Differences in American English, Spanish, and monkey perception of thesay-stay trading relation

An interesting phenomenon in human speech perception is the trading relation, in which two different acoustic cues both signal the same phonetic percept. The present study compared American English, Spanish, and monkey listeners in their perception of the trading relation between gap duration andFl transition onset frequency in a syntheticsay-stay continuum. For all the subjects, increased gap duration caused perception to change fromsay tostay; however, subjects differed in the extent to which theFl cue traded with gap duration. For American English listeners, a change from a low to a highF1 onset caused a phoneme boundary shift of 26 msec toward shorter gap durations, indicating a strong trading relation. For Spanish listeners, the shift was significantly smaller at 13.7 msec, indicating a weaker trading relation. For monkeys, there was no shift at all, indicating no trading relation. These results provide evidence that thesay-stay trading relation is dependent on perceptual learning from linguistic exposure.     

Lexical tone in Cantonese spoken-word processing

In three experiments, the processing of lexical tone in Cantonese was examined. Cantonese listeners more often accepted a nonword as a word when the only difference between the nonword and the word was in tone, especially when theF0 onset difference between correct and erroneous tone was small.Same-different judgments by these listeners were also slower and less accurate when the only difference between two syllables was in tone, and this was true whether theF0 onset difference between the two tones was large or small. Listeners with no knowledge of Cantonese produced essentially the samesame-different judgment pattern as that produced by the native listeners, suggesting that the results display the effects of simple perceptual processing rather than of linguistic knowledge. It is argued that the processing of lexical tone distinctions may be slowed, relative to the processing of segmental distinctions, and that, in speeded-response tasks, tone is thus more likely to be misprocessed than is segmental structure.     

Ability in perceiving nonnative contrasts: Performance on natural and synthetic speech stimuli

The perception of the distinction between /r/ and /l/ by native speakers of American English and of Japanese was studied using natural and synthetic speech. The American subjects were all nearly perfect at recognizing the natural speech sounds, whereas there was substantial variation among the Japanese subjects in their accuracy of recognizing /r/ and /l/ except in syllable-final position. A logit model, which additively combined the acoustic information conveyed byF1-transition duration and byF3-onset frequency, provided a good fit to the perception of synthetic /r/ and /l/ by the American subjects. There was substantial variation among the Japanese subjects in whether theF1 andF3 cues had a significant effect on their classifications of the synthetic speech. This variation was related to variation in accuracy of recognizing natural /r/ and /l/, such that greater use of both theF1 cue and theF3 cue in classifying the synthetic speech sounds was positively related to accuracy in recognizing the natural sounds. However, multiple regression showed that use of theF1 cue did not account for significant variance in natural speech performance beyond that accounted for by theF3 cue, indicating that theF3 cue is more important than theF1 cue for Japanese speakers learning English. The relation between performance on natural and synthetic speech also provides external validation of the logit model by showing that it predicts performance outside of the domain of data to which it was fit.     

Acoustic emphasis in four year olds

Acoustic emphasis may convey a range of subtle discourse distinctions, yet little is known about how this complex ability develops in children. This paper presents a first investigation of the factors which influence the production of acoustic prominence in young children’s spontaneous speech. In a production experiment, SVO sentences were elicited from 4 year olds who were asked to describe events in a video. Children were found to place more acoustic prominence both on ‘new’ words and on words that were ‘given’ but had shifted to a more accessible position within the discourse. This effect of accessibility concurs with recent studies of adult speech. We conclude that, by age four, children show appropriate, adult-like use of acoustic prominence, suggesting sensitivity to a variety of discourse distinctions.     

Hemispheric asymmetries in children's perception of nonlinguistic human affective sounds

In the present work, we developed a database of nonlinguistic sounds that mirror prosodic characteristics typical of language and thus carry affective information, but do not convey linguistic information. In a dichotic-listening task, we used these novel stimuli as a means of disambiguating the relative contributions of linguistic and affective processing across the hemispheres. This method was applied to both children and adults with the goal of investigating the role of developing cognitive resource capacity on affective processing. Results suggest that children's limited computational resources influence how they process affective information and rule out attentional biases as a factor in children's perceptual asymmetries for nonlinguistic affective sounds. These data further suggest that investigation of perception of nonlinguistic affective sounds is a valuable tool in assessing interhemispheric asymmetries in affective processing, especially in parceling out linguistic contributions to hemispheric differences.     

