assessed. Speech rate and number of disfluencies were measured in each speaking condition. The results indicated that fewer disfluencies occurred (relative to normal reading performance) when a metronome or syllable-initial click was presented.In a perceptual experiment, a group of normal listeners was presented with samples of each of the stutterers' speech from all three speaking conditions. The listeners were asked to choose that which sounded most natural. The speech recorded from the condition where a click occurred at syllable onset was judged more natural than normal speech or speech recorded while the stutterers heard a metronome click.     

Effect of distraction on reading versus listening

Levy (1977) reported a series of experiments in which a distracting task (counting aloud) interfered more with reading than with listening. The results were interpreted as evidence of the importance of phonological recoding during reading. In a similar experiment we varied the nature of the distracting task, using one task related to speech (counting aloud) and one task not related to speech (manual response to a threshold shock). Both distracting tasks led to similar results, namely, more interference with reading than listening. On the basis of our results and a consideration of related literature, we ascribe the selective interference effect to the relative difficulty of reading over listening rather than to the importance of speech recoding in reading.     

Speech segmentation by statistical learning is supported by domain-general processes within working memory

The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which working memory resources are recruited during statistical learning (SL). Participants were asked to identify novel words in an artificial speech stream where the transitional probabilities between syllables provided the only segmentation cue. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that segmentation performance improved when the speech rate was slowed down, suggesting that SL is supported by some form of active processing or maintenance mechanism that operates more effectively under slower presentation rates. In Experiment 3 we investigated the nature of this mechanism by asking participants to perform a two-back task while listening to the speech stream. Half of the participants performed a two-back rhyme task designed to engage phonological processing, whereas the other half performed a comparable two-back task on un-nameable visual shapes. It was hypothesized that if SL is dependent only upon domain-specific processes (i.e., phonological rehearsal), the rhyme task should impair speech segmentation performance more than the shape task. However, the two loads were equally disruptive to learning, as they both eradicated the benefit provided by the slow rate. These results suggest that SL is supported by working-memory processes that rely on domain-general resources.     

Speed/accuracy decisions in task performance: Built-in trade-off or separate strategic concerns?

In four studies we show that participants’ regulatory focus influences speed/accuracy decisions in different tasks. According to regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997), promotion focus concerns with accomplishments and aspirations produce strategic eagerness whereas prevention focus concerns with safety and responsibilities produce strategic vigilance. Studies 1–3 show faster performance and less accuracy in simple drawing tasks for participants with a chronic or situationally induced promotion focus compared to participants with a prevention focus. These studies also show that as participants move closer to the goal of completing the task, speed increases and accuracy decreases for participants with a promotion focus, whereas speed decreases and accuracy increases for participants with a prevention focus. Study 4 basically replicates these results for situationally induced regulatory focus with a more complex proofreading task. The study found that a promotion focus led to faster proofreading compared to a prevention focus, whereas a prevention focus led to higher accuracy in finding more difficult errors than a promotion focus. Through speed and searching for easy errors, promotion focus participants maximized their proofreading performance. In all four studies, the speed effects were independent of the accuracy effects and vice versa. These results show that speed/accuracy (or quantity/quality) decisions are influenced by the strategic inclinations of participants varying in regulatory focus rather than by a built-in trade-off.     

The lasting effect of words on feelings: words may facilitate exposure effects to threatening images

Previous studies have shown that mere words, particularly affective words, can dampen emotional responses. However, the effect of affective labels on emotional responding in the long term is unknown. The authors examined whether repeated exposure to aversive images would lead to more reduction in autonomic reactivity a week later if the images were exposed with single-word labels than without labels. In Experiment 1, healthy individuals were exposed to pictures of disturbing scenes with or without labels on Day 1. On Day 8, the same pictures from the previous week were exposed, this time without labels. In Experiment 2, participants were spider fearful and were exposed to pictures of spiders. In both experiments, although repeated exposure to aversive images (without labels) led to long-term attenuation of autonomic reactivity, exposure plus affective labels, but not nonaffective labels, led to more attenuation than exposure alone. Thus, affective labels may help dampen emotional reactivity in both the short and long terms. Implications for exposure therapy and translational studies are discussed.     

