Perception and production of tone in aphasia

An acoustical and perceptual study of lexical tone was conducted to evaluate the extent and nature of tonal disruption in aphasia. The language under investigation was Thai, a tone language which has five lexical tones--mid, low, falling, high, and rising. Subjects included six left brain-damaged aphasics (two Broca's, one transcortical motor, one global, one conduction, one Wernicke), one right brain-damaged nonaphasic, one cerebellar dysarthric, and five normals. High-quality tape recordings of each subject's productions of a minimal set of five, monosyllabic Thai words were presented to 10 adult Thai listeners for identification. Results from the phonemic identification tests indicated that tone production is relatively spared in aphasic patients with unilateral left hemisphere lesions. The performance of the global aphasic, however, was considerably below normal. Patterns of tonal confusions further revealed that the performance of all aphasics, except the global, differed from that of normal speakers primarily in degree rather than in kind. Tonal contrasts were signaled at a high level of proficiency by the right brain-damaged and dysarthric patients. Acoustical analysis revealed that F0 contours associated with the five tones for all aphasics, except the global, were similar in overall shape as well as position in the tone space to those of normals. F0 contours for the right brain-damaged patient and the dysarthric also generally agreed with those of normals in terms of shape and position. F0 ranges of both aphasic and nonaphasic brain-damaged speakers were generally larger than those of normals for all five tones. The relationship between tone and vowel duration was generally similar to that of normals for all brain-damaged speakers. A comparison of aphasics' performance on tone perception (J. Gandour & R. Dardarananda, 1983, Brain and Language, 18, 94-114) and tone production indicated that, for the normal and right brain-damaged subjects, performance on the perception task was higher than on production, whereas the opposite was true for the aphasics. These data are brought to bear on issues related to tone production in aphasia, consonant and vowel production in aphasia, hemispheric specialization for tone production, intonation production in aphasia, relationship between speech perception and speech production, and tone production in dysarthria with cerebellar disease.     

Perception and production of object-related grasping in 6-month-olds

In this study, 6-month-olds’ perception of an object-related human grasping action was compared with their level of grasping performance using a within-participants design. In the action perception task, infants were presented with the video of an actor’s grasping movement toward an occluded target object. Subsequently, an expected and an unexpected final state of this grasping movement were presented simultaneously, and infants’ looking times were measured. In the action production task, infants were presented with three graspable objects. Infants’ grasping behavior was coded to be either palmar or thumb-opposite grasping. Results indicate that infants who were already able to perform a thumb-opposite grasp differentiated between the two final states in the action perception task by looking longer toward the unexpected final state. In contrast, infants who showed only palmar grasps looked equally long toward both final states. This finding supports the assumption that action perception and action control are already closely related in infants as young as 6 months.     

Perception of American sign language in dynamic point-light displays

Perception of dynamic events of American Sign Language (ASL) was studied by isolating information about motion in the language from information about form. Four experiments utilized Johansson's technique for presenting biological motion as moving points of light. In the first, deaf signers were highly accurate in matching movements of lexical signs presented in point-light displays to those normally presented. Both discrimination accuracy and the pattern of errors were similar in this matching task to that obtained in a control condition in which the same signs were always represented normally. The second experiment showed that these results held for discrimination of morphological operations presented in point-light displays as well. In the third experiment, signers were able to accurately identify signs of a constant handshape and morphological operations acting on signs presented in point-light displays. Finally, in Experiment 4, we evaluated what aspects of the motion patterns carried most of the information for sign identifiability. We presented signs in point-light displays with certain lights removed and found that the movement of the fingertips, but not of any other pair of points, is necessary for sign identification and that, in general, the more distal the joint, the more information its movement carries.     

Dichotic Perception of Mandarin Tones by Chinese and American Listeners

The dichotic perception of Mandarin tones by native and nonnative listeners was examined in order to investigate the lateralization of lexical tone. Twenty American listeners with no tone language background and 20 Chinese listeners were asked to identify dichotically presented tone pairs by identifying which tone they heard in each ear. For the Chinese listeners, 57% of the total errors occurred via the left ear, indicating a significant right ear advantage. However, the American listeners revealed no significant ear preference, with 48% of the errors attributable to the left ear. These results indicated that Mandarin tones are predominantly processed in the left hemisphere by native Mandarin speakers, whereas they are bilaterally processed by American English speakers with no prior tone experience. The results also suggest that the left hemisphere superiority for native Mandarin tone processing is similar to native processing of other tone languages.     