Differences in American English, Spanish, and monkey perception of the say-stay trading relation

An interesting phenomenon in human speech perception is the trading relation, in which two different acoustic cues both signal the same phonetic percept. The present study compared American English, Spanish, and monkey listeners in their perception of the trading relation between gap duration and F1 transition onset frequency in a synthetic say-stay continuum. For all the subjects, increased gap duration caused perception to change from say to stay; however, subjects differed in the extent to which the F1 cue traded with gap duration. For American English listeners, a change from a low to a high F1 onset caused a phoneme boundary shift of 26 msec toward shorter gap durations, indicating a strong trading relation. For Spanish listeners, the shift was significantly smaller at 13.7 msec, indicating a weaker trading relation. For monkeys, there was no shift at all, indicating no trading relation. These results provide evidence that the say-stay trading relation is dependent on perceptual learning from linguistic exposure.     

Imagery,concreteness, goodness,and familiarity ratings for 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs

Partly in order to facilitate research on the relation between some standard psychological variables, we gathered normative data on 500 proverbs sampled from theOxford Dictionary of English Proverbs (Wilson, 1970). The scales for which we gathered data are imagery, concreteness, goodness , and familiarity. These norms may be of value to researchers who wish to sample linguistic units larger than the word from a set that contains an extensive number of unfamiliar and familiar items. To illustrate the possible uses to which these data may be put, we presented a causal model of the relation between the four variables mentioned above.     

Categorical perception of affective and linguistic facial expressions

Two experiments investigated categorical perception (CP) effects for affective facial expressions and linguistic facial expressions from American Sign Language (ASL) for Deaf native signers and hearing non-signers. Facial expressions were presented in isolation (Experiment 1) or in an ASL verb context (Experiment 2). Participants performed ABX discrimination and identification tasks on morphed affective and linguistic facial expression continua. The continua were created by morphing end-point photo exemplars into 11 images, changing linearly from one expression to another in equal steps. For both affective and linguistic expressions, hearing non-signers exhibited better discrimination across category boundaries than within categories for both experiments, thus replicating previous results with affective expressions and demonstrating CP effects for non-canonical facial expressions. Deaf signers, however, showed significant CP effects only for linguistic facial expressions. Subsequent analyses indicated that order of presentation influenced signers’ response time performance for affective facial expressions: viewing linguistic facial expressions first slowed response time for affective facial expressions. We conclude that CP effects for affective facial expressions can be influenced by language experience.     

Identification of argentine Spanish vowels

The acoustical spectrum of the five Spanish vowels |a, e, i, o, u| has been delimited to show the areas covered by F ₁ , F ₂ , and F ₃ and the relative distribution energy among the formants. Through the analysis of the spectral components of vowels, isolated and in consonantal context, it is possible to estimate the different weight of each formant in vowel identification. At least for isolated vowels,F ₂ andF ₃ seem to be effective for the identification of [i] and [e] while theF ₁ andF ₂ carry the weight for the identification of [o] and [u]. The cue to differentiate [a] seems to beF ₂. Spanish vowels are compared with cardinals and North American English vowels. There is no correlation with cardinal vowels while similarities are found with English vowels.     

Trading relations in the perception of speech by 5-year-old children

Five-year-old children were tested for perceptual trading relations between a temporal cue (silence duration) and a spectral cue (F₁ onset frequency) for the “say-stay” distinction. Identification functions were obtained for two synthetic “say-stay” continua, each containing systematic variations in the amount of silence following the /s/ noise. In one continuum, the vocalic portion had a lower F₁ onset than in the other continuum. Children showed a smaller trading relation than has been found with adults. They did not differ from adults, however, in their perception of an “ay-day” continuum formed by varying F₁ onset frequency only. The results of a discrimination task in which the two acoustic cues were made to “cooperate” or “conflict” phonetically supported the notion of perceptual equivalence of the temporal and spectral cues along a single phonetic dimension. The results indicate that young children, like adults, perceptually integrate multiple cues to a speech contrast in a phonetically relevant manner, but that they may not give the same perceptual weights to the various cues as do adults.     

