A neuroimaging study of conflict during word recognition.

PubMed

Riba, Jordi; Heldmann, Marcus; Carreiras, Manuel; Münte, Thomas F

2010-08-04

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging the neural activity associated with error commission and conflict monitoring in a lexical decision task was assessed. In a cohort of 20 native speakers of Spanish conflict was introduced by presenting words with high and low lexical frequency and pseudo-words with high and low syllabic frequency for the first syllable. Erroneous versus correct responses showed activation in the frontomedial and left inferior frontal cortex. A similar pattern was found for correctly classified words of low versus high lexical frequency and for correctly classified pseudo-words of high versus low syllabic frequency. Conflict-related activations for language materials largely overlapped with error-induced activations. The effect of syllabic frequency underscores the role of sublexical processing in visual word recognition and supports the view that the initial syllable mediates between the letter and word level.

Phonological neighborhood and word frequency effects on the stuttered disfluencies of children who stutter: comments on Anderson (2007).

PubMed

Howell, Peter

2010-10-01

This letter comments on a study by Anderson (2007) that compared the effects of word frequency, neighborhood density, and phonological neighborhood frequency on part-word repetitions, prolongations, and single-syllable word repetitions produced by children who stutter. Anderson discussed her results with respect to 2 theories about stuttering: the covert repair hypothesis and execution planning (EXPLAN) theory. Her remarks about EXPLAN theory are examined. Anderson considered that EXPLAN does not predict the relationship between word and neighborhood frequency and stuttering for part-word repetitions and prolongations (she considered that EXPLAN predicts that stuttering occurs on simple words for children). The actual predictions that EXPLAN makes are upheld by her results. She also considered that EXPLAN cannot account for why stuttering is affected by the same variables that lead to speech errors, and it is shown that this is incorrect. The effects of word frequency, neighborhood density, and phonological neighborhood frequency on part-word repetitions, prolongations, and single-syllable word repetitions reported by Anderson (2007) are consistent with the predictions of the EXPLAN model.

A Mechanism for Frequency Modulation in Songbirds Shared with Humans

PubMed Central

Margoliash, Daniel

2013-01-01

In most animals that vocalize, control of fundamental frequency is a key element for effective communication. In humans, subglottal pressure controls vocal intensity but also influences fundamental frequency during phonation. Given the underlying similarities in the biomechanical mechanisms of vocalization in humans and songbirds, songbirds offer an attractive opportunity to study frequency modulation by pressure. Here, we present a novel technique for dynamic control of subsyringeal pressure in zebra finches. By regulating the opening of a custom-built fast valve connected to the air sac system, we achieved partial or total silencing of specific syllables, and could modify syllabic acoustics through more complex manipulations of air sac pressure. We also observed that more nuanced pressure variations over a limited interval during production of a syllable concomitantly affected the frequency of that syllable segment. These results can be explained in terms of a mathematical model for phonation that incorporates a nonlinear description for the vocal source capable of generating the observed frequency modulations induced by pressure variations. We conclude that the observed interaction between pressure and frequency was a feature of the source, not a result of feedback control. Our results indicate that, beyond regulating phonation or its absence, regulation of pressure is important for control of fundamental frequencies of vocalizations. Thus, although there are separate brainstem pathways for syringeal and respiratory control of song production, both can affect airflow and frequency. We hypothesize that the control of pressure and frequency is combined holistically at higher levels of the vocalization pathways. PMID:23825417

A mechanism for frequency modulation in songbirds shared with humans.

PubMed

Amador, Ana; Margoliash, Daniel

2013-07-03

In most animals that vocalize, control of fundamental frequency is a key element for effective communication. In humans, subglottal pressure controls vocal intensity but also influences fundamental frequency during phonation. Given the underlying similarities in the biomechanical mechanisms of vocalization in humans and songbirds, songbirds offer an attractive opportunity to study frequency modulation by pressure. Here, we present a novel technique for dynamic control of subsyringeal pressure in zebra finches. By regulating the opening of a custom-built fast valve connected to the air sac system, we achieved partial or total silencing of specific syllables, and could modify syllabic acoustics through more complex manipulations of air sac pressure. We also observed that more nuanced pressure variations over a limited interval during production of a syllable concomitantly affected the frequency of that syllable segment. These results can be explained in terms of a mathematical model for phonation that incorporates a nonlinear description for the vocal source capable of generating the observed frequency modulations induced by pressure variations. We conclude that the observed interaction between pressure and frequency was a feature of the source, not a result of feedback control. Our results indicate that, beyond regulating phonation or its absence, regulation of pressure is important for control of fundamental frequencies of vocalizations. Thus, although there are separate brainstem pathways for syringeal and respiratory control of song production, both can affect airflow and frequency. We hypothesize that the control of pressure and frequency is combined holistically at higher levels of the vocalization pathways.

Lexical tone and stuttering loci in Mandarin: evidence from preschool children who stutter.

PubMed

Chou, Fang-Chi; Zebrowski, Patricia; Yang, Shu-Lan

2015-02-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between stuttering loci and lexical tone in Mandarin-speaking preschoolers. Conversational samples from 20 Taiwanese children who stutter (CWS; M = 4:9; range = 3:2-6:4) were analysed for frequency and type of speech disfluency and lexical tone associated with stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs). Results indicated that SLDs were significantly more likely to be produced on Mandarin syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 syllables compared to syllables carrying either Tone 1 or Tone 2. Post-hoc analyses revealed: (1) no significant differences in the stuttering frequencies between Tone 1 and Tone 2, or between Tone 3 and Tone 4, and (2) a higher incidence of stuttering on syllables carrying Tone 3 and Tone 4 embedded in conflicting (as opposed to compatible) tonal contexts. Results suggest that the higher incidence of stuttering on Mandarin syllables carrying either Tone 3 or 4 may be attributed to the increased level of speech motor demand underlying rapid F0 change both within and across syllables.

Stereotypy and variability of social calls among clustering female big-footed myotis (Myotis macrodactylus).

PubMed

Xiao, Yan-Hong; Wang, Lei; Hoyt, Joseph R; Jiang, Ting-Lei; Lin, Ai-Qing; Feng, Jiang

2018-03-18

Echolocating bats have developed advanced auditory perception systems, predominantly using acoustic signaling to communicate with each other. They can emit a diverse range of social calls in complex behavioral contexts. This study examined the vocal repertoire of five pregnant big-footed myotis bats (Myotis macrodactylus). In the process of clustering, the last individual to return to the colony (LI) emitted social calls that correlated with behavior, as recorded on a PC-based digital recorder. These last individuals could emit 10 simple monosyllabic and 27 complex multisyllabic types of calls, constituting four types of syllables. The social calls were composed of highly stereotyped syllables, hierarchically organized by a common set of syllables. However, intra-specific variation was also found in the number of syllables, syllable order and patterns of syllable repetition across call renditions. Data were obtained to characterize the significant individual differences that existed in the maximum frequency and duration of calls. Time taken to return to the roost was negatively associated with the diversity of social calls. Our findings indicate that variability in social calls may be an effective strategy taken by individuals during reintegration into clusters of female M. macrodactylus.

Effects of measurement method and transcript availability on inexperienced raters' stuttering frequency scores.

PubMed

Chakraborty, Nalanda; Logan, Kenneth J

To examine the effects of measurement method and transcript availability on the accuracy, reliability, and efficiency of inexperienced raters' stuttering frequency measurements. 44 adults, all inexperienced at evaluating stuttered speech, underwent 20 min of preliminary training in stuttering measurement and then analyzed a series of sentences, with and without access to transcripts of sentence stimuli, using either a syllable-based analysis (SBA) or an utterance-based analysis (UBA). Participants' analyses were compared between groups and to a composite analysis from two experienced evaluators. Stuttering frequency scores from the SBA and UBA groups differed significantly from the experienced evaluators' scores; however, UBA scores were significantly closer to the experienced evaluators' scores and were completed significantly faster than the SBA scores. Transcript availability facilitated scoring accuracy and efficiency in both groups. The internal reliability of stuttering frequency scores was acceptable for the SBA and UBA groups; however, the SBA group demonstrated only modest point-by-point agreement with ratings from the experienced evaluators. Given its accuracy and efficiency advantages over syllable-based analysis, utterance-based fluency analysis appears to be an appropriate context for introducing stuttering frequency measurement to raters who have limited experience in stuttering measurement. To address accuracy gaps between experienced and inexperienced raters, however, use of either analysis must be supplemented with training activities that expose inexperienced raters to the decision-making processes used by experienced raters when identifying stuttered syllables. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Phonological neighborhood and word frequency effects in the stuttered disfluencies of children who stutter.

PubMed

Anderson, Julie D

2007-02-01

The purpose of this study was to examine (a) the role of neighborhood density (number of words that are phonologically similar to a target word) and frequency variables on the stuttering-like disfluencies of preschool children who stutter, and (b) whether these variables have an effect on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. A 500+ word speech sample was obtained from each participant (N = 15). Each stuttered word was randomly paired with the firstly produced word that closely matched it in grammatical class, familiarity, and number of syllables/phonemes. Frequency, neighborhood density, and neighborhood frequency values were obtained for the stuttered and fluent words from an online database. Findings revealed that stuttered words were lower in frequency and neighborhood frequency than fluent words. Words containing part-word repetitions and sound prolongations were also lower in frequency and/or neighborhood frequency than fluent words, but these frequency variables did not have an effect on single-syllable word repetitions. Neighborhood density failed to influence the susceptibility of words to stuttering, as well as the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. In general, findings suggest that neighborhood and frequency variables not only influence the fluency with which words are produced in speech, but also have an impact on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced.

A Report of On-Going Research Aimed at Developing Unweighted and Weighted Syllable Lists.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sakiey, Elizabeth

Knowing which syllables are most commonly used should aid in linguistic research and in the preparation of curriculum materials, particularly in reading. A research project has been undertaken to develop unweighted and weighted (by the frequency of the words in which they appear) syllable lists. At present, two of the project's three phases are…

Female Presence and Estrous State Influence Mouse Ultrasonic Courtship Vocalizations

PubMed Central

Hanson, Jessica L.; Hurley, Laura M.

2012-01-01

The laboratory mouse is an emerging model for context-dependent vocal signaling and reception. Mouse ultrasonic vocalizations are robustly produced in social contexts. In adults, male vocalization during courtship has become a model of interest for signal-receiver interactions. These vocalizations can be grouped into syllable types that are consistently produced by different subspecies and strains of mice. Vocalizations are unique to individuals, vary across development, and depend on social housing conditions. The behavioral significance of different syllable types, including the contexts in which different vocalizations are made and the responses listeners have to different types of vocalizations, is not well understood. We examined the effect of female presence and estrous state on male vocalizations by exploring the use of syllable types and the parameters of syllables during courtship. We also explored correlations between vocalizations and other behaviors. These experimental manipulations produced four main findings: 1) vocalizations varied among males, 2) the production of USVs and an increase in the use of a specific syllable type were temporally related to mounting behavior, 3) the frequency (kHz), bandwidth, and duration of syllables produced by males were influenced by the estrous phase of female partners, and 4) syllable types changed when females were removed. These findings show that mouse ultrasonic courtship vocalizations are sensitive to changes in female phase and presence, further demonstrating the context-sensitivity of these calls. PMID:22815817

Copy Counts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beaumont, Lee R.

1970-01-01

The level of difficulty of straight copy, which is used to measure typewriting speed, is influenced by syllable intensity (the average number of syllables per word), stroke intensity (average number of strokes per word), and high-frequency words. (CH)

Perceptual-center modeling is affected by including acoustic rate-of-change modulations.

PubMed

Harsin, C A

1997-02-01

This study investigated the acoustic correlates of perceptual centers (p-centers) in CV and VC syllables and developed an acoustic p-center model. In Part 1, listeners located syllables' p-centers by a method-of-adjustment procedure. The CV syllables contained the consonants /s/,/r/,/n/,/t/,/d/,/k/, and /g/; the VCs, the consonants /s/,/r/, and /n/. The vowel in all syllables was /a/. The results of this experiment replicated and extended previous findings regarding the effects of phonetic variation on p-centers. In Part 2, a digital signal processing procedure was used to acoustically model p-center perception. Each stimulus was passed through a six-band digital filter, and the outputs were processed to derive low-frequency modulation components. These components were weighted according to a perceived modulation magnitude function and recombined to create six psychoacoustic envelopes containing modulation energies from 3 to 47 Hz. In this analysis, p-centers were found to be highly correlated with the time-weighted function of the rate-of-change in the psychoacoustic envelopes, multiplied by the psychoacoustic envelope magnitude increment. The results were interpreted as suggesting (1) the probable role of low-frequency energy modulations in p-center perception, and (2) the presence of perceptual processes that integrate multiple articulatory events into a single syllabic event.

The Transition from the Core Vowels to the Following Segments in Japanese Children Who Stutter: The Second, Third and Fourth Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Matsumoto-Shimamori, Sachiyo; Ito, Tomohiko; Fukuda, Suzy E.; Fukuda, Shinji

2011-01-01

Shimamori and Ito (2007, Syllable weight and phonological encoding in Japanese children who stutter. "Japanese Journal of Special Education", 44, 451-462; 2008, Syllable weight and frequency of stuttering: Comparison between children who stutter with and without a family history of stuttering. "Japanese Journal of Special Education", 45, 437-445;…

Effect of extended exposure to frequency-altered feedback on stuttering during reading and monologue.

PubMed

Armson, J; Stuart, A

1998-06-01

An ABA time series design was used to examine the effect of extended, continuous exposure to frequency-altered auditory feedback (FAF) during an oral reading and monologue task on stuttering frequency and speech rate. Twelve adults who stutter participated. A statistically significant decrease in number of stuttering events, an increase in number of syllables produced, and a decrease in percent stuttering was observed during the experimental segment relative to baseline segments for the oral reading task. In the monologue task, there were no statistically significant differences for the number of stuttering events, number of syllables produced, or percent stuttering between the experimental and baseline segments. Varying individual patterns of response to FAF were evident during the experimental segment of the reading task: a large consistent reduction in stuttering, an initial reduction followed by fluctuations in amount of stuttering, and essentially no change in stuttering frequency. Ten of 12 participants showed no reduction in stuttering frequency during the experimental segment of the monologue task. These findings have ramifications both for the clinical utilization of FAF and for theoretical explanations of fluency-enhancement.

Phonological Neighborhood and Word Frequency Effects in the Stuttered Disfluencies of Children Who Stutter

PubMed Central

Anderson, Julie D.