A Cross-Language Study of Perception of Lexical Stress in English

This study investigates the question of whether language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English. Thirty native English speakers and 30 native Chinese learners of English participated in a stressed-syllable identification task and a discrimination task involving three types of stimuli (real words/pseudowords/hums). The results show that both language groups were able to identify and discriminate stress patterns. Lexical and segmental information affected the English and Chinese speakers in varying degrees. English and Chinese speakers showed different response patterns to trochaic vs. iambic stress across the three types of stimuli. An acoustic analysis revealed that two language groups used different acoustic cues to process lexical stress. The findings suggest that the different degrees of lexical and segmental effects can be explained by language background, which in turn supports the hypothesis that language background affects the perception of lexical stress in English.     

初中生英语自我效能感与知觉到的教师期望、英语成绩的关系

研究主要考察初中生英语自我效能感、知觉到的教师期望与英语成绩的关系.探索性和验证性因素分析结果表明,初中生英语自我效能感包括学科能力感、目标自信感、挫折效能感和策略使用感四个维度.研究得出高成绩组学生的英语自我效能感及知觉到的教师期望显著高于低成绩组学生;英语自我效能感具有显著的性别差异、年级差异与学校类型差异;年级、学校类型、英语自我效能感中的能力因子与挫折因子及知觉到的教师期望中的态度因子是英语成绩的显著预测变量.     

Differences in personality between American and English children

One thousand and ninety-one children between the ages of 9 and 15 yr from three Tennessee schools completed the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire and an Impulsiveness Inventory. The American children scored significantly higher on the N, P, E and Imp scales and lower on the L scale. Common trends were noted on age and sex between the American personality norms and the English norms. The results were discussed in terms of the differences in crime rate and lifestyle between the two countries. Both questionnaires were seen as useful measures of personality for children in the U.S.     

汉语母语儿童和成人视听双通道英语语音知觉的训练研究

本研究通过前测-训练-后测的实验程序,对22名五年级小学生和29名大学一年级学生在不同测查条件下知觉英语辅音/s/和/θ/的可塑性情况进行了考察和比较。两个年龄阶段被试在前后测中均接受纯听、视听一致、视听不一致和纯视条件下的测查,训练时两个年龄阶段被试中分别有一半接受纯听训练,另一半接受视听训练,训练时间历时10天,每天30分钟左右。对训练效果的分析发现:(1)接受纯听和视听训练的五年级学生在纯视测查条件下知觉英语辅音/s/和/θ/的提高率有显著差异,视听训练被试显著高于纯听训练被试,在其他条件下没有显著差异;(2)接受两种训练的大学生在所有条件下知觉英语辅音/s/和/θ/的提高率都没有显著差异。说明儿童表现出了更强的视听双通道语音知觉的可塑性。     

Perception and production of brief durations: beat-based versus interval-based timing

Two experiments examined whether timing of short intervals is beat- or interval-based. In Experiment 1, subjects heard a sequence of standard tones followed by 2 test tones; they compared the interval between test tones to the interval between the standards. If optimal precision required beat-based timing, performance should be best in blocks in which the interval between standard and test reliably matched the standard interval. No such effect was observed. In Experiment 2, subjects heard 2 test tones and reproduced the intertone interval by producing 2 keypress responses. Entrainment to the beat was apparent: First-response latency clustered around the standard interval and was positively correlated with the produced interval. However, responses occurring on or near the beat showed no better temporal fidelity than off-beat responses. One plausible interpretation of these findings is that the brain always times brief intervals with an interval timer; however, this timer can be used in a cyclic fashion to trigger rhythmic responses.     

Perception of movement in American Sign Language: Effects of linguistic structure and linguistic experience

In order to reveal the psychological representation of movement from American Sign Language (ASL), deaf native signers and hearing subjects unfamiliar with sign were asked to make triadic comparisons of movements that had been isolated from lexical and from grammatically inflected signs. An analysis of the similarity judgments revealed a small set of physically specifiable dimensions that accounted for most of the variance. The dimensions underlying the perception of lexical movement were in general different from those underlying inflectional movement, for both groups of subjects. Most strikingly, deaf and hearing subjects significantly differed in their patterns of dimensional salience for movements, both at the lexical and at the inflectional levels. Linguistically relevant dimensions were of increased salience to native signers. The difference in perception of linguistic movement by native signers and by naive observers demonstrates that modification of natural perceptual categories after language acquisition is not bound to a particular transmission modality, but rather can be a more general consequence of acquiring a formal linguistic system.     