Speech prosody in Broca's aphasia

Because speech prosody is thought to be impaired in Broca's aphasia, we conducted three experiments using Broca's aphasics and nonneurological control subjects in order to determine to what extent this statement is accurate. Using three acoustic measures of speech prosody—sentence-final fundamental frequency (F₀) fall, F₀ declination, and sentence-final lengthening—we found that some aspects of prosody were spared while others were abnormal. All Broca's aphasics, regardless of degree of impairment, exhibited sentence-final F₀ fall. F₀ declination was present in simple sentences but was absent over longer domains; moreover, the amount of declination was correlated with the degree of linguistic impairment. Sentence-final lengthening was clearly absent in Broca's aphasia; in fact, sentence-terminal words were actually shorter than their sentence-initial and medial counterparts.     

A comparison of the randomization test with the<Emphasis Type="Italic">F</Emphasis> test when error is skewed

I compared the randomization/permutation test and theF test for a two-cell comparative experiment. I varied (1) the number of observations per cell, (2) the size of the treatment effect, (3) the shape of the underlying distribution of error and, (4) for cases with skewed error, whether or not the skew was correlated with the treatment. With normal error, there was little difference between the tests. When error was skewed, by contrast, the randomization test was more sensitive than theF test, and if the amount of skew was correlated with the treatment, the advantage for the randomization test was both large and positively correlated with the treatment. I conclude that, because the randomization test was never less powerful than theF test, it should replace theF test in routine work.     

When what you say about others says something about you: Language abstraction and inferences about describers’ attitudes and goals

According to the linguistic category model ( [Semin and Fiedler, 1988] and [Semin and Fiedler, 1991]), a person’s behavior can be described at varying levels of abstraction from concrete (e.g., “Lisa slaps Ann”) to abstract (e.g., “Lisa is aggressive”). Research has shown that language abstraction conveys information about the person whose behavior is described (Wigboldus, Semin, & Spears, 2000). However to date, little research has examined the information that language abstraction may convey about describers themselves. In this paper, we report three experiments demonstrating that describers who use relatively abstract language to describe others’ behaviors are perceived to have biased attitudes and motives compared with those describers who use more concrete language.     

Stability and variability in the relationship between subjective well-being and income

Empirical studies typically find a moderate positive correlation between subjective well-being (SWB) and income. In the present paper, we examined stable and transient determinants of the relation between affective well-being and income in the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS; N = 37,041) and the relation between cognitive well-being and income in the BHPS (N = 31,871) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP; N = 43,565) with bivariate latent state-trait models. The results show that the relation between SWB and income is primarily driven by stable individual differences whereas transient changes in income are weakly related to transient changes in SWB. It is therefore important to consider stable dispositional and stable situational variables in studies on income and SWB.     

Reichenbach on the relative a priori and the context of discovery/justification distinction

Hans Reichenbach introduced two seemingly separate sets of distinctions in his epistemology at different times. One is between the axioms of coordination and the axioms of connections. The other distinction is between the context of discovery and the context of justification. The status and nature of each of these distinctions have been subject-matter of an ongoing debate among philosophers of science. Thus, there is a significant amount of works considering both distinctions separately. However, the relevance of Reichenbach’s two distinctions to each other does not seem to have enjoyed the same amount of interest so far. This is what I would like to consider in this paper. In other words, I am concerned with the question: what kind of relationship is there between his two distinctions, if there is any?     

Linguistic and cognitive prominence in anaphor resolution: topic,contrastive focus and pronouns

This paper examines the role that linguistic and cognitive prominence play in the resolution of anaphor–antecedent relationships. In two experiments, we found that pronouns are immediately sensitive to the cognitive prominence of potential antecedents when other antecedent selection cues are uninformative. In experiment 1, results suggest that despite their theoretical dissimilarities, topic and contrastive focus both serve to enhance cognitive prominence. Results from experiment 2 suggest that the contrastive prosody appropriate for focus constructions may also play an important role in enhancing cognitive prominence. Thus different types of linguistic prominence (topic, contrastive focus) appear to have the common effect of increasing the cognitive prominence of the discourse referent. For pronouns with two possible antecedents, the cognitive prominence of an antecedent aids in anaphor resolution, immediately biasing selection towards the more prominent (and ultimately preferred) antecedent.