2008-01-01

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine (a) the role of neighborhood density (number of words that are phonologically similar to a target word) and frequency variables on the stuttering-like disfluencies of preschool children who stutter, and (b) whether these variables have an effect on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. Method A 500+ word speech sample was obtained from each participant (N = 15). Each stuttered word was randomly paired with the firstly produced word that closely matched it in grammatical class, familiarity, and number of syllables/phonemes. Frequency, neighborhood density, and neighborhood frequency values were obtained for the stuttered and fluent words from an online database. Results Findings revealed that stuttered words were lower in frequency and neighborhood frequency than fluent words. Words containing part-word repetitions and sound prolongations were also lower in frequency and/or neighborhood frequency than fluent words, but these frequency variables did not have an effect on single-syllable word repetitions. Neighborhood density failed to influence the susceptibility of words to stuttering, as well as the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. Conclusions In general, findings suggest that neighborhood and frequency variables not only influence the fluency with which words are produced in speech, but also have an impact on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced. PMID:17344561

Authorship Discovery in Blogs Using Bayesian Classification with Corrective Scaling

DTIC Science & Technology

2008-06-01

4 2.3 W. Fucks ’ Diagram of n-Syllable Word Frequencies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.1 Confusion Matrix for All Test Documents of 500...of the books which scholars believed he had. • Wilhelm Fucks discriminated between authors using the average number of syllables per word and average...distance between equal-syllabled words [8]. Fucks , too, concluded that a study such as his reveals a “possibility of a quantitative classification

The cerebral control of speech tempo: opposite relationship between speaking rate and BOLD signal changes at striatal and cerebellar structures.

PubMed

Riecker, Axel; Kassubek, Jan; Gröschel, Klaus; Grodd, Wolfgang; Ackermann, Hermann

2006-01-01

So far, only sparse data on the cerebral organization of speech motor control are available. In order to further delineate the neural basis of articulatory functions, fMRI measurements were performed during self-paced syllable repetitions at six different frequencies (2-6 Hz). Bilateral hemodynamic main effects, calculated across all syllable rates considered, emerged within sensorimotor cortex, putamen, thalamus and cerebellum. At the level of the caudatum and the anterior insula, activation was found restricted to the left side. The computation of rate-to-response functions of the BOLD signal revealed a negative linear relationship between syllable frequency and response magnitude within the striatum whereas cortical areas and cerebellar hemispheres exhibited an opposite activation pattern. Dysarthric patients with basal ganglia disorders show unimpaired or even accelerated speaking rate whereas, in contrast, cerebellar dysfunctions give rise to slowed speech tempo which does not fall below a rate of about 3 Hz. The observed rate-to-response profiles of the BOLD signal thus might help to elucidate the pathophysiological mechanisms of dysarthric deficits in central motor disorders.

The Word Frequency Effect on Second Language Vocabulary Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Koirala, Cesar

2015-01-01

This study examines several linguistic factors as possible contributors to perceived word difficulty in second language learners in an experimental setting. The investigated factors include: (1) frequency of word usage in the first language, (2) word length, (3) number of syllables in a word, and (4) number of consonant clusters in a word. Word…

Stimulus presentation order and the perception of lexical tones in Cantonese

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Francis, Alexander L.; Ciocca, Valter

2003-09-01

Listeners' auditory discrimination of vowel sounds depends in part on the order in which stimuli are presented. Such presentation order effects have been argued to be language independent, and to result from psychophysical (not speech- or language-specific) factors such as the decay of memory traces over time or increased weighting of later-occurring stimuli. In the present study, native Cantonese speakers' discrimination of a linguistic tone continuum is shown to exhibit order of presentation effects similar to those shown for vowels in previous studies. When presented with two successive syllables differing in fundamental frequency by approximately 4 Hz, listeners were significantly more sensitive to this difference when the first syllable was higher in frequency than the second. However, American English-speaking listeners with no experience listening to Cantonese showed no such contrast effect when tested in the same manner using the same stimuli. Neither English nor Cantonese listeners showed any order of presentation effects in the discrimination of a nonspeech continuum in which tokens had the same fundamental frequencies as the Cantonese speech tokens but had a qualitatively non-speech-like timbre. These results suggest that tone presentation order effects, unlike vowel effects, may be language specific, possibly resulting from the need to compensate for utterance-related pitch declination when evaluating fundamental frequency for tone identification.

Song convergence in multiple urban populations of silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis)

PubMed Central

Potvin, Dominique A; Parris, Kirsten M

2012-01-01

Recent studies have revealed differences between urban and rural vocalizations of numerous bird species. These differences include frequency shifts, amplitude shifts, altered song speed, and selective meme use. If particular memes sung by urban populations are adapted to the urban soundscape, “urban-typical” calls, memes, or repertoires should be consistently used in multiple urban populations of the same species, regardless of geographic location. We tested whether songs or contact calls of silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis) might be subject to such convergent cultural evolution by comparing syllable repertoires of geographically dispersed urban and rural population pairs throughout southeastern Australia. Despite frequency and tempo differences between urban and rural calls, call repertoires were similar between habitat types. However, certain song syllables were used more frequently by birds from urban than rural populations. Partial redundancy analysis revealed that both geographic location and habitat characteristics were important predictors of syllable repertoire composition. These findings suggest convergent cultural evolution: urban populations modify both song and call syllables from their local repertoire in response to noise. PMID:22957198

Song convergence in multiple urban populations of silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis).

PubMed

Potvin, Dominique A; Parris, Kirsten M

2012-08-01

Recent studies have revealed differences between urban and rural vocalizations of numerous bird species. These differences include frequency shifts, amplitude shifts, altered song speed, and selective meme use. If particular memes sung by urban populations are adapted to the urban soundscape, "urban-typical" calls, memes, or repertoires should be consistently used in multiple urban populations of the same species, regardless of geographic location. We tested whether songs or contact calls of silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis) might be subject to such convergent cultural evolution by comparing syllable repertoires of geographically dispersed urban and rural population pairs throughout southeastern Australia. Despite frequency and tempo differences between urban and rural calls, call repertoires were similar between habitat types. However, certain song syllables were used more frequently by birds from urban than rural populations. Partial redundancy analysis revealed that both geographic location and habitat characteristics were important predictors of syllable repertoire composition. These findings suggest convergent cultural evolution: urban populations modify both song and call syllables from their local repertoire in response to noise.

Duration of the speech disfluencies of beginning stutterers.

PubMed

Zebrowski, P M

1991-06-01

This study compared the duration of within-word disfluencies and the number of repeated units per instance of sound/syllable and whole-word repetitions of beginning stutterers to those produced by age- and sex-matched nonstuttering children. Subjects were 10 stuttering children [9 males and 1 female; mean age 4:1 (years:months); age range 3:2-5:1), and 10 nonstuttering children (9 males and 1 female; mean age 4:0; age range: 2:10-5:1). Mothers of the stuttering children reported that their children had been stuttering for 1 year or less. One 300-word conversational speech sample from each of the stuttering and nonstuttering children was analyzed for (a) mean duration of sound/syllable repetition and sound prolongation, (b) mean number of repeated units per instance of sound/syllable and whole-word repetition, and (c) various related measures of the frequency of all between- and within-word speech disfluencies. There were no significant between-group differences for either the duration of acoustically measured sound/syllable repetitions and sound prolongations or the number of repeated units per instance of sound/syllable and whole-word repetition. Unlike frequency and type of speech disfluency produced, average duration of within-word disfluencies and number of repeated units per repetition do not differentiate the disfluent speech of beginning stutterers and their nonstuttering peers. Additional analyses support findings from previous perceptual work that type and frequency of speech disfluency, not duration, are the principal characteristics listeners use in distinguishing these two talker groups.

Intensity Accents in French 2 Year Olds' Speech.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Allen, George D.

The acoustic features and functions of accentuation in French are discussed, and features of accentuation in the speech of French 2-year-olds are explored. The four major acoustic features used to signal accentual distinctions are fundamental frequency of voicing, duration of segments and syllables, intensity of segments and syllables, and…

The Influence of Syllable Onset Complexity and Syllable Frequency on Speech Motor Control

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Riecker, Axel; Brendel, Bettina; Ziegler, Wolfram; Erb, Michael; Ackermann, Hermann

2008-01-01

Functional imaging studies have delineated a "minimal network for overt speech production," encompassing mesiofrontal structures (supplementary motor area, anterior cingulate gyrus), bilateral pre- and postcentral convolutions, extending rostrally into posterior parts of the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) of the language-dominant hemisphere, left…

Cascaded processing in written compound word production

PubMed Central

Bertram, Raymond; Tønnessen, Finn Egil; Strömqvist, Sven; Hyönä, Jukka; Niemi, Pekka

2015-01-01

In this study we investigated the intricate interplay between central linguistic processing and peripheral motor processes during typewriting. Participants had to typewrite two-constituent (noun-noun) Finnish compounds in response to picture presentation while their typing behavior was registered. As dependent measures we used writing onset time to assess what processes were completed before writing and inter-key intervals to assess what processes were going on during writing. It was found that writing onset time was determined by whole word frequency rather than constituent frequencies, indicating that compound words are retrieved as whole orthographic units before writing is initiated. In addition, we found that the length of the first syllable also affects writing onset time, indicating that the first syllable is fully prepared before writing commences. The inter-key interval results showed that linguistic planning is not fully ready before writing, but cascades into the motor execution phase. More specifically, inter-key intervals were largest at syllable and morpheme boundaries, supporting the view that additional linguistic planning takes place at these boundaries. Bigram and trigram frequency also affected inter-key intervals with shorter intervals corresponding to higher frequencies. This can be explained by stronger memory traces for frequently co-occurring letter sequences in the motor memory for typewriting. These frequency effects were even larger in the second than in the first constituent, indicating that low-level motor memory starts to become more important during the course of writing compound words. We discuss our results in the light of current models of morphological processing and written word production. PMID:25954182

Cascaded processing in written compound word production.

PubMed

Bertram, Raymond; Tønnessen, Finn Egil; Strömqvist, Sven; Hyönä, Jukka; Niemi, Pekka

2015-01-01

In this study we investigated the intricate interplay between central linguistic processing and peripheral motor processes during typewriting. Participants had to typewrite two-constituent (noun-noun) Finnish compounds in response to picture presentation while their typing behavior was registered. As dependent measures we used writing onset time to assess what processes were completed before writing and inter-key intervals to assess what processes were going on during writing. It was found that writing onset time was determined by whole word frequency rather than constituent frequencies, indicating that compound words are retrieved as whole orthographic units before writing is initiated. In addition, we found that the length of the first syllable also affects writing onset time, indicating that the first syllable is fully prepared before writing commences. The inter-key interval results showed that linguistic planning is not fully ready before writing, but cascades into the motor execution phase. More specifically, inter-key intervals were largest at syllable and morpheme boundaries, supporting the view that additional linguistic planning takes place at these boundaries. Bigram and trigram frequency also affected inter-key intervals with shorter intervals corresponding to higher frequencies. This can be explained by stronger memory traces for frequently co-occurring letter sequences in the motor memory for typewriting. These frequency effects were even larger in the second than in the first constituent, indicating that low-level motor memory starts to become more important during the course of writing compound words. We discuss our results in the light of current models of morphological processing and written word production.

Central Tendency and Dispersion Measures of the Fundamental Frequencies of Four Vowels as Produced by Two Year-Old and Four-Year Children.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Monroe, Roberta Lynn

The intrinsic fundamental frequency effect among vowels is a vocalic phenomenon of adult speech in which high vowels have higher fundamental frequencies in relation to low vowels. Acoustic investigations of children's speech have shown that variability of the speech signal decreases as children's ages increase. Fundamental frequency measures have been suggested as an indirect metric for the development of laryngeal stability and coordination. Studies of the intrinsic fundamental frequency effect have been conducted among 8- and 9-year old children and in infants. The present study investigated this effect among 2- and 4-year old children. Eight 2-year old and eight 4-year old children produced four vowels, /ae/, /i/, /u/, and /a/, in CVC syllables. Three measures of fundamental frequency were taken. These were mean fundamental frequency, the intra-utterance standard deviation of the fundamental frequency, and the extent to which the cycle-to-cycle pattern of the fundamental frequency was predicted by a linear trend. An analysis of variance was performed to compare the two age groups, the four vowels, and the earlier and later repetitions of the CVC syllables. A significant difference between the two age groups was detected using the intra-utterance standard deviation of the fundamental frequency. Mean fundamental frequencies and linear trend analysis showed that voicing of the preceding consonant determined the statistical significance of the age-group comparisons. Statistically significant differences among the fundamental frequencies of the four vowels were not detected for either age group.

Perceptual invariance of coarticulated vowels over variations in speaking rate.

PubMed

Stack, Janet W; Strange, Winifred; Jenkins, James J; Clarke, William D; Trent, Sonja A

2006-04-01

This study examined the perception and acoustics of a large corpus of vowels spoken in consonant-vowel-consonant syllables produced in citation-form (lists) and spoken in sentences at normal and rapid rates by a female adult. Listeners correctly categorized the speaking rate of sentence materials as normal or rapid (2% errors) but did not accurately classify the speaking rate of the syllables when they were excised from the sentences (25% errors). In contrast, listeners accurately identified the vowels produced in sentences spoken at both rates when presented the sentences and when presented the excised syllables blocked by speaking rate or randomized. Acoustical analysis showed that formant frequencies at syllable midpoint for vowels in sentence materials showed "target undershoot" relative to citation-form values, but little change over speech rate. Syllable durations varied systematically with vowel identity, speaking rate, and voicing of final consonant. Vowel-inherent-spectral-change was invariant in direction of change over rate and context for most vowels. The temporal location of maximum F1 frequency further differentiated spectrally adjacent lax and tense vowels. It was concluded that listeners were able to utilize these rate- and context-independent dynamic spectrotemporal parameters to identify coarticulated vowels, even when sentential information about speaking rate was not available.

Input Frequency and the Acquisition of Syllable Structure in Polish

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jarosz, Gaja; Calamaro, Shira; Zentz, Jason

2017-01-01

This article examines phonological development and its relationship to input statistics. Using novel data from a longitudinal corpus of spontaneous child speech in Polish, we evaluate and compare the predictions of a variety of input-based phonotactic models for syllable structure acquisition. We find that many commonly examined input statistics…

Enhanced Passive and Active Processing of Syllables in Musician Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chobert, Julie; Marie, Celine; Francois, Clement; Schon, Daniele; Besson, Mireille

2011-01-01

The aim of this study was to examine the influence of musical expertise in 9-year-old children on passive (as reflected by MMN) and active (as reflected by discrimination accuracy) processing of speech sounds. Musician and nonmusician children were presented with a sequence of syllables that included standards and deviants in vowel frequency,…

For a Psycholinguistic Model of Handwriting Production: Testing the Syllable-Bigram Controversy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kandel, Sonia; Peereman, Ronald; Grosjacques, Geraldine; Fayol, Michel

2011-01-01

This study examined the theoretical controversy on the impact of syllables and bigrams in handwriting production. French children and adults wrote words on a digitizer so that we could collect data on the local, online processing of handwriting production. The words differed in the position of the lowest frequency bigram. In one condition, it…

Exploring vocal recovery after cranial nerve injury in Bengalese finches.