Effect of reading with reversed speech on frequency of stuttering in adults

This study explored the effect of reading with reversed speech on the frequency of stuttering. Eight adults who stutter served as participants and read four 300-syllable passages while listening to three types of speech stimuli: normal speech (choral reading), reversed speech at normal speed, reversed speech at half speed, and a control condition of no auditory feedback. A repeated-measures analysis of variance showed a significant decrease in stuttering frequency in the choral reading condition but not in reversed speech at normal and half speed. However, the reversed speech at half-speed condition showed a large effect size (omega2 = 0.32). Data suggest that a forward moving speech feedback is not essential to decrease the frequency of stuttering in adults who stutter.     

Memory and encoding of spoken discourse following right hemisphere damage: evidence from the Auditory Moving Window (AMW) technique

We investigated the hypotheses that impaired discourse processing following right hemisphere damage is mediated by task difficulty and is associated with deficits in discourse encoding. Spoken discourse passages differing in contextual predictability were presented to right hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients and to non-brain-damaged (NBD) controls for subsequent recall using the Auditory Moving Window paradigm. To manipulate processing difficulty, speech segments were of normal or accelerated speech rates. The recall results showed that RHD adults recalled less than NBD controls overall and failed to recall major idea units better than minor idea units for high predictability passages presented at accelerated speech rates. Both RHD patients and NBD controls failed to recall major idea units better than minor idea units for low predictability passages, regardless of speech rate. The encoding results showed that RHD adults were both slower overall and differentially slower than NBD controls when listening to accelerated passage segments. Taken together, the encoding and recall results are consistent with the view that extracting passage gist under difficult listening conditions is especially vulnerable for patients with right hemisphere strokes.     

Auditory spectral integration in nontraditional speech cues in diotic and dichotic listening

Underlying auditory processes in speech perception were explored. Specifically of interest were the stages of auditory processing involved in the integration of dynamic information in nontraditional speech cues such as the virtual formant transitions. These signals utilize intensity ratio cues and changes in spectral center-of-gravity (instead of the actual formant frequency transitions) to produce perceived F3 glides. 6 men and 8 women (M age = 24.2 yr., SD = 2.1), recruited through posted materials from graduate students at The Ohio State University, participated in two experiments. The results for frequency-based formant transitions (Exp. 1) indicated that spectral cues to syllable identification are combined at more central levels of auditory processing. However, when the components of the virtual formant stimuli were divided between the ears in a dichotic listening task (Exp. 2), the results indicated that auditory spectral integration may occur above the auditory periphery but at stages more intermediate rather than central.     

Modeling the categorical perception of speech sounds: A step toward biological plausibility

Our native language has a lifelong effect on how we perceive speech sounds. Behaviorally, this is manifested as categorical perception, but the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are still unknown. Here, we constructed a computational model of categorical perception, following principles consistent with infant speech learning. A self-organizing network was exposed to a statistical distribution of speech input presented as neural activity patterns of the auditory periphery, resembling the way sound arrives to the human brain. In the resulting neural map, categorical perception emerges from most single neurons of the model being maximally activated by prototypical speech sounds, while the largest variability in activity is produced at category boundaries. Consequently, regions in the vicinity of prototypes become perceptually compressed, and regions at category boundaries become expanded. Thus, the present study offers a unifying framework for explaining the neural basis of the warping of perceptual space associated with categorical perception.     