Characterizing sentence intonation in a right hemisphere-damaged population

Current production studies present a mixed view of right hemisphere-damaged (RHD) patients' ability to produce normal sentence intonation. The present study characterized the sentence intonation of RHD patients, focusing on a greater number of acoustic parameters than past works, and relying on more naturally elicited speech samples through use of a story completion task. Eight RHD speakers and seven nonneurological control subjects produced declarative and imperative sentences as well as yes-no and wh-questions. Slope of F0 change, linearity of pitch contour, and variance of F0 points were calculated for each utterance as a whole, as well as for the preterminal and the terminal contour separately. RHD contours were less linear and flatter in F0 decline than normal controls for the declarative sentences. The patients' yes-no questions also differed from normal productions, displaying smaller F0 dispersion around a mean F0. Preterminal range values were more restricted for patients' utterances of yes-no questions, while terminal properties between groups differed for three of the four sentence types examined. The present results suggest some disturbance in the patients' ability to manipulate fundamental frequency across sentential domains. These data are discussed in terms of current theories of a general dysprosody in RHD patients.     

Perception of Native English Reduced Forms in Adverse Environments by Chinese Undergraduate Students

Previous research has shown that learners of English-as-a-second-language (ESL) have difficulties in understanding connected speech spoken by native English speakers. Extending from past research limited to quiet listening condition, this study examined the perception of English connected speech presented under five adverse conditions, namely multi-talker babble noise, speech-shaped noise, factory noise, whispering and sad emotional tones. We tested a total of 64 Chinese ESL undergraduate students, using a battery of listening tasks. Results confirmed that the recognition of English native speech was more challenging for Chinese ESL learners under unfavorable listening conditions, in comparison to a noise-free listening condition. These findings carry significant implications for the importance of training and assessments on connected speech perception across various listening environments.     

Discrimination and production of English vowels by bilingual speakers of Spanish and English

The goal of this study was to examine whether listeners bilingual in Spanish and English would have difficulty in the discrimination of English vowel contrasts. An additional goal was to estimate the correlation between their discrimination and production of these vowels. Participants (40 bilingual Spanish- and English-speaking and 40 native monolingual English-speaking college students, 23-36 years of age) participated (M age = 25.3 yr., Mdn = 25.0). The discrimination and production of English vowels in real and novel words by adult participants bilingual in Spanish and English were examined and their discrimination was compared with that of 40 native monolingual English-speaking participants. Stimuli were presented within triads in an ABX paradigm. Novel words were chosen to represent new words when learning a new language and to provide a more valid test of discrimination. Bilingual participants' productions of vowels were judged by two independent listeners to estimate the correlation between discrimination and production. Discrimination accuracy was significantly greater for native English-speaking participants than for bilingual participants for vowel contrasts and novel words. Significant errors also appeared in the bilingual participants' productions of certain vowels. Earlier age of acquisition, absence of communication problems, and greater percentage of time devoted to communication contributed to greater accuracy in discrimination and production.     

Hemispheric processing of affective and linguistic intonation contours in normal subjects

In a previous study of the comprehension of linguistic prosody in brain-damaged subjects, S. R. Grant and W. O. Dingwall (1984. The role of the right hemisphere in processing linguistic prosody, presentation at the Academy of Aphasia, 1984) demonstrated that the right hemisphere (RH) of nonaphasic patients plays a prominent role in the processing of stress and intonation. The present study examines laterality for affective and linguistic prosody using the dichotic listening paradigm. Both types of prosody elicited a significant left ear advantage. This advantage was more pronounced for affective than for linguistic prosody. These findings strongly support previously documented evidence of RH involvement in the processing of affective prosody (R. G. Ley & M. P. Bryden, 1982. A dissociation of right and left hemispheric effects for recognizing emotional tone and verbal content, Brain and Cognition, 1, 3-9). They also provide support for the previously mentioned demonstration of RH involvement in the processing of linguistic intonation (S. Blumstein & W. E. Cooper, 1974. Hemispheric processing of intonation contours, Cortex, 10, 146-158; Grant & Dingwall, 1984).     

