Language research over the past 40 years converges on the speech-is-special hypothesis (SiS), according to which speech perception and production are uniquely human adaptations. SiS is grounded in a variety of biological, developmental, and behavioral evidence. In some comparative studies, speechlike stimuli have seemed to cause nonhuman animals to exhibit humanlike performance functions. Auditorists—who believe that spoken language processing is executed by, and is explicable in terms of, general auditory mechanisms—have seized upon such studies as evidence that SiS is incorrect. However, it is difficult to identify biological and functional similarities across different species on the basis of behavior alone, and the elaborate training regimen that nonhuman animals require to achieve human performance levels undermines the significance of certain comparative studies. Both comparative and human behavioral research, including brain-imaging studies of functional localization, electrophysiological recordings of the neural basis of the perception-production link, and developmental studies of a time-locked schedule of language learning, favor SiS over auditorism. 相似文献
We used H215O PET to characterize the common features of two successful but markedly different fluency-evoking conditions — paced speech and singing — in order to identify brain mechanisms that enable fluent speech in people who stutter. To do so, we compared responses under fluency-evoking conditions with responses elicited by tasks that typically elicit dysfluent speech (quantifying the degree of stuttering and using this measure as a confounding covariate in our analyses). We evaluated task-related activations in both stuttering subjects and age- and gender-matched controls.
Areas that were either uniquely activated during fluency-evoking conditions, or in which the magnitude of activation was significantly greater during fluency-evoking than dysfluency-evoking tasks included auditory association areas that process speech and voice and motor regions related to control of the larynx and oral articulators. This suggests that a common fluency-evoking mechanism might relate to more effective coupling of auditory and motor systems — that is, more efficient self-monitoring, allowing motor areas to more effectively modify speech.
These effects were seen in both PWS and controls, suggesting that they are due to the sensorimotor or cognitive demands of the fluency-evoking tasks themselves. While responses seen in both groups were bilateral, however, the fluency-evoking tasks elicited more robust activation of auditory and motor regions within the left hemisphere of stuttering subjects, suggesting a role for the left hemisphere in compensatory processes that enable fluency.
Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) compare brain activation patterns under fluency- and dysfluency-evoking conditions in stuttering and control subjects; (2) appraise the common features, both central and peripheral, of fluency-evoking conditions; and (3) discuss ways in which neuroimaging methods can be used to understand the pathophysiology of stuttering. 相似文献
Many individuals with aphasia report the ability to say words in their heads despite spoken naming difficulty. Here, we examined individual differences in the experience of inner speech (IS) in participants with aphasia to test the hypotheses that self-reported IS reflects intact phonological retrieval and that articulatory output processing is not essential to IS. Participants (N = 53) reported their ability to name items correctly internally during a silent picture-naming task. We compared this measure of self-reported IS to spoken picture naming and a battery of tasks measuring the underlying processes required for naming (i.e., phonological retrieval and output processing). Results from three separate analyses of these measures indicate that self-reported IS relates to phonological retrieval and that speech output processes are not a necessary component of IS. We suggest that self-reported IS may be a clinically valuable measure that could assist in clinical decision-making regarding anomia diagnosis and treatment. 相似文献
In this paper, we aimed to test whether we could predict sport type (badminton or running) and marathon proficiency from the valence, form, and content of the athletes’ self-reported inner speech. Additionally, we wanted to assess the difference between self-talk during high intensity and low intensity exercise. The present study corroborated existing research – we were able to predict both sport type in Study 1 and intensity level as well as marathon proficiency in Study 2 from questionnaire data using machine learning models. In Study 1, we found that badminton players engage more in worry and anxiety-control while runners are more prone to task disengagement. Interestingly, it seemed in Study 2 that the more participants engaged in condensed, positive, and repetitive self-talk when not pushing themselves, the slower their fastest marathons and half marathons were. We discuss potential explanations for these findings and make suggestions for future research. 相似文献