视觉信息呈现材料对视线突显技术的影响作用

本研究选取了基于视线追踪的视线突显技术作为研究对象,探究视觉信息呈现材料对不同视线突显技术的影响作用。结果表明：1）相比无突显,两种视线突显技术在搜索中均能提高操作绩效;2）视线矩阵突显技术在提高搜索速度上更优于视线单项突显技术;3）视线矩阵突显技术均能提高两种词频词组的搜索绩效,而低频词组搜索时,视线单项突显技术下的搜索正确率最优。本研究进一步考察了视线突显技术规律特点,为其实际应用提供理论依据和设计思路。     

Brain activity varies with modulation of dynamic pitch variance in sentence melody

Fourteen native speakers of German heard normal sentences, sentences which were either lacking dynamic pitch variation (flattened speech), or comprised of intonation contour exclusively (degraded speech). Participants were to listen carefully to the sentences and to perform a rehearsal task. Passive listening to flattened speech compared to normal speech produced strong brain responses in right cortical areas, particularly in the posterior superior temporal gyrus (pSTG). Passive listening to degraded speech compared to either normal or flattened speech particularly involved fronto-opercular and subcortical (Putamen, Caudate Nucleus) regions bilaterally. Additionally the Rolandic operculum (premotor cortex) in the right hemisphere subserved processing of neat sentence intonation. As a function of explicit rehearsing sentence intonation we found several activation foci in the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca's area), the left inferior precentral sulcus, and the left Rolandic fissure. The data allow several suggestions: First, both flattened and degraded speech evoked differential brain responses in the pSTG, particularly in the planum temporale (PT) bilaterally indicating that this region mediates integration of slowly and rapidly changing acoustic cues during comprehension of spoken language. Second, the bilateral circuit active whilst participants receive degraded speech reflects general effort allocation. Third, the differential finding for passive perception and explicit rehearsal of intonation contour suggests a right fronto-lateral network for processing and a left fronto-lateral network for producing prosodic information. Finally, it appears that brain areas which subserve speech (frontal operculum) and premotor functions (Rolandic operculum) coincidently support the processing of intonation contour in spoken sentence comprehension.     

The effects of speech production and speech comprehension on simulated driving performance

We performed two experiments comparing the effects of speech production and speech comprehension on simulated driving performance. In both experiments, participants completed a speech task and a simulated driving task under single‐ and dual‐task conditions, with language materials matched for linguistic complexity. In Experiment 1, concurrent production and comprehension resulted in more variable velocity compared to driving alone. Experiment 2 replicated these effects in a more difficult simulated driving environment, with participants showing larger and more variable headway times when speaking or listening while driving than when just driving. In both experiments, concurrent production yielded better control of lane position relative to single‐task performance; concurrent comprehension had little impact on control of lane position. On all other measures, production and comprehension had very similar effects on driving. The results show, in line with previous work, that there are detrimental consequences for driving of concurrent language use. Our findings imply that these detrimental consequences may be roughly the same whether drivers are producing speech or comprehending it. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evidence for habituation of the irrelevant-sound effect on serial recall

Working memory theories make opposing predictions as to whether the disruptive effect of task-irrelevant sound on serial recall should be attenuated after repeated exposure to the auditory distractors. Although evidence of habituation has emerged after a passive listening phase, previous attempts to observe habituation to to-be ignored distractors on a trial-by-trial basis have proven to be fruitless. With the present study, we suggest that habituation to auditory distractors occurs, but has often been overlooked because past attempts to measure habituation in the irrelevant-sound paradigm were not sensitive enough. In a series of four experiments, the disruptive effects of to-be-ignored speech and music relative to a quiet control condition were markedly reduced after eight repetitions, regardless of whether trials were presented in blocks (Exp. 1) or in a random order (Exp. 2). The auditory distractor’s playback direction (forward, backward) had no effect (Exp. 3). The same results were obtained when the auditory distractors were only presented in a retention interval after the presentation of the to-be-remembered items (Exp. 4). This pattern is only consistent with theoretical accounts that allow for attentional processes to interfere with the maintenance of information in working memory.