Mommy, speak clearly: induced hearing loss shapes vowel hyperarticulation

Talkers hyperarticulate vowels when communicating with listeners that require increased speech intelligibility. Vowel hyperarticulation is said to be motivated by knowledge of the listener's linguistic needs because it typically occurs in speech to infants, foreigners and hearing-impaired listeners, but not to non-verbal pets. However, the degree to which vowel hyperarticulation is determined by feedback from the listener is surprisingly less well understood. This study examines whether mothers' speech input is driven by knowledge of the infant's linguistic competence, or by the infant's feedback cues. Specifically, we manipulated (i) mothers' knowledge of whether they believed their infants could hear them or not, and (ii) the audibility of the speech signal available to the infant (full or partial audibility, or inaudible). Remarkably, vowel hyperarticulation was completely unaffected by mothers' knowledge; instead, there was a reduction in the degree of hyperarticulation such that vowels were hyperarticulated to the greatest extent in the full audibility condition, there was reduced hyperarticulation in the partially audible condition, and no hyperarticulation in the inaudible condition. Thus, while it might be considered adaptive to hyperarticulate speech to the hearing-impaired adult or infant, when these two factors (infant and hearing difficulty) are coupled, vowel hyperarticulation is sacrificed. Our results imply that infant feedback drives talker behavior and raise implications for intervention strategies used with carers of hearing-impaired infants.     

Cognitive Load in Cross‐Modal Dual‐Task Processing

Unitary‐resource models posit a collective attentional resource responsible for sustaining information processing across all modalities. In contrast, multiple‐resource models presume a system of modality‐independent resources. The two models predict similar within‐modal performance, but seemingly contradictory cross‐modal performance. Discordant outcomes in past research are here hypothesized to result from inconsistent levels of cognitive load imposed within experimental tasks. Participants monitored two simultaneously presented alphabetic letter arrays consisting of the serial presentation of a target and multiple distractors. The dual‐task design required the identification of targets in within‐modal and cross‐modal trials. Cognitive load was manipulated by altering the presentation rate of the letters. While cross‐modal performance was generally superior and cognitive load was associated with decreasing performance, the cross‐modal advantage prominent at low levels of cognitive load was absent under high cognitive load. Therefore, neither resource model can alone account for dual‐task processing, suggesting the role of a hierarchical resource model. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Counterfactual closeness and predicted affect

Empirical research on counterfactual thinking has found a closeness effect: people report higher negative affect if an actual outcome is close to a better counterfactual outcome. However, it remains unclear what actually is a “close” miss. In three experiments that manipulate close counterfactuals, closeness effects were found only when closeness was unambiguously defined either with respect to a contrasted alternative, or with respect to a categorical boundary. In a real task people failed to report greater negative affect when encountering a close numerical miss, while they predicted greater negative affect hypothetically. These results show that counterfactual closeness effects on affect depend on closeness being accessible and unambiguously defined.     

Children with Comorbid Speech Sound Disorder and Specific Language Impairment are at Increased Risk for Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

This study focuses on the comorbidity between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms and speech sound disorder (SSD). SSD is a developmental disorder characterized by speech production errors that impact intelligibility. Previous research addressing this comorbidity has typically used heterogeneous groups of speech-language disordered children. This study employed more precise speech-language diagnostic criteria and examined ADHD symptomatology in 108 SSD children between the ages of 4 and 7 years old with specific language impairment (SLI) (n = 23, 14 males, 9 females) and without SLI (n = 85, 49 males, 36 females). We also examined whether a subcategory of SSD, persistent (n = 39, 25 males, 14 females) versus normalized SSD (n = 67, 38 males, 29 females), was associated with ADHD and/or interacted with SLI to predict ADHD symptomatology. Results indicated that participants in the SSD + SLI group had higher rates of inattentive ADHD symptoms than those in the SSD-only and control groups. In addition, an unexpected interaction emerged such that children with SLI and normalized-SSD had significantly higher ADHD inattentive ratings than the other subgroups. A proposed explanation for this interaction is discussed.     

A static color discontinuity can capture spatial attention when the target is an abrupt-onset singleton

C. L. Folk, R. W. Remington, and J. C. Johnston's (1992) contingent involuntary orienting hypothesis states that a salient visual feature will involuntarily capture attention only when the observer's attentional set includes similar features. In four experiments, when the target's relevant feature was its being an abruptly onset singleton, attentional capture occurred for a static discontinuity cue that was the boundary between a group of red Xs contiguously joined to a group of green Os within a single row. Such an attentional capture effect is novel and contrary to Folk et al.'s (1992) hypothesis, because the attentional set for the target should have included abrupt onset but not color discontinuity, which was the feature that captured attention. These capture effects were involuntary because they occurred even when the target never appeared in the same location as the cue, and color could not have been used as a cue to signal the appearance of the target array (cf. B. S. Gibson & E. M. Kelsey, 1998).     

Hindsight bias in economic expectations: I knew all along what I want to hear

Hindsight bias in economic expectations was investigated with particular focus on the moderating effects of attitudes. Stronger hindsight bias was expected for subjectively favorable economic developments. Six months before and after the introduction of the euro as the official book currency of the European Monetary Union, participants rated the probabilities of several economic developments. Results show that hindsight bias occurs with economic expectations and that it is moderated by attitudes. Euro supporters showed stronger hindsight bias for positive economic developments than for negative ones, whereas euro opponents showed the opposite pattern. The results support the notion that hindsight bias is a reconstruction bias in which self-serving tendencies can influence the reconstruction selectively for favorable and unfavorable outcomes.