PubMed

Urbano, Catherine M; Peterson, Jennifer R; Cooper, Brenton G

2013-02-08

Songbirds and humans use auditory feedback to acquire and maintain their vocalizations. The Bengalese finch (Lonchura striata domestica) is a songbird species that rapidly modifies its vocal output to adhere to an internal song memory. In this species, the left side of the bipartite vocal organ is specialized for producing louder, higher frequencies (≥2.2kHz) and denervation of the left vocal muscles eliminates these notes. Thus, the return of higher frequency notes after cranial nerve injury can be used as a measure of vocal recovery. Either the left or right side of the syrinx was denervated by resection of the tracheosyringeal portion of the hypoglossal nerve. Histologic analyses of syringeal muscle tissue showed significant muscle atrophy in the denervated side. After left nerve resection, songs were mainly composed of lower frequency syllables, but three out of five birds recovered higher frequency syllables. Right nerve resection minimally affected phonology, but it did change song syntax; syllable sequence became abnormally stereotyped after right nerve resection. Therefore, damage to the neuromuscular control of sound production resulted in reduced motor variability, and Bengalese finches are a potential model for functional vocal recovery following cranial nerve injury. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Pitch Perception in Tone Language-Speaking Adults With and Without Autism Spectrum Disorders

PubMed Central

Cheng, Stella T. T.; Lam, Gary Y. H.

2017-01-01

Enhanced low-level pitch perception has been universally reported in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). This study examined whether tone language speakers with ASD exhibit this advantage. The pitch perception skill of 20 Cantonese-speaking adults with ASD was compared with that of 20 neurotypical individuals. Participants discriminated pairs of real syllable, pseudo-syllable (syllables that do not conform the phonotactic rules or are accidental gaps), and non-speech (syllables with attenuated high-frequency segmental content) stimuli contrasting pitch levels. The results revealed significantly higher discrimination ability in both groups for the non-speech stimuli than for the pseudo-syllables with one semitone difference. No significant group differences were noted. Different from previous findings, post hoc analysis found that enhanced pitch perception was observed in a subgroup of participants with ASD showing no history of delayed speech onset. The tone language experience may have modulated the pitch processing mechanism in the speakers in both ASD and non-ASD groups. PMID:28616150

An acoustical study of English word stress produced by Americans and Koreans

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Byunggon

2002-05-01

Acoustical correlates of stress can be divided into duration, intensity, and fundamental frequency. This study examined the acoustical difference in the first two syllables of stressed English words produced by ten American and Korean speakers. The Korean subjects scored very high in TOEFL. They read, at a normal speed, a fable from which the acoustical parameters of eight words were analyzed. In order to make the data comparison meaningful, each parameter was collected at 100 dynamic time points proportional to the total duration of the two syllables. Then, the ratio of the parameter sum of the first rime to that of the second rime was calculated to determine the relative prominence of the syllables. Results showed that the durations of the first two syllables were almost comparable between the Americans and Koreans. However, statistically significant differences showed up in the diphthong pronunciations and in the words with the second syllable stressed. Also, remarkably high r-squared values were found between pairs of the three acoustical parameters, which suggests that either one or a combination of two or more parameters may account for the prominence of a syllable within a word. [Work supported by Korea Science Foundation R01-1999-00229.

Rapid Syllable Transitions (ReST) treatment for Childhood Apraxia of Speech: the effect of lower dose-frequency.

PubMed

Thomas, Donna C; McCabe, Patricia; Ballard, Kirrie J

2014-01-01

This study investigated the effectiveness of twice-weekly Rapid Syllable Transitions (ReST) treatment for Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS). ReST is an effective treatment at a frequency of four sessions a week for three consecutive weeks. In this study we used a multiple-baselines across participants design to examine treatment efficacy for four children with CAS, aged four to eight years, who received ReST treatment twice a week for six weeks. The children's ability to acquire new skills, generalize these skills to untreated items and maintain the skills after treatment was examined. All four children improved their production of the target items. Two of the four children generalized the treatment effects to similar untreated pseudo words and all children generalized to untreated real words. During the maintenance phase, all four participants maintained their skills to four months post-treatment, with a stable rather than rising profile. This study shows that ReST treatment delivered twice-weekly results in significant retention of treatment effects to four months post-treatment and generalization to untrained but related speech behaviors. Compared to ReST therapy four times per week, the twice-weekly frequency produces similar treatment gains but no ongoing improvement after the cessation of treatment. This implies that there may be a small but significant benefit of four times weekly therapy compared with twice-weekly ReST therapy. Readers will be able to define dose-frequency, and describe how this relates to overall intervention intensity. Readers will be able to explain the acquisition, generalization and maintenance effects in the study and describe how these compare to higher dose frequency treatments. Readers will recognize that the current findings give preliminary support for high dose-frequency CAS treatment. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Separate and Cumulative Effects of TBI and PTSD on Cognitive Function and Emotional Control

DTIC Science & Technology

2012-04-01

indicate an altered profile of persistent hyper- arousal , exaggerated startle responses (Fani et al., 2012; Pole, 2007), larger eye-blink, eye pupil...were each compared. This separation kept variables such as word frequency, valence, arousal , and other properties as consistent as possible across...number of syllables and frequency. Only high arousal Negative and Positive words were used and arousal and valence ratings for Neutral, Negative and

Beyond Decoding Deficit: Inhibitory Effect of Positional Syllable Frequency in Dyslexic Spanish Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luque, Juan L.; López-Zamora, Miguel; Álvarez, Carlos J.; Bordoy, Soraya

2013-01-01

This study explores whether activation and inhibition word processes contribute to the characteristic speed deficits found in transparent orthographies (Wimmer, "Appl Psycholinguist" 14:1-33, 1993). A second and fourth grade sample of normal school readers and dyslexic school readers participated in a lexical decision task. Words were…

General contrast effects in speech perception: effect of preceding liquid on stop consonant identification.

PubMed

Lotto, A J; Kluender, K R

1998-05-01

When members of a series of synthesized stop consonants varying acoustically in F3 characteristics and varying perceptually from /da/ to /ga/ are preceded by /al/, subjects report hearing more /ga/ syllables relative to when each member is preceded by /ar/ (Mann, 1980). It has been suggested that this result demonstrates the existence of a mechanism that compensates for coarticulation via tacit knowledge of articulatory dynamics and constraints, or through perceptual recovery of vocal-tract dynamics. The present study was designed to assess the degree to which these perceptual effects are specific to qualities of human articulatory sources. In three experiments, series of consonant-vowel (CV) stimuli varying in F3-onset frequency (/da/-/ga/) were preceded by speech versions or nonspeech analogues of /al/ and /ar/. The effect of liquid identity on stop consonant labeling remained when the preceding VC was produced by a female speaker and the CV syllable was modeled after a male speaker's productions. Labeling boundaries also shifted when the CV was preceded by a sine wave glide modeled after F3 characteristics of /al/ and /ar/. Identifications shifted even when the preceding sine wave was of constant frequency equal to the offset frequency of F3 from a natural production. These results suggest an explanation in terms of general auditory processes as opposed to recovery of or knowledge of specific articulatory dynamics.

[Acoustic characteristics of adductor spasmodic dysphonia].

PubMed

Yang, Yang; Wang, Li-Ping

2008-06-01

To explore the acoustic characteristics of adductor spasmodic dysphonia. The acoustic characteristics, including acoustic signal of recorded voice, three-dimensional sonogram patterns and subjective assessment of voice, between 10 patients (7 women, 3 men) with adductor spasmodic dysphonia and 10 healthy volunteers (5 women, 5 men), were compared. The main clinical manifestation of adductor spasmodic dysphonia included the disorders of sound quality, rhyme and fluency. It demonstrated the tension dysphonia when reading, acoustic jitter, momentary fluctuation of frequency and volume, voice squeezing, interruption, voice prolongation, and losing normal chime. Among 10 patients, there were 1 mild dysphonia (abnormal syllable number < 25%), 6 moderate dysphonia (abnormal syllable number 25%-49%), 1 severe dysphonia (abnormal syllable number 50%-74%) and 2 extremely severe dysphonia (abnormal syllable number > or = 75%). The average reading time in 10 patients was 49 s, with reading time extension and aphasia area interruption in acoustic signals, whereas the average reading time in health control group was 30 s, without voice interruption. The aphasia ratio averaged 42%. The respective symptom syllable in different patients demonstrated in the three-dimensional sonogram. There were voice onset time prolongation, irregular, interrupted and even absent vowel formants. The consonant of symptom syllables displayed absence or prolongation of friction murmur in the block-friction murmur occasionally. The acoustic characteristics of adductor spasmodic dysphonia is the disorders of sound quality, rhyme and fluency. The three-dimensional sonogram of the symptom syllables show distinctive changes of proportional vowels or consonant phonemes.

Masked syllable priming effects in word and picture naming in Chinese.

PubMed

You, Wenping; Zhang, Qingfang; Verdonschot, Rinus G

2012-01-01

Four experiments investigated the role of the syllable in Chinese spoken word production. Chen, Chen and Ferrand (2003) reported a syllable priming effect when primes and targets shared the first syllable using a masked priming paradigm in Chinese. Our Experiment 1 was a direct replication of Chen et al.'s (2003) Experiment 3 employing CV (e.g., ,/ba2.ying2/, strike camp) and CVG (e.g., ,/bai2.shou3/, white haired) syllable types. Experiment 2 tested the syllable priming effect using different syllable types: e.g., CV (,/qi4.qiu2/, balloon) and CVN (,/qing1.ting2/, dragonfly). Experiment 3 investigated this issue further using line drawings of common objects as targets that were preceded either by a CV (e.g., ,/qi3/, attempt), or a CVN (e.g., ,/qing2/, affection) prime. Experiment 4 further examined the priming effect by a comparison between CV or CVN priming and an unrelated priming condition using CV-NX (e.g., ,/mi2.ni3/, mini) and CVN-CX (e.g., ,/min2.ju1/, dwellings) as target words. These four experiments consistently found that CV targets were named faster when preceded by CV primes than when they were preceded by CVG, CVN or unrelated primes, whereas CVG or CVN targets showed the reverse pattern. These results indicate that the priming effect critically depends on the match between the structure of the prime and that of the first syllable of the target. The effect obtained in this study was consistent across different stimuli and different tasks (word and picture naming), and provides more conclusive and consistent data regarding the role of the syllable in Chinese speech production.

Word-level prominence in Persian: An Experimental Study.

PubMed

Sadeghi, Vahid

2017-12-01

Previous literature on the phonetics of stress in Persian has reported that fundamental frequency is the only reliable acoustic correlate of stress, and that stressed and unstressed syllables are not differentiated from each other in the absence of accentuation. In this study, the effects of lexical stress on duration, overall intensity and spectral tilt were examined in Persian both in the accented and unaccented conditions. Results showed that syllable duration is consistently affected by stress in Persian in both the accented and unaccented conditions across all vowel types. Unlike duration, the results for overall intensity and spectral tilt were significant only in the accented condition, suggesting that measures of intensity are not a correlate of stress in Persian but they are mainly caused by the presence of a pitch movement. The findings are phonologically interpreted as suggesting that word-level prominence in Persian is typologically similar to 'stress accent' languages, in which multiple phonetic cues are used to signal the prominence contrast in the accented condition, and stressed and unstressed syllables are different from each other even when the word is not pitch-accented.

An Avian Basal Ganglia-Forebrain Circuit Contributes Differentially to Syllable Versus Sequence Variability of Adult Bengalese Finch Song

PubMed Central

Hampton, Cara M.; Sakata, Jon T.; Brainard, Michael S.

2009-01-01

Behavioral variability is important for motor skill learning but continues to be present and actively regulated even in well-learned behaviors. In adult songbirds, two types of song variability can persist and are modulated by social context: variability in syllable structure and variability in syllable sequencing. The degree to which the control of both types of adult variability is shared or distinct remains unknown. The output of a basal ganglia-forebrain circuit, LMAN (the lateral magnocellular nucleus of the anterior nidopallium), has been implicated in song variability. For example, in adult zebra finches, neurons in LMAN actively control the variability of syllable structure. It is unclear, however, whether LMAN contributes to variability in adult syllable sequencing because sequence variability in adult zebra finch song is minimal. In contrast, Bengalese finches retain variability in both syllable structure and syllable sequencing into adulthood. We analyzed the effects of LMAN lesions on the variability of syllable structure and sequencing and on the social modulation of these forms of variability in adult Bengalese finches. We found that lesions of LMAN significantly reduced the variability of syllable structure but not of syllable sequencing. We also found that LMAN lesions eliminated the social modulation of the variability of syllable structure but did not detect significant effects on the modulation of sequence variability. These results show that LMAN contributes differentially to syllable versus sequence variability of adult song and suggest that these forms of variability are regulated by distinct neural pathways. PMID:19357331

An Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Altered Auditory Feedback on the Conversational Speech of Adults Who Stutter

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lincoln, Michelle; Packman, Ann; Onslow, Mark; Jones, Mark

2010-01-01

Purpose: To investigate the impact on percentage of syllables stuttered of various durations of delayed auditory feedback (DAF), levels of frequency-altered feedback (FAF), and masking auditory feedback (MAF) during conversational speech. Method: Eleven adults who stuttered produced 10-min conversational speech samples during a control condition…

Early sound patterns in the speech of two Brazilian Portuguese speakers.

PubMed

Teixeira, Elizabeth Reis; Davis, Barbara L

2002-06-01

Sound patterns in the speech of two Brazilian-Portuguese speaking children are compared with early production patterns in English-learning children as well as English and Brazilian-Portuguese (BP) characteristics. The relationship between production system effects and ambient language influences in the acquisition of early sound patterns is of primary interest, as English and BP are characterized by differing phonological systems. Results emphasize the primacy of production system effects in early acquisition, although even the earliest word forms show evidence of perceptual effects from the ambient language in both BP children. Use of labials and coronals and low and midfront vowels in simple syllable shapes is consistent with acquisition data for this period across languages. However, potential ambient language influences include higher frequencies of dorsals, use of multisyllabic words, and different phone types in syllable-offset position. These results suggest that to fully understand early acquisition of sound systems one must account for both production system effects and perceptual effects from the ambient language.

Spatiotemporal frequency characteristics of cerebral oscillations during the perception of fundamental frequency contour changes in one-syllable intonation.

