Speech perception engages a general timer: Evidence from a divided attention word identification task

Time is essential to speech. The duration of speech segments plays a critical role in the perceptual identification of these segments, and therefore in that of spoken words. Here, using a French word identification task, we show that vowels are perceived as shorter when attention is divided between two tasks, as compared to a single task control condition. This temporal underestimation pattern is consistent with attentional models of timing and hence demonstrates that vowel duration is explicitly estimated using a central general-purpose timer.     

Statistical frequency in perception affects children’s lexical production

Children’s early word production is influenced by the statistical frequency of speech sounds and combinations. Three experiments asked whether this production effect can be explained by a perceptual learning mechanism that is sensitive to word-token frequency and/or variability. Four-year-olds were exposed to nonwords that were either frequent (presented 10 times) or infrequent (presented once). When the frequent nonwords were spoken by the same talker, children showed no significant effect of perceptual frequency on production. When the frequent nonwords were spoken by different talkers, children produced them with fewer errors and shorter latencies. The results implicate token variability in perceptual learning.     

英语多媒体学习中言语关联手势对认知负荷的影响

为了探讨英语多媒体学习中言语关联手势对认知负荷及学习成绩的影响,采用2×2被试间实验设计。结果发现：该手势对认知负荷影响的主效应不显著,但与英语语言技能水平之间存在交互作用,当学生语言技能水平低时,手势增加了认知负荷,反之,则降低认知负荷;该手势对句子转换的成绩没有明显影响,但在学生语言技能高时能提升理解能力的成绩。本研究结果提示,言语关联手势的运用有明显作用,它能提高或降低认知负荷,并对理解能力的成绩产生影响,但其大小和方向依赖于学生英语语言技能水平。     

Speech rhythm alterations in Spanish-speaking individuals with Alzheimer’s disease

Rhythm is the speech property related to the temporal organization of sounds. Considerable evidence is now available for suggesting that dementia of Alzheimer’s type is associated with impairments in speech rhythm. The aim of this study is to assess the use of an automatic computerized system for measuring speech rhythm characteristics in an oral reading task performed by 45 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) compared with those same characteristics among 82 healthy older adults without a diagnosis of dementia, and matched by age, sex and cultural background. Ranges of rhythmic-metric and clinical measurements were applied. The results show rhythmic differences between the groups, with higher variability of syllabic intervals in AD patients. Signal processing algorithms applied to oral reading recordings prove to be capable of differentiating between AD patients and older adults without dementia with an accuracy of 87% (specificity 81.7%, sensitivity 82.2%), based on the standard deviation of the duration of syllabic intervals. Experimental results show that the syllabic variability measurements extracted from the speech signal can be used to distinguish between older adults without a diagnosis of dementia and those with AD, and may be useful as a tool for the objective study and quantification of speech deficits in AD.     

Atmospheric memories: Affect and minor politics at the ten-year anniversary of the London bombings

This paper addresses how the ten-year anniversary of the London bombings was made present through political affects and atmospheres on 7 July 2015. Although the anniversary of a terrorist event forms an opportune moment for invoking the nation as united in feeling, we are interested in how people attune to political atmospheres of memory and trauma in multiple ways, which do not always cohere to sovereign narratives about unity and certainty. By focusing on these events through an attentiveness to the atmospheric and affective, we examine how these events were recalled, memorialised, felt and sensed in the small-scale ceremonies taking place across London on that morning, by way of a multi-authored sensory auto-ethnography. As such, we are led towards various moments of encounter, which involve ‘minor gestures’ (Manning, 2016), and imply ways of responding to acts of terror that rub against the unifying forces of the state. In contrast to the ‘rolling maelstroms of affect’ (Thrift 2004: 57) pursued by the state and media following a terrorist attack, this project is attentive to multiple, uncertain and ambivalent encounters. These matter because they suggest other ways of being political and of responding to both terrorist and state-led violence.     

言语产生中音韵编码的计划广度:来自图-词干扰范式的证据

采用图-词干扰范式,要求被试口语产生包含三个名词的句子,同时听觉呈现干扰刺激并操纵其与各个名词的语音相关性,通过与无关刺激相比,与各个名词语音相关的干扰刺激产生的语音效应,探讨句子产生中音韵编码的计划广度,同时检验音韵编码的层级激活假设。结果发现,只有第一个名词上出现了语音促进效应,第二和第三个名词上既无语音促进,也无语音干扰。该结果与层级激活假设相悖,表明句子产生中音韵编码的计划广度为第一个韵律词。     

The Pervasiveness of 1/f Scaling in Speech Reflects the Metastable Basis of Cognition

Human neural and behavioral activities have been reported to exhibit fractal dynamics known as 1/f noise , which is more aptly named 1/f scaling . Some argue that 1/f scaling is a general and pervasive property of the dynamical substrate from which cognitive functions are formed. Others argue that it is an idiosyncratic property of domain-specific processes. An experiment was conducted to investigate whether 1/f scaling pervades the intrinsic fluctuations of a spoken word. Ten participants each repeated the word bucket over 1,000 times, and fluctuations in acoustic measurements across repetitions generally followed the 1/f scaling relation, including numerous parallel yet distinct series of 1/f fluctuations. On the basis of work showing that 1/f scaling is a universal earmark of metastability, it is proposed that the observed pervasiveness of 1/f fluctuations in speech reflects the fact that cognitive functions are formed as metastable patterns of activity in brain, body, and environment.     

Which children benefit from letter names in learning letter sounds?

Typical U.S. children use their knowledge of letters' names to help learn the letters' sounds. They perform better on letter sound tests with letters that have their sounds at the beginnings of their names, such as v, than with letters that have their sounds at the ends of their names, such as m, and letters that do not have their sounds in their names, such as h. We found this same pattern among children with speech sound disorders, children with language impairments as well as speech sound disorders, and children who later developed serious reading problems. Even children who scored at chance on rhyming and sound matching tasks performed better on the letter sound task with letters such as v than with letters such as m and h. Our results suggest that a wide range of children use the names of letters to help learn the sounds and that phonological awareness, as conventionally measured, is not required in order to do so.     

Lexical effects on speech perception in individuals with "autistic" traits

It has been claimed that Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by a limited ability to process perceptual stimuli in reference to the contextual information of the percept. Such a connection between a nonholistic processing style and behavioral traits associated with ASD is thought to exist also within the neurotypical population albeit in a more subtle way. We examined this hypothesis with respect to auditory speech perception, by testing whether the extent to which phonetic categorization shifts to make the percept a known word (i.e., the 'Ganong effect') is weakened as a function of autistic traits in neurotypicals. Fifty-five university students were given the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and a segment identification test using two word-to-nonword Voice Onset Time (VOT) continua (kiss-giss and gift-kift). A significant negative correlation was found between the total AQ score and the identification shift that occurred between the continua. The AQ score did not correlate with scores on separately administered VOT discrimination, auditory lexical decision, or verbal IQ, thus ruling out enhanced auditory sensitivity, slower lexical access or verbal intelligence as explanations of the AQ-related shift in phonetic categorization.