Familial risk for developmental dyslexia can compromise auditory and speech processing and subsequent language and literacy development. According to the phonological deficit theory, supporting phonological development during the sensitive infancy period could prevent or ameliorate future dyslexic symptoms. Music is an established method for supporting auditory and speech processing and even language and literacy, but no previous studies have investigated its benefits for infants at risk for developmental language and reading disorders. We pseudo-randomized N∼150 infants at risk for dyslexia to vocal or instrumental music listening interventions at 0–6 months, or to a no-intervention control group. Music listening was used as an easy-to-administer, cost-effective intervention in early infancy. Mismatch responses (MMRs) elicited by speech-sound changes were recorded with electroencephalogram (EEG) before (at birth) and after (at 6 months) the intervention and at a 28 months follow-up. We expected particularly the vocal intervention to promote phonological development, evidenced by enhanced speech-sound MMRs and their fast maturation. We found enhanced positive MMR amplitudes in the vocal music listening intervention group after but not prior to the intervention. Other music activities reported by parents did not differ between the three groups, indicating that the group effects were attributable to the intervention. The results speak for the use of vocal music in early infancy to support speech processing and subsequent language development in infants at developmental risk.
Research Highlights
Dyslexia-risk infants were pseudo-randomly assigned to a vocal or instrumental music listening intervention at home from birth to 6 months of age.
Neural mismatch responses (MMRs) to speech-sound changes were enhanced in the vocal music intervention group after but not prior to the intervention.
Even passive vocal music listening in early infancy can support phonological development known to be deficient in dyslexia-risk.
Two experiments are described, which investigated 7
- to 13-month-old infants' abilities to categorise syllables according to their ending sounds, or rhymes. Using the Conditioned Headturn (CHT) Procedure, infants were conditioned to turn their head when one set of rhyming CVCs changed to another set of rhyming CVCs. Even the 7
-month-old infants demonstrated an ability to categorise according to rimes. The infants could be separated into three different groups: those who conditioned but did not succeed in a rhyming task; those who succeeded at one rhyming task but not a second; and those infants who succeeded on two rhyming tasks. The infants in the second group were showing an early sensitivity to rhyme. However, they appeared to be learning a very specific rule, listening only for one category of rhyme. The third group of infants was able to extend the initial rule they learned to include new rhymes. This group learned not only to highlight one particular rhyme, but were also able to abstract the previously learned rule to new rhymes, thereby demonstrating a higher level of sophistication in their categorisation of rhymes. These results are discussed in relation to the ontogeny of language learning, and work demonstrating a relationship between rhyming ability and competence in reading and writing. 相似文献
The development in the interface of smart devices has lead to voice interactive systems. An additional step in this direction is to enable the devices to recognize the speaker. But this is a challenging task because the interaction involves short duration speech utterances. The traditional Gaussian mixture models (GMM) based systems have achieved satisfactory results for speaker recognition only when the speech lengths are sufficiently long. The current state-of-the-art method utilizes i-vector based approach using a GMM based universal background model (GMM-UBM). It prepares an i-vector speaker model from a speaker’s enrollment data and uses it to recognize any new test speech. In this work, we propose a multi-model i-vector system for short speech lengths. We use an open database THUYG-20 for the analysis and development of short speech speaker verification and identification system. By using an optimum set of mel-frequency cepstrum coefficients (MFCC) based features we are able to achieve an equal error rate (EER) of 3.21% as compared to the previous benchmark score of EER 4.01% on the THUYG-20 database. Experiments are conducted for speech lengths as short as 0.25 s and the results are presented. The proposed method shows improvement as compared to the current i-vector based approach for shorter speech lengths. We are able to achieve improvement of around 28% even for 0.25 s speech samples. We also prepared and tested the proposed approach on our own database with 2500 speech recordings in English language consisting of actual short speech commands used in any voice interactive system. 相似文献