PubMed

Ueno, Sanae; Okumura, Eiichi; Remijn, Gerard B; Yoshimura, Yuko; Kikuchi, Mitsuru; Shitamichi, Kiyomi; Nagao, Kikuko; Mochiduki, Masayuki; Haruta, Yasuhiro; Hayashi, Norio; Munesue, Toshio; Tsubokawa, Tsunehisa; Oi, Manabu; Nakatani, Hideo; Higashida, Haruhiro; Minabe, Yoshio

2012-05-02

Accurate perception of fundamental frequency (F0) contour changes in the human voice is important for understanding a speaker's intonation, and consequently also his/her attitude. In this study, we investigated the neural processes involved in the perception of F0 contour changes in the Japanese one-syllable interjection "ne" in 21 native-Japanese listeners. A passive oddball paradigm was applied in which "ne" with a high falling F0 contour, used when urging a reaction from the listener, was randomly presented as a rare deviant among a frequent "ne" syllable with a flat F0 contour (i.e., meaningless intonation). We applied an adaptive spatial filtering method to the neuromagnetic time course recorded by whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) and estimated the spatiotemporal frequency dynamics of event-related cerebral oscillatory changes in the oddball paradigm. Our results demonstrated a significant elevation of beta band event-related desynchronization (ERD) in the right temporal and frontal areas, in time windows from 100 to 300 and from 300 to 500 ms after the onset of deviant stimuli (high falling F0 contour). This is the first study to reveal detailed spatiotemporal frequency characteristics of cerebral oscillations during the perception of intonational (not lexical) F0 contour changes in the human voice. The results further confirmed that the right hemisphere is associated with perception of intonational F0 contour information in the human voice, especially in early time windows. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Assessment of rhythmic entrainment at multiple timescales in dyslexia: evidence for disruption to syllable timing.

PubMed

Leong, Victoria; Goswami, Usha

2014-02-01

Developmental dyslexia is associated with rhythmic difficulties, including impaired perception of beat patterns in music and prosodic stress patterns in speech. Spoken prosodic rhythm is cued by slow (<10 Hz) fluctuations in speech signal amplitude. Impaired neural oscillatory tracking of these slow amplitude modulation (AM) patterns is one plausible source of impaired rhythm tracking in dyslexia. Here, we characterise the temporal profile of the dyslexic rhythm deficit by examining rhythmic entrainment at multiple speech timescales. Adult dyslexic participants completed two experiments aimed at testing the perception and production of speech rhythm. In the perception task, participants tapped along to the beat of 4 metrically-regular nursery rhyme sentences. In the production task, participants produced the same 4 sentences in time to a metronome beat. Rhythmic entrainment was assessed using both traditional rhythmic indices and a novel AM-based measure, which utilised 3 dominant AM timescales in the speech signal each associated with a different phonological grain-sized unit (0.9-2.5 Hz, prosodic stress; 2.5-12 Hz, syllables; 12-40 Hz, phonemes). The AM-based measure revealed atypical rhythmic entrainment by dyslexic participants to syllable patterns in speech, in perception and production. In the perception task, both groups showed equally strong phase-locking to Syllable AM patterns, but dyslexic responses were entrained to a significantly earlier oscillatory phase angle than controls. In the production task, dyslexic utterances showed shorter syllable intervals, and differences in Syllable:Phoneme AM cross-frequency synchronisation. Our data support the view that rhythmic entrainment at slow (∼5 Hz, Syllable) rates is atypical in dyslexia, suggesting that neural mechanisms for syllable perception and production may also be atypical. These syllable timing deficits could contribute to the atypical development of phonological representations for spoken words, the central cognitive characteristic of developmental dyslexia across languages. Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Assessment of rhythmic entrainment at multiple timescales in dyslexia: Evidence for disruption to syllable timing☆

PubMed Central

Leong, Victoria; Goswami, Usha

2014-01-01

Developmental dyslexia is associated with rhythmic difficulties, including impaired perception of beat patterns in music and prosodic stress patterns in speech. Spoken prosodic rhythm is cued by slow (<10 Hz) fluctuations in speech signal amplitude. Impaired neural oscillatory tracking of these slow amplitude modulation (AM) patterns is one plausible source of impaired rhythm tracking in dyslexia. Here, we characterise the temporal profile of the dyslexic rhythm deficit by examining rhythmic entrainment at multiple speech timescales. Adult dyslexic participants completed two experiments aimed at testing the perception and production of speech rhythm. In the perception task, participants tapped along to the beat of 4 metrically-regular nursery rhyme sentences. In the production task, participants produced the same 4 sentences in time to a metronome beat. Rhythmic entrainment was assessed using both traditional rhythmic indices and a novel AM-based measure, which utilised 3 dominant AM timescales in the speech signal each associated with a different phonological grain-sized unit (0.9–2.5 Hz, prosodic stress; 2.5–12 Hz, syllables; 12–40 Hz, phonemes). The AM-based measure revealed atypical rhythmic entrainment by dyslexic participants to syllable patterns in speech, in perception and production. In the perception task, both groups showed equally strong phase-locking to Syllable AM patterns, but dyslexic responses were entrained to a significantly earlier oscillatory phase angle than controls. In the production task, dyslexic utterances showed shorter syllable intervals, and differences in Syllable:Phoneme AM cross-frequency synchronisation. Our data support the view that rhythmic entrainment at slow (∼5 Hz, Syllable) rates is atypical in dyslexia, suggesting that neural mechanisms for syllable perception and production may also be atypical. These syllable timing deficits could contribute to the atypical development of phonological representations for spoken words, the central cognitive characteristic of developmental dyslexia across languages. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled . PMID:23916752

The Effect of the Number of Syllables on Handwriting Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lambert, Eric; Kandel, Sonia; Fayol, Michel; Esperet, Eric

2008-01-01

Four experiments examined whether motor programming in handwriting production can be modulated by the syllable structure of the word to be written. This study manipulated the number of syllables. The items, words and pseudo-words, had 2, 3 or 4 syllables. French adults copied them three times. We measured the latencies between the visual…

Stuttering Frequency, Speech Rate, Speech Naturalness, and Speech Effort During the Production of Voluntary Stuttering.

PubMed

Davidow, Jason H; Grossman, Heather L; Edge, Robin L

2018-05-01

Voluntary stuttering techniques involve persons who stutter purposefully interjecting disfluencies into their speech. Little research has been conducted on the impact of these techniques on the speech pattern of persons who stutter. The present study examined whether changes in the frequency of voluntary stuttering accompanied changes in stuttering frequency, articulation rate, speech naturalness, and speech effort. In total, 12 persons who stutter aged 16-34 years participated. Participants read four 300-syllable passages during a control condition, and three voluntary stuttering conditions that involved attempting to produce purposeful, tension-free repetitions of initial sounds or syllables of a word for two or more repetitions (i.e., bouncing). The three voluntary stuttering conditions included bouncing on 5%, 10%, and 15% of syllables read. Friedman tests and follow-up Wilcoxon signed ranks tests were conducted for the statistical analyses. Stuttering frequency, articulation rate, and speech naturalness were significantly different between the voluntary stuttering conditions. Speech effort did not differ between the voluntary stuttering conditions. Stuttering frequency was significantly lower during the three voluntary stuttering conditions compared to the control condition, and speech effort was significantly lower during two of the three voluntary stuttering conditions compared to the control condition. Due to changes in articulation rate across the voluntary stuttering conditions, it is difficult to conclude, as has been suggested previously, that voluntary stuttering is the reason for stuttering reductions found when using voluntary stuttering techniques. Additionally, future investigations should examine different types of voluntary stuttering over an extended period of time to determine their impact on stuttering frequency, speech rate, speech naturalness, and speech effort.

Learning multiple rules simultaneously: Affixes are more salient than reduplications.

PubMed

Gervain, Judit; Endress, Ansgar D

2017-04-01

Language learners encounter numerous opportunities to learn regularities, but need to decide which of these regularities to learn, because some are not productive in their native language. Here, we present an account of rule learning based on perceptual and memory primitives (Endress, Dehaene-Lambertz, & Mehler, Cognition, 105(3), 577-614, 2007; Endress, Nespor, & Mehler, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(8), 348-353, 2009), suggesting that learners preferentially learn regularities that are more salient to them, and that the pattern of salience reflects the frequency of language features across languages. We contrast this view with previous artificial grammar learning research, which suggests that infants "choose" the regularities they learn based on rational, Bayesian criteria (Frank & Tenenbaum, Cognition, 120(3), 360-371, 2013; Gerken, Cognition, 98(3)B67-B74, 2006, Cognition, 115(2), 362-366, 2010). In our experiments, adult participants listened to syllable strings starting with a syllable reduplication and always ending with the same "affix" syllable, or to syllable strings starting with this "affix" syllable and ending with the "reduplication". Both affixation and reduplication are frequently used for morphological marking across languages. We find three crucial results. First, participants learned both regularities simultaneously. Second, affixation regularities seemed easier to learn than reduplication regularities. Third, regularities in sequence offsets were easier to learn than regularities at sequence onsets. We show that these results are inconsistent with previous Bayesian rule learning models, but mesh well with the perceptual or memory primitives view. Further, we show that the pattern of salience revealed in our experiments reflects the distribution of regularities across languages. Ease of acquisition might thus be one determinant of the frequency of regularities across languages.

The Ortho-Syllable as a Processing Unit in Handwriting: The Mute E Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lambert, Eric; Sausset, Solen; Rigalleau, François

2015-01-01

Some research on written production has focused on the role of the syllable as a processing unit. However, the precise nature of this syllable unit has yet to be elucidated. The present study examined whether the nature of this processing unit is orthographic (i.e., an ortho-syllable) or phonological. We asked French adults to copy three-syllable…

Attention effects on the processing of task-relevant and task-irrelevant speech sounds and letters

PubMed Central

Mittag, Maria; Inauri, Karina; Huovilainen, Tatu; Leminen, Miika; Salo, Emma; Rinne, Teemu; Kujala, Teija; Alho, Kimmo

2013-01-01

We used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to study effects of selective attention on the processing of attended and unattended spoken syllables and letters. Participants were presented with syllables randomly occurring in the left or right ear and spoken by different voices and with a concurrent foveal stream of consonant letters written in darker or lighter fonts. During auditory phonological (AP) and non-phonological tasks, they responded to syllables in a designated ear starting with a vowel and spoken by female voices, respectively. These syllables occurred infrequently among standard syllables starting with a consonant and spoken by male voices. During visual phonological and non-phonological tasks, they responded to consonant letters with names starting with a vowel and to letters written in dark fonts, respectively. These letters occurred infrequently among standard letters with names starting with a consonant and written in light fonts. To examine genuine effects of attention and task on ERPs not overlapped by ERPs associated with target processing or deviance detection, these effects were studied only in ERPs to auditory and visual standards. During selective listening to syllables in a designated ear, ERPs to the attended syllables were negatively displaced during both phonological and non-phonological auditory tasks. Selective attention to letters elicited an early negative displacement and a subsequent positive displacement (Pd) of ERPs to attended letters being larger during the visual phonological than non-phonological task suggesting a higher demand for attention during the visual phonological task. Active suppression of unattended speech during the AP and non-phonological tasks and during the visual phonological tasks was suggested by a rejection positivity (RP) to unattended syllables. We also found evidence for suppression of the processing of task-irrelevant visual stimuli in visual ERPs during auditory tasks involving left-ear syllables. PMID:24348324

Speech-feature discrimination in children with Asperger syndrome as determined with the multi-feature mismatch negativity paradigm.

PubMed

Kujala, T; Kuuluvainen, S; Saalasti, S; Jansson-Verkasalo, E; von Wendt, L; Lepistö, T

2010-09-01

Asperger syndrome, belonging to the autistic spectrum of disorders, involves deficits in social interaction and prosodic use of language but normal development of formal language abilities. Auditory processing involves both hyper- and hypoactive reactivity to acoustic changes. Responses composed of mismatch negativity (MMN) and obligatory components were recorded for five types of deviations in syllables (vowel, vowel duration, consonant, syllable frequency, syllable intensity) with the multi-feature paradigm from 8-12-year old children with Asperger syndrome. Children with Asperger syndrome had larger MMNs for intensity and smaller MMNs for frequency changes than typically developing children, whereas no MMN group differences were found for the other deviant stimuli. Furthermore, children with Asperger syndrome performed more poorly than controls in Comprehension of Instructions subtest of a language test battery. Cortical speech-sound discrimination is aberrant in children with Asperger syndrome. This is evident both as hypersensitive and depressed neural reactions to speech-sound changes, and is associated with features (frequency, intensity) which are relevant for prosodic processing. The multi-feature MMN paradigm, which includes variation and thereby resembles natural speech hearing circumstances, suggests abnormal pattern of speech discrimination in Asperger syndrome, including both hypo- and hypersensitive responses for speech features. 2010 International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Typing is writing: Linguistic properties modulate typing execution.

PubMed

Pinet, Svetlana; Ziegler, Johannes C; Alario, F-Xavier

2016-12-01

Typing is becoming our preferred way of writing. Perhaps because of the relative recency of this change, very few studies have investigated typing from a psycholinguistic perspective. In addition, and despite obvious similarities between typing and handwriting, typing research has remained rather disconnected from handwriting research. The current study aimed at bridging this gap by evaluating how typing is affected by a number of psycholinguistic variables defined at the word, syllable, and letter levels. In a writing-to-dictation task, we assessed typing performance by measuring response accuracy, onset latencies - an index of response preparation and initiation - and interkeystroke intervals (IKIs) - an index of response execution processes. The lexical and sublexical factors revealed a composite pattern of effects. Lexical frequency improved response latencies and accuracy, while bigram frequency speeded up IKIs. Sound-spelling consistency improved latencies, but had an inhibitory effect on IKI. IKIs were also longer at syllable boundaries. Together, our findings can be fit within a framework for typed production that combines the previously developed theories of spelling and typing execution. At their interface, we highlight the need for an intermediate hierarchical stage, perhaps in the form of a graphemic buffer for typing.

Performance constraints and the production of birdsong

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Suthers, Roderick A.; Vallet, Eric; Zollinger, Sue Anne

2004-05-01

The role of physical and physiological constraints in determining the performance limits on the tempo and frequency bandwidth of birdsong was investigated. One series of experiments examined the mechanism by which a vocal mimic, the northern mockingbird (Mimus polygottos), copied the songs of other species with which it was tutored as a juvenile. Other experiments analyzed the motor basis of special canary (Serinus canaria) syllables eliciting sexual responses from females. In each case, the mechanism of vocalization was determined by measuring the respiratory dynamics and sound produced on each side of the songbirds duplex vocal organ, the syrinx. When mockingbirds copied the songs of other species the accuracy of their copy depended on the accuracy with which they reproduced the motor pattern used by the tutor species. Motor difficulty of various acoustic features was assessed by the accuracy of its copy. The high repetition rate, broadband canary syllables preferred by females required especially demanding bilateral motor skills. The results indicate that constraints on the rate of respiratory ventilation and bilateral syringeal coordination can set an upper limit on syllable repetition rate and frequency bandwidth. [Work supported by NIH and NSF.

True katydids (Pseudophyllinae) from Guadeloupe: acoustic signals and functional considerations of song production.

