语音超文本系统中锚点标记方式的比较研究

近年来。语音超文本系统中超链接锚点的标记方式成为该研究领域的一个热点问题。笔者在设计参数优化基础上对语音超文本系统中常见的两种超链接锚点标记方式——言语相关标记与非言语相关标记进行比较研究,旨在为语音超文本界面中超链接锚点标记的设计提供适宜的参数。实验在模拟的语音超文本系统中进行,以链接词检测率、句子理解正确率和主观评价作为评价绩效的指标,结果发现,(1)男女声变调的言语相关标记方式下对链接词的检测率和主观评价均优于全词标记和尾字标记两种非言语相关标记方式,但上述三种标记方式对句子理解均无显著影响;(2)采用非言语相关标记时,链接词在句中的位置显著影响其检测率。根据上述结果,笔者推荐男女声变调标记可作为语音超文本链接词标记的首选方式。     

Shyness,Self-regulation,and Cognitive Problem Solving in Typically Developing 4-year-olds: A Pilot Study

Because shy children are at risk for poor academic achievement, it is important to examine factors that contribute to variability in the relation between individual differences in shyness and cognitive functioning before school entry. The authors examined whether on-task facilitative private speech—a proxy of self-regulation—moderated the association between individual differences in shyness and performance on an executive function (EF) task in 52 typically developing 4-year-olds. They found that private speech interacted with shyness to predict performance on the EF task in girls but not in boys. More specifically, shyness was inversely related to EF task performance when girls used low amounts of regulatory private speech, but was positively related to performance when girls used high amounts of regulatory private speech. These preliminary findings are discussed in the context of implications for shy children in educational settings.     

“Freedom of speech requires actions”: Exploring the discourse of politicians convicted of hate-speech against Muslims

This study explores how politicians convicted of hate-speech against Muslims account for their actions in statements on their Facebook-pages as well as in reported interviews. Taking a critical discursive psychological perspective, the study examines the strategies through which the politicians discursively claim and resist various subject positions, thus managing to construct their hate-speech as everything from trivial mishaps to acts of virtue. The study examines the multifaceted dynamics of these constructions, and shows how elements from the Five Step Social Identity Model of the Development of Collective Hate are flexibly deployed in the discourse to serve distinct social and political purposes. By allowing the Social Identity and (critical) discursive approaches to challenge and develop each other, the study advances social psychological research on political communication and persuasion, and contributes to the debate on the boundaries between hate-speech and freedom of speech.     

Newborns are sensitive to multiple cues for word segmentation in continuous speech

Before infants can learn words, they must identify those words in continuous speech. Yet, the speech signal lacks obvious boundary markers, which poses a potential problem for language acquisition (Swingley, Philos Trans R Soc Lond. Series B, Biol Sci 364 (1536), 3617–3632, 2009). By the middle of the first year, infants seem to have solved this problem (Bergelson & Swingley, Proc Natl Acad Sci 109 (9), 3253–3258, 2012; Jusczyk & Aslin, Cogn Psychol 29 , 1–23, 1995), but it is unknown if segmentation abilities are present from birth, or if they only emerge after sufficient language exposure and/or brain maturation. Here, in two independent experiments, we looked at two cues known to be crucial for the segmentation of human speech: the computation of statistical co‐occurrences between syllables and the use of the language's prosody. After a brief familiarization of about 3 min with continuous speech, using functional near‐infrared spectroscopy, neonates showed differential brain responses on a recognition test to words that violated either the statistical (Experiment 1) or prosodic (Experiment 2) boundaries of the familiarization, compared to words that conformed to those boundaries. Importantly, word recognition in Experiment 2 occurred even in the absence of prosodic information at test, meaning that newborns encoded the phonological content independently of its prosody. These data indicate that humans are born with operational language processing and memory capacities and can use at least two types of cues to segment otherwise continuous speech, a key first step in language acquisition.     

言语与手部运动关系的研究回顾

言语与手部运动之间存在复杂的联系。该文总结了两类手部运动（伴随言语发生的手势运动和抓握运动）与言语之间关系的行为和脑科学研究成果。发现：（1）伴随言语产生的意义手势可促进言语加工,特别是词汇的提取过程;（2）观察手的抓握运动影响言语产生时唇的运动和声音成分;（3）对词语的知觉影响抓握运动的早期计划阶段;（4）言语产生可增加手运动皮层的兴奋性。作者由此认为,言语加工与手势间的联系不仅表现为神经通路的重叠和相互激活,而且可能在外显行为上也相互影响     

The semantics of prosody: acoustic and perceptual evidence of prosodic correlates to word meaning

This investigation examined whether speakers produce reliable prosodic correlates to meaning across semantic domains and whether listeners use these cues to derive word meaning from novel words. Speakers were asked to produce phrases in infant-directed speech in which novel words were used to convey one of two meanings from a set of antonym pairs (e.g., big/small). Acoustic analyses revealed that some acoustic features were correlated with overall valence of the meaning. However, each word meaning also displayed a unique acoustic signature, and semantically related meanings elicited similar acoustic profiles. In two perceptual tests, listeners either attempted to identify the novel words with a matching meaning dimension (picture pair) or with mismatched meaning dimensions. Listeners inferred the meaning of the novel words significantly more often when prosody matched the word meaning choices than when prosody mismatched. These findings suggest that speech contains reliable prosodic markers to word meaning and that listeners use these prosodic cues to differentiate meanings. That prosody is semantic suggests a reconceptualization of traditional distinctions between linguistic and nonlinguistic properties of spoken language.     

Why Choo‐Choo Is Better Than Train: The Role of Register‐Specific Words in Early Vocabulary Growth

Across languages, lexical items specific to infant‐directed speech (i.e., ‘baby‐talk words’) are characterized by a preponderance of onomatopoeia (or highly iconic words), diminutives, and reduplication. These lexical characteristics may help infants discover the referential nature of words, identify word referents, and segment fluent speech into words. If so, the amount of lexical input containing these properties should predict infants’ rate of vocabulary growth. To test this prediction, we tracked the vocabulary size in 47 English‐learning infants from 9 to 21 months and examined whether the patterns of growth can be related to measures of iconicity, diminutives, and reduplication in the lexical input at 9 months. Our analyses showed that both diminutives and reduplication in the input were associated with vocabulary growth, although measures of iconicity were not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological properties typical of lexical input in infant‐directed speech play a role in early vocabulary growth.     

脑干诱发电位在言语感知研究中的应用

脑干诱发电位是一种考察听觉脑干加工声音信号时神经活动的非侵入性技术, 近年来被广泛用于探索言语感知的神经基础。相关研究主要集中在考察成年人和正常发展儿童语音编码时脑干的活动特征及发展模式, 探讨发展性阅读障碍及其他语言损伤的语音编码缺陷及其神经表现等方面。在已有研究的基础上进一步探索初级语音编码和高级言语加工之间的相互作用机制, 考察阅读障碍的底层神经基础将成为未来该技术在言语感知研究中应用的重点。