Effects of cognitive impairment on prosodic parameters of speech production planning in multiple sclerosis

Cognitive impairment (CI) affects 40–65% of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). CI can have a negative impact on a patient's everyday activities, such as engaging in conversations. Speech production planning ability is crucial for successful verbal interactions and thus for preserving social and occupational skills. This study investigates the effect of cognitive-linguistic demand and CI on speech production planning in MS, as reflected in speech prosody. A secondary aim is to explore the clinical potential of prosodic features for the prediction of an individual's cognitive status in MS. A total of 45 subjects, that is 22 healthy controls (HC) and 23 patients in early stages of relapsing-remitting MS, underwent neuropsychological tests probing specific cognitive processes involved in speech production planning. All subjects also performed a read speech task, in which they had to read isolated sentences manipulated as for phonological length. Results show that the speech of MS patients with CI is mainly affected at the temporal level (articulation and speech rate, pause duration). Regression analyses further indicate that rate measures are correlated with working memory scores. In addition, linear discriminant analysis shows the ROC AUC of identifying MS patients with CI is 0.70 (95% confidence interval: 0.68–0.73). Our findings indicate that prosodic planning is deficient in patients with MS-CI and that the scope of planning depends on patients’ cognitive abilities. We discuss how speech-based approaches could be used as an ecological method for the assessment and monitoring of CI in MS.     

Prosodic boundaries, comma rules, and brain responses: the closure positive shift in ERPs as a universal marker for prosodic phrasing in listeners and readers

Just as the false comma in this sentence, shows punctuation can influence sentence processing considerably. Pauses and other prosodic cues in spoken language serve the same function of structuring the sentence in smaller phrases. However, surprisingly little effort has been spent on the question as to whether both phenomena rest on the same mechanism and whether they are equally efficient in guiding parsing decisions. In a recent study, we showed that auditory speech boundaries evoke a specific positive shift in the listeners' event-related brain potentials (ERPs) that indicates the sentence segmentation and resulting changes in the understanding of the utterance (Steinhauer et al., 1999a). Here, we present three ERP reading experiments demonstrating that the human brain processes commas in a similar manner and that comma perception depends crucially on the reader's individual punctuation habits. Main results of the study are: (1) Commas can determine initial parsing as efficiently as speech boundaries because they trigger the same prosodic phrasing covertly, although phonological representations seem to be activated to a lesser extent. (2) Independent of the input modality, this phrasing is reflected online by the same ERP component, namely the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). (3) Both behavioral and ERP data suggest that comma processing varies with the readers' idiosyncratic punctuation habits. (4) A combined auditory and visual ERP experiment shows that the CPS is also elicited both by delexicalized prosody and while subjects replicate prosodic boundaries during silent reading. (5) A comma-induced reversed garden path turned out to be much more difficult than the classical garden path. Implications for psycholinguistic models and future ERP research are discussed.     

转换概率和词长期待对语音统计学习的影响

语音统计学习指个体在加工人工语言过程中, 可以追踪音节间的转换概率实现切分语流、提取词(语)的过程。本研究采用2(转换概率：高转换概率、低转换概率) × 2(词长期待：两音节、三音节)的混合实验设计来考察转换概率和词长期待对语音统计学习的影响, 转换概率是被试间变量, 词长期待是被试内变量。事后检验发现, 仅在低转换概率人工语言的三音节迫选条件下, 被试没有表现出显著的学习效果。事先对比发现, 在学习低转换概率的人工语言后, 被试完成三音节迫选试次的成绩显著低于两音节迫选试次; 在三音节迫选试次中, 学习低转换概率人工语言被试的成绩也显著低于学习高转换概率被试的成绩。以上结果说明, 转换概率和词长期待共同影响个体语音统计学习的效果。     

社会性发展迟滞大学生的情绪韵律识别特点

情绪韵律识别指个体通过对他人话语中除语义以外的声学线索进行分析,推断他人情绪状态的过程。本研究通过2个实验对社会性发展迟滞大学生的情绪韵律识别特点进行探索。结果发现：（1）社会性发展迟滞组厌恶和恐惧韵律的识别正确率显著低于对照组,两组在其他情绪韵律识别正确率上无显著差异;且两组被试情绪韵律识别趋势一致：高兴、愤怒、悲伤、恐惧和厌恶韵律识别正确率依次递减;（2）当语义与韵律矛盾时,迟滞组比对照组更易受语义干扰。     

新生儿情绪性语音加工的正性偏向——来自事件相关电位的证据

准确解码语音中的情绪信息能让个体更好地适应社会环境, 此能力对新生儿和婴儿尤其重要, 因为人类刚出生时听觉系统远比视觉系统发育得完善。虽然已有研究表明5~7月龄的婴儿能分辨不同情绪种类的语音, 但目前对新生儿的研究还非常少。人类是否在出生时即具有分辨不同种类情绪性语音的能力?新生儿对情绪的加工是否存在正性或负性偏向?本文选用odd-ball范式考察高兴、恐惧、愤怒三种韵律性语音在1~6天龄新生儿大脑中诱发的事件相关电位。实验1直接对比三种情绪性条件, 发现新生儿大脑的额区(F3和F4电极点)可以区分情绪性语音的正负性, 正性(高兴)语音诱发的“失匹配反应”幅度明显大于负性(愤怒和恐惧)语音。实验2采用偏差和标准刺激反转的odd-ball范式, 证实了实验1的结果并非源于三种情绪语音物理属性的差异。本文的结果提示, 新生儿大脑可自动辨别正性与负性情绪语音, 但尚不能将愤怒和恐惧两种负性语音区分开来。更重要的是, 高兴语音比两种负性语音诱发了更大的失匹配反应, 这一结果首次从神经学层面(电生理指标)为新生儿情绪性语音加工的正性偏向提供了证据。     