PubMed

Stumpner, Andreas; Dann, Angela; Schink, Matthias; Gubert, Silvia; Hugel, Sylvain

2013-01-01

Guadeloupe, the largest of the Leeward Islands, harbors three species of Pseudophyllinae (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) belonging to distinct tribes. This study examined the basic aspects of sound production and acousto-vibratory behavior of these species. As the songs of many Pseudophyllinae are complex and peak at high frequencies, they require high quality recordings. Wild specimens were therefore recorded ex situ. Collected specimens were used in structure-function experiments. Karukerana aguilari Bonfils (Pterophyllini) is a large species with a mirror in each tegmen and conspicuous folds over the mirror. It sings 4-6 syllables, each comprising 10-20 pulses, with several peaks in the frequency spectrum between 4 and 20 kHz. The song is among the loudest in Orthoptera (> 125 dB SPL in 10 cm distance). The folds are protective and have no function in song production. Both mirrors may work independently in sound radiation. Nesonotus reticulatus (Fabricius) (Cocconotini) produces verses from two syllables at irregular intervals. The song peaks around 20 kHz. While singing, the males often produce a tremulation signal with the abdomen at about 8-10 Hz. To our knowledge, it is the first record of simultaneous calling song and tremulation in Orthoptera. Other males reply to the tremulation with their own tremulation. Xerophyllopteryx fumosa (Brunner von Wattenwyl) (Pleminiini) is a large, bark-like species, producing a syllable of around 20 pulses. The syllables are produced with irregular rhythms (often two with shorter intervals). The song peaks around 2-3 kHz and 10 kHz. The hind wings are relatively thick and are held between the half opened tegmina during singing. Removal of the hind wings reduces song intensity by about 5 dB, especially of the low frequency component, suggesting that the hind wings have a role in amplifying the song.

The Basis of the Syllable Hierarchy: Articulatory Pressures or Universal Phonological Constraints?

PubMed

Zhao, Xu; Berent, Iris

2018-02-01

Across languages, certain syllable types are systematically preferred to others (e.g., [Formula: see text] lbif, where [Formula: see text] indicates a preference). Previous research has shown that these preferences are active in the brains of individual speakers, they are evident even when none of these syllable types exists in participants' language, and even when the stimuli are presented in print. These results suggest that the syllable hierarchy cannot be reduced to either lexical or auditory/phonetic pressures. Here, we examine whether the syllable hierarchy is due to articulatory pressures. According to the motor embodiment view, the perception of a linguistic stimulus requires simulating its production; dispreferred syllables (e.g., lbif) are universally disliked because their production is harder to simulate. To address this possibility, we assessed syllable preferences while articulation was mechanically suppressed. Our four experiments each found significant effects of suppression. Remarkably, people remained sensitive to the syllable hierarchy regardless of suppression. Specifically, results with auditory materials (Experiments 1-2) showed strong effects of syllable structure irrespective of suppression. Moreover, syllable structure uniquely accounted for listeners' behavior even when controlling for several phonetic characteristics of our auditory materials. Results with printed stimuli (Experiments 3-4) were more complex, as participants in these experiments relied on both phonological and graphemic information. Nonetheless, readers were sensitive to most of the syllable hierarchy (e.g., [Formula: see text]), and these preferences emerged when articulation was suppressed, and even when the statistical properties of our materials were controlled via a regression analysis. Together, these findings indicate that speakers possess broad grammatical preferences that are irreducible to either sensory or motor factors.

Speaking rate affects the perception of duration as a suprasegmental lexical-stress cue.

PubMed

Reinisch, Eva; Jesse, Alexandra; McQueen, James M

2011-06-01

Three categorization experiments investigated whether the speaking rate of a preceding sentence influences durational cues to the perception of suprasegmental lexical-stress patterns. Dutch two-syllable word fragments had to be judged as coming from one of two longer words that matched the fragment segmentally but differed in lexical stress placement. Word pairs contrasted primary stress on either the first versus the second syllable or the first versus the third syllable. Duration of the initial or the second syllable of the fragments and rate of the preceding context (fast vs. slow) were manipulated. Listeners used speaking rate to decide about the degree of stress on initial syllables whether the syllables' absolute durations were informative about stress (Experiment Ia) or not (Experiment Ib). Rate effects on the second syllable were visible only when the initial syllable was ambiguous in duration with respect to the preceding rate context (Experiment 2). Absolute second syllable durations contributed little to stress perception (Experiment 3). These results suggest that speaking rate is used to disambiguate words and that rate-modulated stress cues are more important on initial than noninitial syllables. Speaking rate affects perception of suprasegmental information.

Vocal Generalization Depends on Gesture Identity and Sequence

PubMed Central

Sober, Samuel J.

2014-01-01

Generalization, the brain's ability to transfer motor learning from one context to another, occurs in a wide range of complex behaviors. However, the rules of generalization in vocal behavior are poorly understood, and it is unknown how vocal learning generalizes across an animal's entire repertoire of natural vocalizations and sequences. Here, we asked whether generalization occurs in a nonhuman vocal learner and quantified its properties. We hypothesized that adaptive error correction of a vocal gesture produced in one sequence would generalize to the same gesture produced in other sequences. To test our hypothesis, we manipulated the fundamental frequency (pitch) of auditory feedback in Bengalese finches (Lonchura striata var. domestica) to create sensory errors during vocal gestures (song syllables) produced in particular sequences. As hypothesized, error-corrective learning on pitch-shifted vocal gestures generalized to the same gestures produced in other sequential contexts. Surprisingly, generalization magnitude depended strongly on sequential distance from the pitch-shifted syllables, with greater adaptation for gestures produced near to the pitch-shifted syllable. A further unexpected result was that nonshifted syllables changed their pitch in the direction opposite from the shifted syllables. This apparently antiadaptive pattern of generalization could not be explained by correlations between generalization and the acoustic similarity to the pitch-shifted syllable. These findings therefore suggest that generalization depends on the type of vocal gesture and its sequential context relative to other gestures and may reflect an advantageous strategy for vocal learning and maintenance. PMID:24741046

Impaired extraction of speech rhythm from temporal modulation patterns in speech in developmental dyslexia

PubMed Central

Leong, Victoria; Goswami, Usha

2014-01-01

Dyslexia is associated with impaired neural representation of the sound structure of words (phonology). The “phonological deficit” in dyslexia may arise in part from impaired speech rhythm perception, thought to depend on neural oscillatory phase-locking to slow amplitude modulation (AM) patterns in the speech envelope. Speech contains AM patterns at multiple temporal rates, and these different AM rates are associated with phonological units of different grain sizes, e.g., related to stress, syllables or phonemes. Here, we assess the ability of adults with dyslexia to use speech AMs to identify rhythm patterns (RPs). We study 3 important temporal rates: “Stress” (~2 Hz), “Syllable” (~4 Hz) and “Sub-beat” (reduced syllables, ~14 Hz). 21 dyslexics and 21 controls listened to nursery rhyme sentences that had been tone-vocoded using either single AM rates from the speech envelope (Stress only, Syllable only, Sub-beat only) or pairs of AM rates (Stress + Syllable, Syllable + Sub-beat). They were asked to use the acoustic rhythm of the stimulus to identity the original nursery rhyme sentence. The data showed that dyslexics were significantly poorer at detecting rhythm compared to controls when they had to utilize multi-rate temporal information from pairs of AMs (Stress + Syllable or Syllable + Sub-beat). These data suggest that dyslexia is associated with a reduced ability to utilize AMs <20 Hz for rhythm recognition. This perceptual deficit in utilizing AM patterns in speech could be underpinned by less efficient neuronal phase alignment and cross-frequency neuronal oscillatory synchronization in dyslexia. Dyslexics' perceptual difficulties in capturing the full spectro-temporal complexity of speech over multiple timescales could contribute to the development of impaired phonological representations for words, the cognitive hallmark of dyslexia across languages. PMID:24605099

The Effect of Modern Standard Arabic Orthography on Speech Production by Arab Children with Hearing Loss

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Most, Tova; Levin, Iris; Sarsour, Marwa

2008-01-01

This article examined the effect of Modern Standard Arabic orthography on speech production quality (syllable stress and vowels) by 23 Arabic-speaking children with severe or profound hearing loss aged 8-12 years. Children produced 15 one-syllable minimal pairs of words that differed in vowel length (short vs. long) and 20 two-syllable minimal…

Effects of age and hearing loss on recognition of unaccented and accented multisyllabic words.

PubMed

Gordon-Salant, Sandra; Yeni-Komshian, Grace H; Fitzgibbons, Peter J; Cohen, Julie I

2015-02-01

The effects of age and hearing loss on recognition of unaccented and accented words of varying syllable length were investigated. It was hypothesized that with increments in length of syllables, there would be atypical alterations in syllable stress in accented compared to native English, and that these altered stress patterns would be sensitive to auditory temporal processing deficits with aging. Sets of one-, two-, three-, and four-syllable words with the same initial syllable were recorded by one native English and two Spanish-accented talkers. Lists of these words were presented in isolation and in sentence contexts to younger and older normal-hearing listeners and to older hearing-impaired listeners. Hearing loss effects were apparent for unaccented and accented monosyllabic words, whereas age effects were observed for recognition of accented multisyllabic words, consistent with the notion that altered syllable stress patterns with accent are sensitive for revealing effects of age. Older listeners also exhibited lower recognition scores for moderately accented words in sentence contexts than in isolation, suggesting that the added demands on working memory for words in sentence contexts impact recognition of accented speech. The general pattern of results suggests that hearing loss, age, and cognitive factors limit the ability to recognize Spanish-accented speech.

Effects of age and hearing loss on recognition of unaccented and accented multisyllabic words

PubMed Central

Gordon-Salant, Sandra; Yeni-Komshian, Grace H.; Fitzgibbons, Peter J.; Cohen, Julie I.

2015-01-01

The effects of age and hearing loss on recognition of unaccented and accented words of varying syllable length were investigated. It was hypothesized that with increments in length of syllables, there would be atypical alterations in syllable stress in accented compared to native English, and that these altered stress patterns would be sensitive to auditory temporal processing deficits with aging. Sets of one-, two-, three-, and four-syllable words with the same initial syllable were recorded by one native English and two Spanish-accented talkers. Lists of these words were presented in isolation and in sentence contexts to younger and older normal-hearing listeners and to older hearing-impaired listeners. Hearing loss effects were apparent for unaccented and accented monosyllabic words, whereas age effects were observed for recognition of accented multisyllabic words, consistent with the notion that altered syllable stress patterns with accent are sensitive for revealing effects of age. Older listeners also exhibited lower recognition scores for moderately accented words in sentence contexts than in isolation, suggesting that the added demands on working memory for words in sentence contexts impact recognition of accented speech. The general pattern of results suggests that hearing loss, age, and cognitive factors limit the ability to recognize Spanish-accented speech. PMID:25698021

Similar frequency of the McGurk effect in large samples of native Mandarin Chinese and American English speakers.

PubMed

Magnotti, John F; Basu Mallick, Debshila; Feng, Guo; Zhou, Bin; Zhou, Wen; Beauchamp, Michael S

2015-09-01

Humans combine visual information from mouth movements with auditory information from the voice to recognize speech. A common method for assessing multisensory speech perception is the McGurk effect: When presented with particular pairings of incongruent auditory and visual speech syllables (e.g., the auditory speech sounds for "ba" dubbed onto the visual mouth movements for "ga"), individuals perceive a third syllable, distinct from the auditory and visual components. Chinese and American cultures differ in the prevalence of direct facial gaze and in the auditory structure of their languages, raising the possibility of cultural- and language-related group differences in the McGurk effect. There is no consensus in the literature about the existence of these group differences, with some studies reporting less McGurk effect in native Mandarin Chinese speakers than in English speakers and others reporting no difference. However, these studies sampled small numbers of participants tested with a small number of stimuli. Therefore, we collected data on the McGurk effect from large samples of Mandarin-speaking individuals from China and English-speaking individuals from the USA (total n = 307) viewing nine different stimuli. Averaged across participants and stimuli, we found similar frequencies of the McGurk effect between Chinese and American participants (48 vs. 44 %). In both groups, we observed a large range of frequencies both across participants (range from 0 to 100 %) and stimuli (15 to 83 %) with the main effect of culture and language accounting for only 0.3 % of the variance in the data. High individual variability in perception of the McGurk effect necessitates the use of large sample sizes to accurately estimate group differences.

Using syllable-timed speech to treat preschool children who stutter: a multiple baseline experiment.

PubMed

Trajkovski, Natasha; Andrews, Cheryl; Onslow, Mark; Packman, Ann; O'Brian, Sue; Menzies, Ross

2009-03-01

This report presents the results of an experimental investigation of the effects of a syllable-timed speech treatment on three stuttering preschool children. Syllable-timed speech involves speaking with minimal differentiation in linguistic stress across syllables. Three children were studied in a multiple baseline across participants design, with percent syllables stuttered (%SS) as the dependent variable. In the week following the initial clinic visit, each child decreased their beyond-clinic stuttering by 40%, 49% and 32%, respectively. These reductions are only evident in the time series after the introduction of the syllable-timed speech treatment procedure. Participants required a mean of six clinic visits, of approximately 30-60 min in duration, to reach and sustain a beyond-clinic %SS below 1.0. The results suggest that clinical trials of the treatment are warranted. The reader will be able to summarize, discuss and evaluate: (1) The nature, impact and treatment options available for early stuttering. (2) The syllable-timed speech treatment protocol administered. (3) The advantages of syllable-timed speech treatment for early stuttering. (4) The questions that further research needs to answer about the syllable-timed speech treatment.

A Daily Oscillation in the Fundamental Frequency and Amplitude of Harmonic Syllables of Zebra Finch Song

PubMed Central

Wood, William E.; Osseward, Peter J.; Roseberry, Thomas K.; Perkel, David J.

2013-01-01

Complex motor skills are more difficult to perform at certain points in the day (for example, shortly after waking), but the daily trajectory of motor-skill error is more difficult to predict. By undertaking a quantitative analysis of the fundamental frequency (FF) and amplitude of hundreds of zebra finch syllables per animal per day, we find that zebra finch song follows a previously undescribed daily oscillation. The FF and amplitude of harmonic syllables rises across the morning, reaching a peak near mid-day, and then falls again in the late afternoon until sleep. This oscillation, although somewhat variable, is consistent across days and across animals and does not require serotonin, as animals with serotonergic lesions maintained daily oscillations. We hypothesize that this oscillation is driven by underlying physiological factors which could be shared with other taxa. Song production in zebra finches is a model system for studying complex learned behavior because of the ease of gathering comprehensive behavioral data and the tractability of the underlying neural circuitry. The daily oscillation that we describe promises to reveal new insights into how time of day affects the ability to accomplish a variety of complex learned motor skills. PMID:24312654

The Influence of Lexical Status and Neighborhood Density on Children's Nonword Repetition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Metsala, Jamie L.; Chisholm, Gina M.

2010-01-01

This study examined effects of lexical status and neighborhood density of constituent syllables on children's nonword repetition and interactions with nonword length. Lexical status of the target syllable impacted repetition accuracy for the longest nonwords. In addition, children made more errors that changed a nonword syllable to a word syllable…

The Frame Constraint on Experimentally Elicited Speech Errors in Japanese.