“Climatic-affective atmospheres”: A conceptual tool for affective scholarship in a changing climate

This paper engages with the concept of affective atmospheres which has gained prominence in affect studies and suggests that in this era of global climate change, we need to ‘acclimatise’ this term. Working with a range of empirical examples, I argue that we can understand the climatic and affective to be entangled processes that co-produce each other. Working with the conceptual affordances of affective atmospheres offers much potential for research investigating the emotional and affective dimensions of climate change, enabling considerations that go beyond the individualism and anthropocentrism of more conventional approaches. Additionally, attuning to the climatic dimensions of affective atmospheres lessens the representational baggage of this term by moving beyond a metaphorical use of ‘atmosphere’. The refined concept I propose, climatic-affective atmospheres, offers promising opportunities for contributing to more effective and ethical social responses to climate change, for example, by enabling attention to how climate change reconfigures, disrupts, shapes and directs humans, and how everyday human affective practices contribute to changing or stabilising climate.     

Affection and attention: On the phenomenology of becoming aware

Addressing the matter of attention from a phenomenological perspective as it bears on the problem of becoming aware, I draw on Edmund Husserl's analyses and distinctions that mark his “genetic” phenomenology. I describe several experiential levels of affective force and modes of attentiveness, ranging from what I call dispositional orientation and passive discernment to so-called higher levels of attentiveness in cognitive interest, judicative objectivation, and conceptualization. These modes of attentiveness can be understood as motivating a still more active mode of reflective attention, i.e., philosophical attentiveness, and to this extent, even it would be subject to varying influences of affection. What role, if any, does affection play in a peculiar kind of reflective attention that is phenomenological? I conclude by briefly considering phenomenological reflective attentiveness and its relation to affection.     

Some cautions regarding statistical power in split-plot designs

We show that if overall sample size and effect size are held constant, the power of theF test for a one-way analysis of variance decreases dramatically as the number of groups increases. This reduction in power is even greater when the groups added to the design do not produce treatment effects. If a second independent variable is added to the design, either a split-plot or a completely randomized design may be employed. For the split-plot design, we show that the power of theF test on the betweengroups factor decreases as the correlation across the levels of the within-groups factor increases. The attenuation in between-groups power becomes more pronounced as the number of levels of the withingroups factor increases. Sample size and total cost calculations are required to determine whether the split-plot or completely randomized design is more efficient in a particular application. The outcome hinges on the cost of obtaining (or recruiting) a single subject relative to the cost of obtaining a single observation: We call this thesubject-to-observation cost (SOC) ratio. Split-plot designs are less costly than completely randomized designs only when the SOC ratio is high, the correlation across the levels of the within-groups factor is low, and the number of such levels is small.     

Trait Socio-Cognitive Mindfulness is Related to Affective and Cognitive Empathy

Research regarding the relationship between empathy and mindfulness is sparse. Within the social scientific literature, there are two major branches of mindfulness research: meditative mindfulness (Kabat-Zinn in Gen Hosp Psychiatry 4(1):33–47, 1982) and non-meditative, socio-cognitive mindfulness (Langer and Moldoveanu in J Soc Issues 56(1):1–9, 2000). Meditative mindfulness is the awareness that arises through paying attention non-judgmentally to the present moment whereas socio-cognitive mindfulness is the process of drawing novel distinctions leading to greater attention to the present moment and sensitivity to context. We hypothesized that the two types of mindfulness would correlate with each other and with empathy broadly defined but that there would be divergence in these relationships given their conceptual distinctions. Four hundred and eighty-four participants from Mechanical Turk completed tasks of socio-cognitive mindfulness, meditative mindfulness, affective empathy, cognitive empathy, and social desirability. Socio-cognitive mindfulness correlated with both affective and cognitive empathy as well as with meditative mindfulness. Meditative mindfulness correlated with only affective empathy but not with cognitive empathy. These findings suggested that, in contrast to meditative mindfulness, socio-cognitive mindfulness involves cognitive processes (e.g., perspective-taking, flexibility) potentially amenable to experimental manipulation aimed at increasing empathy more generally.