The multidimensional nature of hyperspeech: Evidence from Japanese vowel devoicing

We investigate the hypothesis that infant-directed speech is a form of hyperspeech, optimized for intelligibility, by focusing on vowel devoicing in Japanese. Using a corpus of infant-directed and adult-directed Japanese, we show that speakers implement high vowel devoicing less often when speaking to infants than when speaking to adults, consistent with the hyperspeech hypothesis. The same speakers, however, increase vowel devoicing in careful, read speech, a speech style which might be expected to pattern similarly to infant-directed speech. We argue that both infant-directed and read speech can be considered listener-oriented speech styles—each is optimized for the specific needs of its intended listener. We further show that in non-high vowels, this trend is reversed: speakers devoice more often in infant-directed speech and less often in read speech, suggesting that devoicing in the two types of vowels is driven by separate mechanisms in Japanese.     

Preference for infant-directed speech in preterm infants

The current study explores the effects of exposure to maternal voice on infant sucking in preterm infants. Twenty-four preterm infants averaging 35 weeks gestational age were divided randomly into two groups. A contingency between high-amplitude sucking and presentation of maternal voice was instituted for one group while the other group served as a yoked control. No significant differences were observed in sucking of the two groups, but the degree of pitch modulation of the maternal voice predicted an increase in the rate of infant sucking.     

Associations among mothers’ representations of their relationship with their toddlers,maternal parenting stress,and toddlers’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors

This study examined the array of associations among the emotional valence and the coherence of mothers’ representations of their relationship with their toddlers, mothers’ reported parenting stress, and toddlers’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors. To evaluate maternal representations, 55 mothers were interviewed using the Five Minute Speech Sample procedure (FMSS; Magaña et al., 1986), which was coded for criticism and positive comments (Magaňa-Amato, 1993), as well as coherence (Sher-Censor & Yates, 2015). Mothers also completed the Parenting Stress Index − Short Form (PSI; Abidin, 1997) to evaluate their parenting stress and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL/1.5–5; Achenbach & Rescorla, 2000) to assess their toddlers’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Results indicated that parenting stress was associated with maternal criticism and fewer positive comments in the FMSS, but not with the coherence of mothers’ FMSS. Parenting stress, criticism, and lower coherence in the FMSS were associated with maternal reports of externalizing behaviors. Only parenting stress and lower coherence in the FMSS were related to mothers’ reports of internalizing behaviors of the child. Thus, the emotional valence and the coherence of mothers’ representations of their relationship with their child and parenting stress may each constitute a distinct aspect of parenting and contribute to the understanding of individual differences in toddlers’ internalizing and externalizing behaviors. Implications for research and practice with families of toddlers are discussed.     

Fifty years of American polarization and the changing roles of faith communities

The 2016 election of Donald Trump as president and the first year of his administration have been accompanied by intensified social and political divides in the United States. A comparison of today's polarization with that during the Vietnam War and civil rights movement of the 1960s suggests strategies for bridging the divides—and in particular for an expanding role by faith communities.     

Self‐reported inner speech use in university students

Remarkably little is known regarding what people talk to themselves about (inner speech use) in their everyday lives. Existing self‐directed speech measures (e.g., thought sampling and questionnaires) either uniquely capture inner speech frequency and neglect its content or classify self‐reported thoughts instances in overly simplistic categories determined by the researchers. In the current study, we describe an open‐format thought listing procedure as well as a refined coding scheme and present detailed inner speech content self‐generated by 76 university students. The most frequently self‐reported inner speech activities were self‐regulation (e.g., planning and problem solving), self‐reflection (e.g., emotions, self‐motivation, appearance, behavior/performance, and autobiography), critical thinking (e.g., evaluating, judging, and criticizing), people in general, education, and current events. Inner speech occurred most commonly while studying and driving. These results are consistent with the self‐regulatory and self‐referential functions of inner speech often emphasized in the literature. Future research avenues using the open‐format inner speech listing procedure and coding scheme are proposed.     

Exposure to hate speech increases prejudice through desensitization

In three studies (two representative nationwide surveys, N = 1,007, N = 682; and one experimental, N = 76) we explored the effects of exposure to hate speech on outgroup prejudice. Following the General Aggression Model, we suggest that frequent and repetitive exposure to hate speech leads to desensitization to this form of verbal violence and subsequently to lower evaluations of the victims and greater distancing, thus increasing outgroup prejudice. In the first survey study, we found that lower sensitivity to hate speech was a positive mediator of the relationship between frequent exposure to hate speech and outgroup prejudice. In the second study, we obtained a crucial confirmation of these effects. After desensitization training individuals were less sensitive to hate speech and more prejudiced toward hate speech victims than their counterparts in the control condition. In the final study, we replicated several previous effects and additionally found that the effects of exposure to hate speech on prejudice were mediated by a lower sensitivity to hate speech, and not by lower sensitivity to social norms. Altogether, our studies are the first to elucidate the effects of exposure to hate speech on outgroup prejudice.