PubMed

Saito, Akie; Inoue, Tomoyoshi

2017-06-01

The so-called syllable position effect in speech errors has been interpreted as reflecting constraints posed by the frame structure of a given language, which is separately operating from linguistic content during speech production. The effect refers to the phenomenon that when a speech error occurs, replaced and replacing sounds tend to be in the same position within a syllable or word. Most of the evidence for the effect comes from analyses of naturally occurring speech errors in Indo-European languages, and there are few studies examining the effect in experimentally elicited speech errors and in other languages. This study examined whether experimentally elicited sound errors in Japanese exhibits the syllable position effect. In Japanese, the sub-syllabic unit known as "mora" is considered to be a basic sound unit in production. Results showed that the syllable position effect occurred in mora errors, suggesting that the frame constrains the ordering of sounds during speech production.

a Comparative Analysis of Fluent and Cerebral Palsied Speech.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

van Doorn, Janis Lee

Several features of the acoustic waveforms of fluent and cerebral palsied speech were compared, using six fluent and seven cerebral palsied subjects, with a major emphasis being placed on an investigation of the trajectories of the first three formants (vocal tract resonances). To provide an overall picture which included other acoustic features, fundamental frequency, intensity, speech timing (speech rate and syllable duration), and prevocalization (vocalization prior to initial stop consonants found in cerebral palsied speech) were also investigated. Measurements were made using repetitions of a test sentence which was chosen because it required large excursions of the speech articulators (lips, tongue and jaw), so that differences in the formant trajectories for the fluent and cerebral palsied speakers would be emphasized. The acoustic features were all extracted from the digitized speech waveform (10 kHz sampling rate): the fundamental frequency contours were derived manually, the intensity contours were measured using the signal covariance, speech rate and syllable durations were measured manually, as were the prevocalization durations, while the formant trajectories were derived from short time spectra which were calculated for each 10 ms of speech using linear prediction analysis. Differences which were found in the acoustic features can be summarized as follows. For cerebral palsied speakers, the fundamental frequency contours generally showed inappropriate exaggerated fluctuations, as did some of the intensity contours; the mean fundamental frequencies were either higher or the same as for the fluent subjects; speech rates were reduced, and syllable durations were longer; prevocalization was consistently present at the beginning of the test sentence; formant trajectories were found to have overall reduced frequency ranges, and to contain anomalous transitional features, but it is noteworthy that for any one cerebral palsied subject, the inappropriate trajectory pattern was generally reproducible. The anomalous transitional features took the form of (a) inappropriate transition patterns, (b) reduced frequency excursions, (c) increased transition durations, and (d) decreased maximum rates of frequency change.

Timed picture naming in seven languages

PubMed Central

BATES, ELIZABETH; D’AMICO, SIMONA; JACOBSEN, THOMAS; SZÉKELY, ANNA; ANDONOVA, ELENA; DEVESCOVI, ANTONELLA; HERRON, DAN; LU, CHING CHING; PECHMANN, THOMAS; PLÉH, CSABA; WICHA, NICOLE; FEDERMEIER, KARA; GERDJIKOVA, IRINI; GUTIERREZ, GABRIEL; HUNG, DAISY; HSU, JEANNE; IYER, GOWRI; KOHNERT, KATHERINE; MEHOTCHEVA, TEODORA; OROZCO-FIGUEROA, ARACELI; TZENG, ANGELA; TZENG, OVID

2012-01-01

Timed picture naming was compared in seven languages that vary along dimensions known to affect lexical access. Analyses over items focused on factors that determine cross-language universals and cross-language disparities. With regard to universals, number of alternative names had large effects on reaction time within and across languages after target–name agreement was controlled, suggesting inhibitory effects from lexical competitors. For all the languages, word frequency and goodness of depiction had large effects, but objective picture complexity did not. Effects of word structure variables (length, syllable structure, compounding, and initial frication) varied markedly over languages. Strong cross-language correlations were found in naming latencies, frequency, and length. Other-language frequency effects were observed (e.g., Chinese frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times) even after within-language effects were controlled (e.g., Spanish frequencies predicting Spanish reaction times). These surprising cross-language correlations challenge widely held assumptions about the lexical locus of length and frequency effects, suggesting instead that they may (at least in part) reflect familiarity and accessibility at a conceptual level that is shared over languages. PMID:12921412

Flexibility of orthographic and graphomotor coordination during a handwritten copy task: effect of time pressure

PubMed Central

Sausset, Solen; Lambert, Eric; Olive, Thierry

2013-01-01

The coordination of the various processes involved in language production is a subject of keen debate in writing research. Some authors hold that writing processes can be flexibly coordinated according to task demands, whereas others claim that process coordination is entirely inflexible. For instance, orthographic planning has been shown to be resource-dependent during handwriting, but inflexible in typing, even under time pressure. The present study therefore went one step further in studying flexibility in the coordination of orthographic processing and graphomotor execution, by measuring the impact of time pressure during a handwritten copy task. Orthographic and graphomotor processes were observed via syllable processing. Writers copied out two- and three-syllable words three times in a row, with and without time pressure. Latencies and letter measures at syllable boundaries were analyzed. We hypothesized that if coordination is flexible and varies according to task demands, it should be modified by time pressure, affecting both latency before execution and duration of execution. We therefore predicted that the extent of syllable processing before execution would be reduced under time pressure and, as a consequence, syllable effects during execution would be more salient. Results showed, however, that time pressure interacted neither with syllable number nor with syllable structure. Accordingly, syllable processing appears to remain the same regardless of time pressure. The flexibility of process coordination during handwriting is discussed, as is the operationalization of time pressure constraints. PMID:24319435

Experimental evidence for real-time song frequency shift in response to urban noise in a passerine bird.

PubMed

Bermúdez-Cuamatzin, Eira; Ríos-Chelén, Alejandro A; Gil, Diego; Garcia, Constantino Macías

2011-02-23

Research has shown that bird songs are modified in different ways to deal with urban noise and promote signal transmission through noisy environments. Urban noise is composed of low frequencies, thus the observation that songs have a higher minimum frequency in noisy places suggests this is a way of avoiding noise masking. Most studies are correlative and there is as yet little experimental evidence that this is a short-term mechanism owing to individual plasticity. Here we experimentally test if house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus) can modulate the minimum frequency of their songs in response to different noise levels. We exposed singing males to three continuous treatments: low-high-low noise levels. We found a significant increase in minimum frequency from low to high and a decrement from high to low treatments. We also found that this was mostly achieved by modifying the frequency of the same low-frequency syllable types used in the different treatments. When different low-frequency syllables were used, those sung during the noisy condition were longer than the ones sang during the quiet condition. We conclude that house finches modify their songs in several ways in response to urban noise, thus providing evidence of a short-term acoustic adaptation.

True Katydids (Pseudophyllinae) from Guadeloupe: Acoustic Signals and Functional Considerations of Song Production

PubMed Central

Stumpner, Andreas; Dann, Angela; Schink, Matthias; Gubert, Silvia; Hugel, Sylvain

2013-01-01

Guadeloupe, the largest of the Leeward Islands, harbors three species of Pseudophyllinae (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) belonging to distinct tribes. This study examined the basic aspects of sound production and acousto-vibratory behavior of these species. As the songs of many Pseudophyllinae are complex and peak at high frequencies, they require high quality recordings. Wild specimens were therefore recorded ex situ. Collected specimens were used in structure-function experiments. Karukerana aguilari Bonfils (Pterophyllini) is a large species with a mirror in each tegmen and conspicuous folds over the mirror. It sings 4–6 syllables, each comprising 10–20 pulses, with several peaks in the frequency spectrum between 4 and 20 kHz. The song is among the loudest in Orthoptera (> 125 dB SPL in 10 cm distance). The folds are protective and have no function in song production. Both mirrors may work independently in sound radiation. Nesonotus reticulatus (Fabricius) (Cocconotini) produces verses from two syllables at irregular intervals. The song peaks around 20 kHz. While singing, the males often produce a tremulation signal with the abdomen at about 8–10 Hz. To our knowledge, it is the first record of simultaneous calling song and tremulation in Orthoptera. Other males reply to the tremulation with their own tremulation. Xerophyllopteryx fumosa (Brunner von Wattenwyl) (Pleminiini) is a large, bark-like species, producing a syllable of around 20 pulses. The syllables are produced with irregular rhythms (often two with shorter intervals). The song peaks around 2–3 kHz and 10 kHz. The hind wings are relatively thick and are held between the half opened tegmina during singing. Removal of the hind wings reduces song intensity by about 5 dB, especially of the low frequency component, suggesting that the hind wings have a role in amplifying the song. PMID:24785151

Acoustic and laryngographic measures of the laryngeal reflexes of linguistic prominence and vocal effort in German1

PubMed Central

Mooshammer, Christine

2010-01-01

This study uses acoustic and physiological measures to compare laryngeal reflexes of global changes in vocal effort to the effects of modulating such aspects of linguistic prominence as sentence accent, induced by focus variation, and word stress. Seven speakers were recorded by using a laryngograph. The laryngographic pulses were preprocessed to normalize time and amplitude. The laryngographic pulse shape was quantified using open and skewness quotients and also by applying a functional version of the principal component analysis. Acoustic measures included the acoustic open quotient and spectral balance in the vowel ∕e∕ during the test syllable. The open quotient and the laryngographic pulse shape indicated a significantly shorter open phase for loud speech than for soft speech. Similar results were found for lexical stress, suggesting that lexical stress and loud speech are produced with a similar voice source mechanism. Stressed syllables were distinguished from unstressed syllables by their open phase and pulse shape, even in the absence of sentence accent. Evidence for laryngeal involvement in signaling focus, independent of fundamental frequency changes, was not as consistent across speakers. Acoustic results on various spectral balance measures were generally much less consistent compared to results from laryngographic data. PMID:20136226

InfoSyll: A Syllabary Providing Statistical Information on Phonological and Orthographic Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chetail, Fabienne; Mathey, Stephanie

2010-01-01

There is now a growing body of evidence in various languages supporting the claim that syllables are functional units of visual word processing. In the perspective of modeling the processing of polysyllabic words and the activation of syllables, current studies investigate syllabic effects with subtle manipulations. We present here a syllabary of…

The Effects of Background Noise on Dichotic Listening to Consonant-Vowel Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sequeira, Sarah Dos Santos; Specht, Karsten; Hamalainen, Heikki; Hugdahl, Kenneth

2008-01-01

Lateralization of verbal processing is frequently studied with the dichotic listening technique, yielding a so called right ear advantage (REA) to consonant-vowel (CV) syllables. However, little is known about how background noise affects the REA. To address this issue, we presented CV-syllables either in silence or with traffic background noise…

Influence of syllable structure on L2 auditory word learning.

PubMed

Hamada, Megumi; Goya, Hideki

2015-04-01

This study investigated the role of syllable structure in L2 auditory word learning. Based on research on cross-linguistic variation of speech perception and lexical memory, it was hypothesized that Japanese L1 learners of English would learn English words with an open-syllable structure without consonant clusters better than words with a closed-syllable structure and consonant clusters. Two groups of college students (Japanese group, N = 22; and native speakers of English, N = 21) learned paired English pseudowords and pictures. The pseudoword types differed in terms of the syllable structure and consonant clusters (congruent vs. incongruent) and the position of consonant clusters (coda vs. onset). Recall accuracy was higher for the pseudowords in the congruent type and the pseudowords with the coda-consonant clusters. The syllable structure effect was obtained from both participant groups, disconfirming the hypothesized cross-linguistic influence on L2 auditory word learning.

The effect of deep brain stimulation on the speech motor system.

PubMed

Mücke, Doris; Becker, Johannes; Barbe, Michael T; Meister, Ingo; Liebhart, Lena; Roettger, Timo B; Dembek, Till; Timmermann, Lars; Grice, Martine

2014-08-01

Chronic deep brain stimulation of the nucleus ventralis intermedius is an effective treatment for individuals with medication-resistant essential tremor. However, these individuals report that stimulation has a deleterious effect on their speech. The present study investigates one important factor leading to these effects: the coordination of oral and glottal articulation. Sixteen native-speaking German adults with essential tremor, between 26 and 86 years old, with and without chronic deep brain stimulation of the nucleus ventralis intermedius and 12 healthy, age-matched subjects were recorded performing a fast syllable repetition task (/papapa/, /tatata/, /kakaka/). Syllable duration and voicing-to-syllable ratio as well as parameters related directly to consonant production, voicing during constriction, and frication during constriction were measured. Voicing during constriction was greater in subjects with essential tremor than in controls, indicating a perseveration of voicing into the voiceless consonant. Stimulation led to fewer voiceless intervals (voicing-to-syllable ratio), indicating a reduced degree of glottal abduction during the entire syllable cycle. Stimulation also induced incomplete oral closures (frication during constriction), indicating imprecise oral articulation. The detrimental effect of stimulation on the speech motor system can be quantified using acoustic measures at the subsyllabic level.

Using Statistical Process Control Charts to Study Stuttering Frequency Variability during a Single Day

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karimi, Hamid; O'Brian, Sue; Onslow, Mark; Jones, Mark; Menzies, Ross; Packman, Ann

2013-01-01

Purpose: Stuttering varies between and within speaking situations. In this study, the authors used statistical process control charts with 10 case studies to investigate variability of stuttering frequency. Method: Participants were 10 adults who stutter. The authors counted the percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) for segments of their speech…

Comparing Nouns and Verbs in a Lexical Task

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cordier, Francoise; Croizet, Jean-Claude; Rigalleau, Francois

2013-01-01

We analyzed the differential processing of nouns and verbs in a lexical decision task. Moderate and high-frequency nouns and verbs were compared. The characteristics of our material were specified at the formal level (number of letters and syllables, number of homographs, orthographic neighbors, frequency and age of acquisition), and at the…

The genus Phlesirtes Bolivar, 1922 (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae: Conocephalinae, Conocephalini; Karniellina), a review of the genus with data on its bioacoustics and the description of new species.

PubMed

Hemp, Claudia; Heller, Klaus-Gerhard

2017-03-22

Species of the genus Phlesirtes are reviewed in this paper and 16 new species described. A key is provided to the species of Phlesirtes. Among the subtribe Karniellina of Conocephalini members of the genus Phlesirtes occupy habitats of montane to afroalpine grasslands in East Africa. All recorded species produced long-lasting, trill-like calling songs, consisting of sequences of continuously repeated syllables or syllable pairs with the peak of the carrier frequency in the low ultrasound.

Comparing nouns and verbs in a lexical task.