Valence-specific laterality effects in vocal emotion: interactions with stimulus type, blocking and sex

Valence-specific laterality effects have been frequently obtained in facial emotion perception but not in vocal emotion perception. We report a dichotic listening study further examining whether valence-specific laterality effects generalise to vocal emotions. Based on previous literature, we tested whether valence-specific laterality effects were dependent on blocked presentation of the emotion conditions, on the naturalness of the emotional stimuli, or on listener sex. We presented happy and sad sentences, paired with neutral counterparts, dichotically in an emotion localisation task, with vocal stimuli being preceded by verbal labels indicating target emotions. The measure was accuracy. When stimuli of the same emotion were presented as a block, a valence-specific laterality effect was demonstrated, but only in original stimuli and not morphed stimuli. There was a separate interaction with listener sex. We interpret our findings as suggesting that the valence-specific laterality hypothesis is supported only in certain circumstances. We discuss modulating factors, and we consider whether the mechanisms underlying those factors may be attentional or experiential in nature.     

Pre-schoolers use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to highlight important information in speech

Previous evidence suggests that children's mastery of prosodic modulations to signal the informational status of discourse referents emerges quite late in development. In the present study, we investigate the children's use of head gestures as it compares to prosodic cues to signal a referent as being contrastive relative to a set of possible alternatives. A group of French-speaking pre-schoolers were audio-visually recorded while playing in a semi-spontaneous but controlled production task, to elicit target words in the context of broad focus, contrastive focus, or corrective focus utterances. We analysed the acoustic features of the target words (syllable duration and word-level pitch range), as well as the head gesture features accompanying these target words (head gesture type, alignment patterns with speech). We found that children's production of head gestures, but not their use of either syllable duration or word-level pitch range, was affected by focus condition. Children mostly aligned head gestures with relevant speech units, especially when the target word was in phrase-final position. Moreover, the presence of a head gesture was linked to greater syllable duration patterns in all focus conditions. Our results show that (a) 4- and 5-year-old French-speaking children use head gestures rather than prosodic cues to mark the informational status of discourse referents, (b) the use of head gestures may gradually entrain the production of adult-like prosodic features, and that (c) head gestures with no referential relation with speech may serve a linguistic structuring function in communication, at least during language development.     

Differences in adult and adolescent listeners’ ratings of valence and arousal in emotional prosody

ABSTRACT

Judgments of emotional stimuli’s valence and arousal can differ based on the perceiver’s age. With most of the existing literature on age-related changes in such ratings based on perceptions of visually-presented pictures or words, less is known about how youth and adults perceive and rate the affective information contained in auditory emotional stimuli. The current study examined age-related differences in adolescent (n?=?31; 45% female; aged 12–17, M?=?14.35, SD?=?1.68) and adult listeners’ (n?=?30; 53% female; aged 21–30, M?=?26.20 years, SD?=?2.98) ratings of the valence and arousal of spoken words conveying happiness, anger, and a neutral expression. We also fitted closed curves to the average ratings for each emotional expression to determine their relative position on the valence-arousal plane of an affective circumplex. Compared to adults, adolescents’ ratings of emotional prosody were generally higher in valence, but more constricted in range for both valence and arousal. This pattern of ratings is suggestive of lesser differentiation amongst emotional categories’ holistic properties, which may have implications for the successful recognition and appropriate response to vocal emotional cues in adolescents’ social environments.     

Attentional bias towards angry faces is moderated by the activation of a social processing mode in the general population

ABSTRACT

Dot-probe studies usually find an attentional bias towards threatening stimuli only in anxious participants, but not in non-anxious participants. In the present study, we conducted two experiments to investigate whether attentional bias towards angry faces in unselected samples is moderated by the extent to which the current task requires social processing. In Experiment 1, participants performed a dot-probe task involving classification of either socially meaningful targets (schematic faces) or meaningless targets (scrambled schematic faces). Targets were preceded by two photographic face cues, one angry and one neutral. Angry face cues only produced significant cueing scores (i.e. faster target responses if the target replaced the angry face compared to the neutral face) with socially meaningful targets, not with meaningless targets. In Experiment 2, participants classified only meaningful targets, which were either socially meaningful (schematic faces) or not (schematic houses). Again, mean cueing scores were significantly moderated by the social character of the targets. However, cueing scores in this experiment were non-significant in the social target condition and significantly negative in the non-social target condition. These results suggest that attentional bias towards angry faces in the dot-probe task is moderated by the activation of a social processing mode in unselected samples.