The role of intonation for interrogative suggestibility

The detrimental consequences of suggestive witness manipulation have been frequently discussed in the literature. Notably, these discussions have been limited to the consequences of suggestive question types and interrogator conduct. This study is the first to investigate the influence of interrogator's intonation on interrogative suggestibility. Specifically, utilizing a modified German version of the forensic Gudjonsson suggestibility scale as dependent variable, we experimentally manipulated phrase‐final contours (low vs. high) and accentuation of details (neutral vs. emphatic) in the questions of the interrogator in a student sample (N = 88). Phrase‐final falling intonation contours increased suggestibility both through suggestive questions and through negative feedback. In contrast, accentuation of selected details increased only the latter. The combination of both tonal patterns only partially influenced suggestive response behavior after the exposure to interrogative pressure. However, particularly the combination of phrase‐final rising and neutral intonation consistently led to lowest interrogative suggestibility. Results are discussed in terms of their theoretical and applied implications for forensic contexts.     

The Effects of Early English Learning on Auditory Perception of English Minimal Pairs by Taiwan University Students

Auditory perception of English minimal pairs was tested with or without noise background. Each subject was interviewed after the test to collect information regarding their early experience on learning English as a foreign language. This study was designed to examine the differential effects of learning English at three age-starting points and two learning durations. This study hopes to determine how childhood experience of English learning (which is not mandatory in public elementary schools) has affected the auditory competence of university students in distinguishing English minimal pairs. Results showed that age effects were salient only under condition of noise background. Without the interference of background noise, most subjects performed well enough to obliterate any potential differences.     

Perception mirrors production in 14- and 18-month-olds: the case of coda consonants

In a word learning experiment, 14- and 18-month-old infants are tested on their perceptual sensitivity to coda-consonant omissions. The results indicate that 14-month-olds are not sensitive to coda consonant omissions, showing a parallel with the omission of target coda consonants in early child language productions. At 18 months, infants are sensitive to coda-omission. The study strengthens the hypothesis that phonological wellformedness constraints influence infants' speech processing in general, and might restrict what is stored in their initial lexical representations. A lexical representation lacking information on the target coda consonant is, in turn, a likely source for coda-omissions in production.     

Separating the redundancy of voicing from nasality in American English

This paper reports the results of a study designed to separate the voicing redundancy from nasality in American English and to determine their individual saliencies. Sixty-seven subjects judged the similarity of nonnasal pairs versus nasal pairs of CV and VC nonsense syllables on a 5-point magnitude-estimation task. The 80 stimuli were constructed to control and to demand subjects' cognitive strategies for coping with redundancy rather than experimental manipulation of the data. They were developed from the consonantal repertoire of / b d g m n p t k / paired with the vowels / i a u /, totaling 72 pairs of dyads. Eight additional stimuli of similar structure, testing multifeature and identity contrasts, were included to monitor the validity of the experimental procedure. Results indicated that (a) speech redundancy can be circumvented cognitively, (b) nasality was more salient (different) than voicing, and (c) a recency effect was found. These findings are discussed in reference to existing data.     

A Latent Semantic Analysis of Gender Stereotype-Consistency and Narrowness in American English

Using latent semantic analysis, we examined gender stereotypes in American English by submitting over 100 masculine, neutral, and feminine role-words and trait-words to pair-wise semantic similarity comparisons with masculine (man, he, him) and feminine (woman, she, her) referents separately. We expected to find: (a) Stereotyping—roles and traits would be more semantically similar to the ostensible ‘matching’ than ‘mismatching’ gender category referent; (b) Categorical narrowness—both categories would be less semantically similar to counterstereotypical than to neutral or stereotypical characteristics; but this would be especially so for the male category, indicating its relatively greater narrowness. Results supported these hypotheses, but only among role-words. American English reflects and reinforces gender stereotypes regarding gender roles at a level beyond that recognized previously.     

Listeners' cognitive and affective reactions to English speakers with standard American English and Asian Accents

Using a 2 (speaker accent: standard American, Asian) x 2 (speakers' sex: male, female) between-subjects design, the present study examined the effects of accent and sex on listeners' cognitive and affective reactions towards speakers with standard American English accents and Asian accents. 70 female and 27 male college students (M = 21.8 yr., SD = 4.7) listened to the audio recording of a monologue by one of the speakers in the early 20s who differed in accent and sex. Standard American English was operationalized as nonaccented English, typical of the western part of the USA, and Vietnamese-accented English was used as an exemplar of Asian-accented English. Results showed that relative to standard American-accented English speakers, Asian-accented English speakers were perceived as poorer communicators who were less potent, less threatening, and more concerned about others. These cognitive reactions to Asian-accented English speakers include (a) the general stereotype associated with an accent, status and solidarity, as well as (b) the stereotype unique to Asians as an ethnic group, being concerned for others and poorer communicators. Analysis also showed that speakers with an Asian accent evoked more negative affect and required more attention from listeners than did speakers with a standard American English accent. Implications of the study are discussed.