PubMed

Cordier, Françoise; Croizet, Jean-Claude; Rigalleau, François

2013-02-01

We analyzed the differential processing of nouns and verbs in a lexical decision task. Moderate and high-frequency nouns and verbs were compared. The characteristics of our material were specified at the formal level (number of letters and syllables, number of homographs, orthographic neighbors, frequency and age of acquisition), and at the semantic level (imagery, number and strength of associations, number of meanings, context dependency). A regression analysis indicated a classical frequency effect and a word-type effect, with latencies for verbs being slower than for nouns. The regression analysis did not permit the conclusion that semantic effects were involved (particularly imageability). Nevertheless, the semantic opposition between nouns as prototypical representations of objects, and verbs as prototypical representation of actions was not tested in this experiment and remains a good candidate explanation of the response time discrepancies between verbs and nouns.

Developmental weighting shifts for noise components of fricative-vowel syllables.

PubMed

Nittrouer, S; Miller, M E

1997-07-01

Previous studies have convincingly shown that the weight assigned to vocalic formant transitions in decisions of fricative identity for fricative-vowel syllables decreases with development. Although these same studies suggested a developmental increase in the weight assigned to the noise spectrum, the role of the aperiodic-noise portions of the signals in these fricative decisions have not been as well-studied. The purpose of these experiments was to examine more closely developmental shifts in the weight assigned to the aperiodic-noise components of the signals in decisions of syllable-initial fricative identity. Two experiments used noises varying along continua from a clear /s/ percept to a clear /[symbol: see text]/ percept. In experiment 1, these noises were created by combining /s/ and /[symbol: see text]/ noises produced by a human vocal tract at different amplitude ratios, a process that resulted in stimuli differing primarily in the amplitude of a relatively low-frequency (roughly 2.2-kHz) peak. In experiment 2, noises that varied only in the amplitude of a similar low-frequency peak were created with a software synthesizer. Both experiments used synthetic /a/ and /u/ portions, and efforts were made to minimize possible contributions of vocalic formant transitions to fricative labeling. Children and adults labeled the resulting stimuli as /s/ vowel or /[symbol: see text]/ vowel. Combined results of the two experiments showed that children's responses were less influenced than those of adults by the amplitude of the low-frequency peak of fricative noises.

Singing-Related Activity in Anterior Forebrain of Male Zebra Finches Reflects Courtship Motivation for Target Females

PubMed Central

Iwasaki, Mai; Poulsen, Thomas M.; Oka, Kotaro; Hessler, Neal A.

2013-01-01

A critical function of singing by male songbirds is to attract a female mate. Previous studies have suggested that the anterior forebrain system is involved in this courtship behavior. Neural activity in this system, including the striatal Area X, is strikingly dependent on the function of male singing. When males sing to attract a female bird rather than while alone, less variable neural activity results in less variable song spectral features, which may be attractive to the female. These characteristics of neural activity and singing thus may reflect a male's motivation for courtship. Here, we compared the variability of neural activity and song features between courtship singing directed to a female with whom a male had previously formed a pair-bond or to other females. Surprisingly, across all units, there was no clear tendency for a difference in variability of neural activity or song features between courtship of paired females, nonpaired females, or dummy females. However, across the population of recordings, there was a significant relationship between the relative variability of syllable frequency and neural activity: when syllable frequency was less variable to paired than nonpaired females, neural activity was also less variable (and vice-versa). These results show that the lower variability of neural activity and syllable frequency during directed singing is not a binary distinction from undirected singing, but can vary in intensity, possibly related to the relative preference of a male for his singing target. PMID:24312344

Syllable Structure Universals and Native Language Interference in Second Language Perception and Production: Positional Asymmetry and Perceptual Links to Accentedness

PubMed Central

Cheng, Bing; Zhang, Yang

2015-01-01

The present study investigated how syllable structure differences between the first Language (L1) and the second language (L2) affect L2 consonant perception and production at syllable-initial and syllable-final positions. The participants were Mandarin-speaking college students who studied English as a second language. Monosyllabic English words were used in the perception test. Production was recorded from each Chinese subject and rated for accentedness by two native speakers of English. Consistent with previous studies, significant positional asymmetry effects were found across speech sound categories in terms of voicing, place of articulation, and manner of articulation. Furthermore, significant correlations between perception and accentedness ratings were found at the syllable onset position but not for the coda. Many exceptions were also found, which could not be solely accounted for by differences in L1–L2 syllabic structures. The results show a strong effect of language experience at the syllable level, which joins force with acoustic, phonetic, and phonemic properties of individual consonants in influencing positional asymmetry in both domains of L2 segmental perception and production. The complexities and exceptions call for further systematic studies on the interactions between syllable structure universals and native language interference with refined theoretical models to specify the links between perception and production in second language acquisition. PMID:26635699

[Stimuli phrases of adductor spasmodic dysphonia phonatory break in mandarin Chinese].

PubMed

Ge, Pingjiang; Ren, Qingyi; Chen, Zhipeng; Cheng, Qiuhui; Sheng, Xiaoli; Wang, Ling; Chen, Shaohua; Zhang, Siyi

2015-12-01

To investigate the characteristics of adductor spasmodic dysphonia phonatory break in mandarin Chinese and select the stimuli phrases. Thirty-eight patients with adductor spasmodic dysphonia were involved in this study. Standard phrase " fù mŭ xīn" and a speech corpus in mandarin Chinese with 229 syllables covering all vowel and constant of mandarin Chinese were selected. Every patient read the phrases above twice in normal speed and comfortable voice. Two auditory perpetual speech pathologists marked phonatory break syllables respectively. The frequency of phonatory break syllables and their located phrases were calculated, rated and described. The phrases including the most phonatory break syllables were selected as stimuli phrases, the phonatory break frequency of which was also higher than that of standard phrase "fù mŭ xīn". Phonatory break happened in the reading of all patients. The average number of phonatory break syllables was 14 (3-33). Phonatroy break occurred when saying 177 (77.3%) syllables in the speech corpus. The syllables "guŏ, rén, zāng, diàn, chē, gè, guăn, a, bā, ne, de" broke in 23.1%-41.0% patients. These syllables belonged to the phrases "pĭng guŏ, huŏ chē, shì de, nĭ shì gè hăo rén, wŏ mén shì yŏu zŏng shì bă qĭn shì nong dé hĕn zāng, wŏ mén nà biān yŏu wăng qiú yùn dong chăng, cān gŭan, jiŭ bā hé yī gè miàn bāo dìan, tā shì duō me kāng kăi a,wŏ yīng gāi zài xìn lĭ xiĕ yī xiē shén mē ne?". Thirty-seven patients (97.3%) had phonatory break in above mentioned words. Ratios of these words phonatory break also were more than "fù mŭ xīn". Adductor spasmodic dysphonic patients exhibited different degrees of phonatory break in mandarine Chinese. The phrases" shì de, pĭng guŏ, huŏ chē, nĭ shì gè hăo rén, wŏ mén nà biān yŏu wăng qiú yùn dong chăng, cān gŭan, jiŭ bā hé yī gè miàn bāo dìan, tā shì duō me kāng kăi a" were recommended as stimuli phrases for adductor spasmodic dysphonia evaluation.

Rapid change in articulatory lip movement induced by preceding auditory feedback during production of bilabial plosives.

PubMed

Mochida, Takemi; Gomi, Hiroaki; Kashino, Makio

2010-11-08

There has been plentiful evidence of kinesthetically induced rapid compensation for unanticipated perturbation in speech articulatory movements. However, the role of auditory information in stabilizing articulation has been little studied except for the control of voice fundamental frequency, voice amplitude and vowel formant frequencies. Although the influence of auditory information on the articulatory control process is evident in unintended speech errors caused by delayed auditory feedback, the direct and immediate effect of auditory alteration on the movements of articulators has not been clarified. This work examined whether temporal changes in the auditory feedback of bilabial plosives immediately affects the subsequent lip movement. We conducted experiments with an auditory feedback alteration system that enabled us to replace or block speech sounds in real time. Participants were asked to produce the syllable /pa/ repeatedly at a constant rate. During the repetition, normal auditory feedback was interrupted, and one of three pre-recorded syllables /pa/, /Φa/, or /pi/, spoken by the same participant, was presented once at a different timing from the anticipated production onset, while no feedback was presented for subsequent repetitions. Comparisons of the labial distance trajectories under altered and normal feedback conditions indicated that the movement quickened during the short period immediately after the alteration onset, when /pa/ was presented 50 ms before the expected timing. Such change was not significant under other feedback conditions we tested. The earlier articulation rapidly induced by the progressive auditory input suggests that a compensatory mechanism helps to maintain a constant speech rate by detecting errors between the internally predicted and actually provided auditory information associated with self movement. The timing- and context-dependent effects of feedback alteration suggest that the sensory error detection works in a temporally asymmetric window where acoustic features of the syllable to be produced may be coded.

The right ear advantage revisited: speech lateralisation in dichotic listening using consonant-vowel and vowel-consonant syllables.

PubMed

Sætrevik, Bjørn

2012-01-01

The dichotic listening task is typically administered by presenting a consonant-vowel (CV) syllable to each ear and asking the participant to report the syllable heard most clearly. The results tend to show more reports of the right ear syllable than of the left ear syllable, an effect called the right ear advantage (REA). The REA is assumed to be due to the crossing over of auditory fibres and the processing of language stimuli being lateralised to left temporal areas. However, the tendency for most dichotic listening experiments to use only CV syllable stimuli limits the extent to which the conclusions can be generalised to also apply to other speech phonemes. The current study re-examines the REA in dichotic listening by using both CV and vowel-consonant (VC) syllables and combinations thereof. Results showed a replication of the REA response pattern for both CV and VC syllables, thus indicating that the general assumption of left-side localisation of processing can be applied for both types of stimuli. Further, on trials where a CV is presented in one ear and a VC is presented in the other ear, the CV is selected more often than the VC, indicating that these phonemes have an acoustic or processing advantage.

Effects of blocking and presentation on the recognition of word and nonsense syllables in noise

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Benkí, José R.

2003-10-01

Listener expectations may have significant effects on spoken word recognition, modulating word similarity effects from the lexicon. This study investigates the effect of blocking by lexical status on the recognition of word and nonsense syllables in noise. 240 phonemically matched word and nonsense CVC syllables [Boothroyd and Nittrouer, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84, 101-108 (1988)] were presented to listeners at different S/N ratios for identification. In the mixed condition, listeners were presented with blocks containing both words and nonwords, while listeners in the blocked condition were presented with the trials in blocks containing either words or nonwords. The targets were presented in isolation with 50 ms of preceding and following noise. Preliminary results indicate no effect of blocking on accuracy for either word or nonsense syllables; results from neighborhood density analyses will be presented. Consistent with previous studies, a j-factor analysis indicates that words are perceived as containing at least 0.5 fewer independent units than nonwords in both conditions. Relative to previous work on syllables presented in a frame sentence [Benkí, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 113, 1689-1705 (2003)], initial consonants were perceived significantly less accurately, while vowels and final consonants were perceived at comparable rates.

The Role of Secondary-Stressed and Unstressed-Unreduced Syllables in Word Recognition: Acoustic and Perceptual Studies with Russian Learners of English.

PubMed

Banzina, Elina; Dilley, Laura C; Hewitt, Lynne E

2016-08-01

The importance of secondary-stressed (SS) and unstressed-unreduced (UU) syllable accuracy for spoken word recognition in English is as yet unclear. An acoustic study first investigated Russian learners' of English production of SS and UU syllables. Significant vowel quality and duration reductions in Russian-spoken SS and UU vowels were found, likely due to a transfer of native phonological features. Next, a cross-modal phonological priming technique combined with a lexical decision task assessed the effect of inaccurate SS and UU syllable productions on native American English listeners' speech processing. Inaccurate UU vowels led to significant inhibition of lexical access, while reduced SS vowels revealed less interference. The results have implications for understanding the role of SS and UU syllables for word recognition and English pronunciation instruction.

The perception of intonation questions and statements in Cantonese.

PubMed

Ma, Joan K-Y; Ciocca, Valter; Whitehill, Tara L

2011-02-01

In tone languages there are potential conflicts in the perception of lexical tone and intonation, as both depend mainly on the differences in fundamental frequency (F0) patterns. The present study investigated the acoustic cues associated with the perception of sentences as questions or statements in Cantonese, as a function of the lexical tone in sentence final position. Cantonese listeners performed intonation identification tasks involving complete sentences, isolated final syllables, and sentences without the final syllable (carriers). Sensitivity (d' scores) were similar for complete sentences and final syllables but were significantly lower for carriers. Sensitivity was also affected by tone identity. These findings show that the perception of questions and statements relies primarily on the F0 characteristics of the final syllables (local F0 cues). A measure of response bias (c) provided evidence for a general bias toward the perception of statements. Logistic regression analyses showed that utterances were accurately classified as questions or statements by using average F0 and F0 interval. Average F0 of carriers (global F0 cue) was also found to be a reliable secondary cue. These findings suggest that the use of F0 cues for the perception of intonation question in tonal languages is likely to be language-specific.

A population memetics approach to cultural evolution in chaffinch song: meme diversity within populations.

PubMed

Lynch, A; Baker, A J

1993-04-01

We investigated cultural evolution in populations of common chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) in the Atlantic islands (Azores, Madeira, Canaries) and neighboring continental regions (Morocco, Iberia) by employing a population memetics approach. To quantify variability within populations, we used the concept of a song meme, defined as a single syllable or a series of linked syllables capable of being transmitted. The frequency distribution of memes within populations generally fit a neutral model in which there is an equilibrium between mutation, migration, and drift, which suggests that memes are functionally equivalent. The diversity of memes of single syllables is significantly greater in the Azores compared to all other regions, consistent with higher population densities of chaffinches there. On the other hand, memes of two to five syllables have greater diversity in Atlantic island and Moroccan populations compared to their Iberian counterparts. This higher diversity emanates from a looser syntax and increased recombination in songs, presumably because of relaxed selection for distinctive songs in these peripheral and depauperate avifaunas. We urge comparative population memetic studies of other species of songbirds and predict that they will lead to a formulation of a general theory for the cultural evolution of bird song analogous to population genetics theory for biological traits.

Segmental transition of the first syllables of words in Japanese children who stutter: Comparison between word and sentence production.

PubMed

Matsumoto, Sachiyo; Ito, Tomohiko

2016-01-01

Matsumoto-Shimamori, Ito, Fukuda, & Fukuda (2011) proposed the hypothesis that in Japanese, the transition from the core vowels (i.e. syllable nucleus) of the first syllables of words to the following segments affected the occurrence of stuttering. Moreover, in this transition position, an inter-syllabic transition precipitated more stuttering than an intra-syllabic one (Shimamori & Ito, 2007, 2008). However, these studies have only used word production tasks. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the same results could be obtained in sentence production tasks. Participants were 28 Japanese school-age children who stutter, ranging in age from 7;3 to 12;7. The frequency of stuttering on words with an inter-syllabic transition was significantly higher than on those having an intra-syllabic transition, not only in isolated words but in the first words of sentences. These results suggested that Matsumoto et al.'s hypothesis could be applicable to the results of sentence production tasks.

Characterization of ultrasonic vocalizations of Fragile X mice.