     

The Swedish Hayling task,and its relation to working memory,verbal ability,and speech‐recognition‐in‐noise

Cognitive functions and speech‐recognition‐in‐noise were evaluated with a cognitive test battery, assessing response inhibition using the Hayling task, working memory capacity (WMC) and verbal information processing, and an auditory test of speech recognition. The cognitive tests were performed in silence whereas the speech recognition task was presented in noise. Thirty young normally‐hearing individuals participated in the study. The aim of the study was to investigate one executive function, response inhibition, and whether it is related to individual working memory capacity (WMC), and how speech‐recognition‐in‐noise relates to WMC and inhibitory control. The results showed a significant difference between initiation and response inhibition, suggesting that the Hayling task taps cognitive activity responsible for executive control. Our findings also suggest that high verbal ability was associated with better performance in the Hayling task. We also present findings suggesting that individuals who perform well on tasks involving response inhibition, and WMC, also perform well on a speech‐in‐noise task. Our findings indicate that capacity to resist semantic interference can be used to predict performance on speech‐in‐noise tasks.     

Content words in Hebrew child-directed speech

The goal of the study was to examine whether the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon, which exists in the lexicon of Hebrew-speaking children, also exists in Hebrew child-directed speech (CDS) as well as in Hebrew adult-directed speech (ADS). In addition, we aimed to describe the use of the different classes of content words in the speech of Hebrew-speaking parents to their children at different ages compared to the speech of parents to adults (ADS). Thirty infants (age range 8:5–33 months) were divided into three stages according to age: pre-lexical, single-word, and early grammar. The ADS corpus included 18 Hebrew-speaking parents of children at the same three stages of language development as in the CDS corpus. The CDS corpus was collected from parent–child dyads during naturalistic activities at home: mealtime, bathing, and play. The ADS corpus was collected from parent–experimenter interactions including the parent watching a video and then being interviewed by the experimenter. 200 utterances of each sample were transcribed, coded for types and tokens and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results show that in CDS, when speaking to infants of all ages, parents’ use of types and tokens of verbs and nouns was similar and significantly higher than their use of adjectives or adverbs. In ADS, however, verbs were the main lexical category used by Hebrew-speaking parents in both types and tokens. It seems that both the properties of the input language (e.g. the pro-drop parameter) and the interactional styles of the caregivers are important factors that may influence the high presence of verbs in Hebrew-speaking parents’ ADS and CDS. The negative correlation between the widespread use of verbs in the speech of parents to their infants and the ‘noun-bias’ phenomenon in the Hebrew-child lexicon will be discussed in detail.     

An Indecent Proposal: The Dual Functions of Indirect Speech

People often use indirect speech, for example, when trying to bribe a police officer by asking whether there might be “a way to take care of things without all the paperwork.” Recent game theoretic accounts suggest that a speaker uses indirect speech to reduce public accountability for socially risky behaviors. The present studies examine a secondary function of indirect speech use: increasing the perceived moral permissibility of an action. Participants report that indirect speech is associated with reduced accountability for unethical behavior, as well as increased moral permissibility and increased likelihood of unethical behavior. Importantly, moral permissibility was a stronger mediator of the effect of indirect speech on likelihood of action, for judgments of one's own versus others' unethical action. In sum, the motorist who bribes the police officer with winks and nudges may not only avoid public punishment but also maintain the sense that his actions are morally permissible.     

The social nature of benevolent sexism and the antisocial nature of hostile sexism: Is benevolent sexism more likely to manifest in public contexts and hostile sexism in private contexts?

Previous research converges on demonstrating that benevolent sexism (BS) is socially approved, whereas hostile sexism (HS) is socially disapproved. We postulated that a sample of married women would be likely to report that their husbands express hostile sexist attitudes and engage in related actions towards them more in private than public contexts, where they lie concealed from public censure. By contrast, the women would report that their husbands would be likely to express benevolent sexist attitudes and engage in related actions more in public than private contexts, where they are reinforced not only by their target (i.e. wife), but also by significant others and the society at large. We tested these hypotheses with a sample of Black, heterosexually married Zimbabwean women (n = 109, mean age = 31.83). Results supported our hypotheses: the women reported hostile sexist attitudes and actions to be more likely to occur in private than public contexts; on the other hand, they reported benevolent sexist attitudes and actions to be more likely in public than private contexts. We conclude that differences in social approval of BS and HS account for these results.