Psychotherapeutic issues with Asian American women

Although several authors have written of the unique needs and stresses encountered by Asian American women, little information is available about the culturally sensitive therapeutic approaches in working with them. This paper attempts to identify some of the issues relevant for work with various groups of Asian American women. Sources of stress are discussed considering a variety of economic, cultural, and historic factors. Therapeutic approaches for dealing with these stressors are also discussed. In addition to traditional therapies, feminist perspectives are considered and issues of gender roles are raised. Finally, case examples and suggestions for therapists are provided.Paper presented at the annual convention of Asian American Psychological Association, New York, 1987.     

Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/and /l/: Long-term retention of learning in perception and production

Previous work from our laboratories has shown that monolingual Japanese adults who were given intensive high-variability perceptual training improved in both perception and production of English /r/-/l/ minimal pairs. In this study, we extended those findings by investigating the long-term retention of learning in both perception and production of this difficult non-native contrast. Results showed that 3 months after completion of the perceptual training procedure, the Japanese trainees maintained their improved levels of performance on the perceptual identification task. Furthermore, perceptual evaluations by native American English listeners of the Japanese trainees’ pretest, posttest, and 3-month follow-up speech productions showed that the trainees retained their long-term improvements in the general quality, identifiability, and overall intelligibility of their English /r/-/l/ word productions. Taken together, the results provide further support for the efficacy of high-variability laboratory speech sound training procedures, and suggest an optimistic outlook for the application of such procedures for a wide range of “special populations.” nt]mis|This work was supported by NIDCD Training Grant DC-00012 and by NIDCD Research Grant DC-00111 to Indiana University.     

Are Words Easier to Learn From Infant‐ Than Adult‐Directed Speech? A Quantitative Corpus‐Based Investigation

We investigate whether infant‐directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult‐directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable in IDS than in ADS. At the phonological level, we find an effect in the opposite direction: The IDS lexicon contains more distinctive words (such as onomatopoeias) than the ADS counterpart. Combining the acoustic and phonological metrics together in a global discriminability score reveals that the bigger separation of lexical categories in the phonological space does not compensate for the opposite effect observed at the acoustic level. As a result, IDS word forms are still globally less discriminable than ADS word forms, even though the effect is numerically small. We discuss the implication of these findings for the view that the functional role of IDS is to improve language learnability.     

Characteristics of serial order learning in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus)

We investigated the characteristics of serial order learning in common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). Five marmosets were trained in a sequential responding task in which they were required to touch four graphic patterns in a given order (A→B→C→D) to obtain a reward. All five marmosets learned the task with over 65% accuracy. Shuffling the positions of B, C, and D immediately after the marmoset had correctly identified and selected the first stimulus (A) either decreased accuracy or lengthened response latency for the second stimulus (B). These results suggest that the marmosets planned the response to the second stimulus before they touched the first stimulus. In addition, when we presented a pair of stimuli (AB, AC, AD, BC, BD, and CD pairs), the marmosets responded to the stimuli in the pair in the appropriate order, according to the learned order (A→B→C→D). The analyses of first and second response latencies clearly demonstrated both the first-item and missing-item effects in task performance. Our data provide direct evidence that marmosets can learn the relative order of the four stimuli in a sequential responding task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

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.     

The development of a phonological illusion: a cross-linguistic study with Japanese and French infants

In adults, native language phonology has strong perceptual effects. Previous work has shown that Japanese speakers, unlike French speakers, break up illegal sequences of consonants with illusory vowels: they report hearing abna as abuna. To study the development of phonological grammar, we compared Japanese and French infants in a discrimination task. In Experiment 1, we observed that 14-month-old Japanese infants, in contrast to French infants, failed to discriminate phonetically varied sets of abna-type and abuna-type stimuli. In Experiment 2, 8-month-old French and Japanese did not differ significantly from each other. In Experiment 3, we found that, like adults, Japanese infants can discriminate abna from abuna when phonetic variability is reduced (single item). These results show that the phonologically induced /u/ illusion is already experienced by Japanese infants at the age of 14 months. Hence, before having acquired many words of their language, they have grasped enough of their native phonological grammar to constrain their perception of speech sound sequences.     

The effects of experimental variables on the perception of American English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners

The effects of variations in response categories, subjects’ perception of natural speech, and stimulus range on the identification of American English /r/ and /l/ by native speakers of Japanese were investigated. Three experiments using a synthesized /rait/-/lait/ series showed that all these variables affected identification and discrimination performance by Japanese-subjects. Furthermore, some of the perceptual characteristics of /r/ and /l/ for Japanese listeners were clarified: (1) Japanese listeners identified some of the stimuli of the series-as/w/.(2). Apositive correlation between the perception of synthesized stimuli and naturally-spoken stimuli was found. Japanese listeners who were able to easily identify naturally spoken stimuli perceived the synthetic series categorically but still perceived a /w/ category on the series. (3) The stimulus range showed a striking effect on identification consistency; identification of /r/ and /l/ was strongly affected by the stimulus range, the /w/ identification less so. This indicates that Japanese listeners tend to make relative judgments between /r/ and /l/.     

Sex categorization of conspecific pictures in Japanese monkeys (Macaca fuscata)

We investigated whether monkeys discriminate the sex of individuals from their pictures. Whole-body pictures of adult and nonadult monkeys were used as stimuli. Two male Japanese monkeys were trained for a two-choice sex categorization task in which each of two choice pictures were assigned to male and female, respectively. Following the training, the monkeys were presented with novel monkey pictures, and whether they had acquired the categorization task was tested. The results suggested that while monkeys discriminate between the pictures of adult males and females, discrimination of nonadult pictures was difficult. Partial presentations of the pictures showed that conspicuous and sexually characteristic parts (i.e., underbellies including male scrotums or breasts including female nipples) played an important role in the sex categorization.     

Processing of empty categories in Japanese

Recent experimental research on the processing of empty categories (EC) in English points to the general conclusion that during on-line processing of a sentence, not only is the presence of an EC detected but its linguistically legitimate antecedents are also computed. In this paper, it is argued that, in Japanese, ECs pose serious problems for on-line processing if they are to be processed in a manner similar to English. Initial experimental data indicates that, in Japanese, the processor may not recognize an EC during initial on-line processing of a sentence. It is tentatively suggested that processing of an EC in Japanese may be delayed until after the on-line processing of the structure of a sentence.