PubMed

Belagodu, Amogh P; Johnson, Aaron M; Galvez, Roberto

2016-09-01

Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is the leading form of inherited intellectual disability. It is caused by the transcriptional silencing of FMR1, the gene which codes for the Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein (FMRP). Patients who have FXS exhibit numerous behavioral and cognitive impairments, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and autistic-like behaviors. In addition to these behavioral abnormalities, FXS patients have also been shown to exhibit various deficits in communication such as abnormal sentence structures, increased utterances, repetition of sounds and words, and reduced articulation. These deficits can dramatically hinder communication for FXS patients, exacerbating learning and cognition impairments while decreasing their quality of life. To examine the biological underpinnings of these communication abnormalities, studies have used a mouse model of the Fragile X Syndrome; however, these vocalization studies have resulted in inconsistent findings that often do not correlate with abnormalities observed in FXS patients. Interestingly, a detailed examination of frequency modulated vocalizations that are believed to be a better assessment of rodent communication has never been conducted. The following study used courtship separation to conduct a detailed examination of frequency modulated ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) in FXS mice. Our analyses of frequency modulated USVs demonstrated that adult FXS mice exhibited longer phrases and more motifs. Phrases are vocalizations consisting of multiple frequency modulated ultrasonic vocalizations, while motifs are repeated frequency modulated USV patterns. Fragile X mice had a higher proportion of "u" syllables in all USVs and phrases while their wildtype counterparts preferred isolated "h" syllables. Although the specific importance of these syllables towards communication deficits still needs to be evaluated, these findings in production of USVs are consistent with the repetitive and perseverative speech patterns observed in FXS patients. This study demonstrates that FXS mice can be used to study the underlying biological mechanism(s) mediating FXS vocalization abnormalities. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Functional asymmetry and effective connectivity of the auditory system during speech perception is modulated by the place of articulation of the consonant- A 7T fMRI study

PubMed Central

Specht, Karsten; Baumgartner, Florian; Stadler, Jörg; Hugdahl, Kenneth; Pollmann, Stefan

2014-01-01

To differentiate between stop-consonants, the auditory system has to detect subtle place of articulation (PoA) and voice-onset time (VOT) differences between stop-consonants. How this differential processing is represented on the cortical level remains unclear. The present functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) study takes advantage of the superior spatial resolution and high sensitivity of ultra-high-field 7 T MRI. Subjects were attentively listening to consonant–vowel (CV) syllables with an alveolar or bilabial stop-consonant and either a short or long VOT. The results showed an overall bilateral activation pattern in the posterior temporal lobe during the processing of the CV syllables. This was however modulated strongest by PoA such that syllables with an alveolar stop-consonant showed stronger left lateralized activation. In addition, analysis of underlying functional and effective connectivity revealed an inhibitory effect of the left planum temporale (PT) onto the right auditory cortex (AC) during the processing of alveolar CV syllables. Furthermore, the connectivity result indicated also a directed information flow from the right to the left AC, and further to the left PT for all syllables. These results indicate that auditory speech perception relies on an interplay between the left and right ACs, with the left PT as modulator. Furthermore, the degree of functional asymmetry is determined by the acoustic properties of the CV syllables. PMID:24966841

Consonant-recognition patterns and self-assessment of hearing handicap.

PubMed

Hustedde, C G; Wiley, T L

1991-12-01

Two companion experiments were conducted with normal-hearing subjects and subjects with high-frequency, sensorineural hearing loss. In Experiment 1, the validity of a self-assessment device of hearing handicap was evaluated in two groups of hearing-impaired listeners with significantly different consonant-recognition ability. Data for the Hearing Performance Inventory--Revised (Lamb, Owens, & Schubert, 1983) did not reveal differences in self-perceived handicap for the two groups of hearing-impaired listeners; it was sensitive to perceived differences in hearing abilities for listeners who did and did not have a hearing loss. Experiment 2 was aimed at evaluation of consonant error patterns that accounted for observed group differences in consonant-recognition ability. Error patterns on the Nonsense-Syllable Test (NST) across the two subject groups differed in both degree and type of error. Listeners in the group with poorer NST performance always demonstrated greater difficulty with selected low-frequency and high-frequency syllables than did listeners in the group with better NST performance. Overall, the NST was sensitive to differences in consonant-recognition ability for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.

Role of the motor system in language knowledge.

PubMed

Berent, Iris; Brem, Anna-Katharine; Zhao, Xu; Seligson, Erica; Pan, Hong; Epstein, Jane; Stern, Emily; Galaburda, Albert M; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro

2015-02-17

All spoken languages express words by sound patterns, and certain patterns (e.g., blog) are systematically preferred to others (e.g., lbog). What principles account for such preferences: does the language system encode abstract rules banning syllables like lbog, or does their dislike reflect the increased motor demands associated with speech production? More generally, we ask whether linguistic knowledge is fully embodied or whether some linguistic principles could potentially be abstract. To address this question, here we gauge the sensitivity of English speakers to the putative universal syllable hierarchy (e.g., blif ≻ bnif ≻ bdif ≻ lbif) while undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the cortical motor representation of the left orbicularis oris muscle. If syllable preferences reflect motor simulation, then worse-formed syllables (e.g., lbif) should (i) elicit more errors; (ii) engage more strongly motor brain areas; and (iii) elicit stronger effects of TMS on these motor regions. In line with the motor account, we found that repetitive TMS pulses impaired participants' global sensitivity to the number of syllables, and functional MRI confirmed that the cortical stimulation site was sensitive to the syllable hierarchy. Contrary to the motor account, however, ill-formed syllables were least likely to engage the lip sensorimotor area and they were least impaired by TMS. Results suggest that speech perception automatically triggers motor action, but this effect is not causally linked to the computation of linguistic structure. We conclude that the language and motor systems are intimately linked, yet distinct. Language is designed to optimize motor action, but its knowledge includes principles that are disembodied and potentially abstract.

Role of the motor system in language knowledge

PubMed Central

Berent, Iris; Brem, Anna-Katharine; Zhao, Xu; Seligson, Erica; Pan, Hong; Epstein, Jane; Stern, Emily; Galaburda, Albert M.; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro

2015-01-01

All spoken languages express words by sound patterns, and certain patterns (e.g., blog) are systematically preferred to others (e.g., lbog). What principles account for such preferences: does the language system encode abstract rules banning syllables like lbog, or does their dislike reflect the increased motor demands associated with speech production? More generally, we ask whether linguistic knowledge is fully embodied or whether some linguistic principles could potentially be abstract. To address this question, here we gauge the sensitivity of English speakers to the putative universal syllable hierarchy (e.g., blif≻bnif≻bdif≻lbif) while undergoing transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the cortical motor representation of the left orbicularis oris muscle. If syllable preferences reflect motor simulation, then worse-formed syllables (e.g., lbif) should (i) elicit more errors; (ii) engage more strongly motor brain areas; and (iii) elicit stronger effects of TMS on these motor regions. In line with the motor account, we found that repetitive TMS pulses impaired participants’ global sensitivity to the number of syllables, and functional MRI confirmed that the cortical stimulation site was sensitive to the syllable hierarchy. Contrary to the motor account, however, ill-formed syllables were least likely to engage the lip sensorimotor area and they were least impaired by TMS. Results suggest that speech perception automatically triggers motor action, but this effect is not causally linked to the computation of linguistic structure. We conclude that the language and motor systems are intimately linked, yet distinct. Language is designed to optimize motor action, but its knowledge includes principles that are disembodied and potentially abstract. PMID:25646465

Lexical tone and stuttering in Cantonese.

PubMed

Law, Thomas; Packman, Ann; Onslow, Mark; To, Carol K-S; Tong, Michael C-F; Lee, Kathy Y-S

2018-01-01

Cantonese is a tone language, in which the variation of the fundamental frequency contour of a syllable can change meaning. There are six different lexical tones in Cantonese. While research with Western languages has shown an association between stuttering and syllabic stress, nothing is known about whether stuttering in Cantonese speakers is associated with one or more of the six lexical tones. Such an association has been reported in conversational speech in Mandarin, which is also a tone language, but which varies markedly from Cantonese. Twenty-four native Cantonese-speaking adults who stutter participated in this study, ranging in age from 18-33 years. There were 18 men and 6 women. Participants read aloud 13 Cantonese syllables, each of which was produced with six contrastive lexical tones. All 78 syllables were embedded in the same carrier sentence, to reduce the influence of suprasegmental or linguistic stress, and were presented in random order. No significant differences were found for stuttering moments across the six lexical tones. It is suggested that this is because lexical tones, at least in Cantonese, do not place the task demands on the speech motor system that typify varying syllabic stress in Western languages: variations not only in fundamental frequency, but also in duration and intensity. The findings of this study suggest that treatments for adults who stutter in Western languages, such as speech restructuring, can be used with Cantonese speakers without undue attention to lexical tone.

Perceptually relevant speech tracking in auditory and motor cortex reflects distinct linguistic features

PubMed Central

Gross, Joachim; Kayser, Christoph

2018-01-01

During online speech processing, our brain tracks the acoustic fluctuations in speech at different timescales. Previous research has focused on generic timescales (for example, delta or theta bands) that are assumed to map onto linguistic features such as prosody or syllables. However, given the high intersubject variability in speaking patterns, such a generic association between the timescales of brain activity and speech properties can be ambiguous. Here, we analyse speech tracking in source-localised magnetoencephalographic data by directly focusing on timescales extracted from statistical regularities in our speech material. This revealed widespread significant tracking at the timescales of phrases (0.6–1.3 Hz), words (1.8–3 Hz), syllables (2.8–4.8 Hz), and phonemes (8–12.4 Hz). Importantly, when examining its perceptual relevance, we found stronger tracking for correctly comprehended trials in the left premotor (PM) cortex at the phrasal scale as well as in left middle temporal cortex at the word scale. Control analyses using generic bands confirmed that these effects were specific to the speech regularities in our stimuli. Furthermore, we found that the phase at the phrasal timescale coupled to power at beta frequency (13–30 Hz) in motor areas. This cross-frequency coupling presumably reflects top-down temporal prediction in ongoing speech perception. Together, our results reveal specific functional and perceptually relevant roles of distinct tracking and cross-frequency processes along the auditory–motor pathway. PMID:29529019

LISTENERS’ PERCEPTION OF “COMPENSATORY SHORTENING

PubMed Central

Fowler, Carol A.; Thompson, Jaqueline M.

2010-01-01

English exhibits “compensatory shortening” whereby a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable is measured to be shorter than the same stressed syllable alone. This “anticipatory” shortening is much greater than “backward” shortening whereby an unstressed syllable is measured to shorten a following stressed syllable. We speculated that measured shortening reflects, not true shortening, but coarticulatory hiding. Hence, we asked whether listeners are sensitive to parts of stressed syllables hidden by following or preceding unstressed syllables. In two experiments, we found the point of subjective equality, that is the durational difference between a stressed syllable in isolation and one followed by an unstressed syllable, at which listeners cannot tell which is longer. A third experiment found the point of subjective equality for stressed monosyllables and disyllables with a weak-strong stress pattern. In all experiments, the points of subjective equality occurred when stressed syllables in disyllables were measured to be shorter than those in monosyllables as if listeners hear the coarticulatory onsest or continuation of a stressed syllable within unstressed syllables. PMID:20139461

Effects of Diet on Early Stage Cortical Perception and Discrimination of Syllables Differing in Voice-Onset Time: A Longitudinal ERP Study in 3 and 6 Month Old Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pivik, R. T.; Andres, Aline; Badger, Thomas M.

2012-01-01

The influence of diet on cortical processing of syllables was examined at 3 and 6 months in 239 infants who were breastfed or fed milk or soy-based formula. Event-related potentials to syllables differing in voice-onset-time were recorded from placements overlying brain areas specialized for language processing. P1 component amplitude and latency…

Interaction between Phonemic Abilities and Syllable Congruency Effect in Young Readers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chetail, Fabienne; Mathey, Stephanie

2013-01-01

This study investigated whether and to what extent phonemic abilities of young readers (Grade 5) influence syllabic effects in reading. More precisely, the syllable congruency effect was tested in the lexical decision task combined with masked priming in eleven-year-old children. Target words were preceded by a pseudo-word prime sharing the first…

Length Effects Turn Out To Be Syllable Structure Effects: Response to Roelofs (2002).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Santiago, Julio; MacKay, Donald G.; Palma, Alfonso

2002-01-01

Responds to a commentary written in response a research study conducted by the author (Santiago et al., 2000) that suggests that a reanalysis of the data on syllable structure effects that takes word length into account leads to a conclusion that is the opposite of what the study found. (Author/VWL)

Effects of syllable structure in aphasic errors: implications for a new model of speech production.

PubMed

Romani, Cristina; Galluzzi, Claudia; Bureca, Ivana; Olson, Andrew

2011-03-01

Current models of word production assume that words are stored as linear sequences of phonemes which are structured into syllables only at the moment of production. This is because syllable structure is always recoverable from the sequence of phonemes. In contrast, we present theoretical and empirical evidence that syllable structure is lexically represented. Storing syllable structure would have the advantage of making representations more stable and resistant to damage. On the other hand, re-syllabifications affect only a minimal part of phonological representations and occur only in some languages and depending on speech register. Evidence for these claims comes from analyses of aphasic errors which not only respect phonotactic constraints, but also avoid transformations which move the syllabic structure of the word further away from the original structure, even when equating for segmental complexity. This is true across tasks, types of errors, and, crucially, types of patients. The same syllabic effects are shown by apraxic patients and by phonological patients who have more central difficulties in retrieving phonological representations. If syllable structure was only computed after phoneme retrieval, it would have no way to influence the errors of phonological patients. Our results have implications for psycholinguistic and computational models of language as well as for clinical and educational practices. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Curvilinear relationship between phonological working memory load and social-emotional modulation

PubMed Central

Mano, Quintino R.; Brown, Gregory G.; Bolden, Khalima; Aupperle, Robin; Sullivan, Sarah; Paulus, Martin P.; Stein, Murray B.

2015-01-01

Accumulating evidence suggests that working memory load is an important factor for the interplay between cognitive and facial-affective processing. However, it is unclear how distraction caused by perception of faces interacts with load-related performance. We developed a modified version of the delayed match-to-sample task wherein task-irrelevant facial distracters were presented early in the rehearsal of pseudoword memoranda that varied incrementally in load size (1-syllable, 2-syllables, or 3-syllables). Facial distracters displayed happy, sad, or neutral expressions in Experiment 1 (N=60) and happy, fearful, or neutral expressions in Experiment 2 (N=29). Facial distracters significantly disrupted task performance in the intermediate load condition (2-syllable) but not in the low or high load conditions (1- and 3-syllables, respectively), an interaction replicated and generalised in Experiment 2. All facial distracters disrupted working memory in the intermediate load condition irrespective of valence, suggesting a primary and general effect of distraction caused by faces. However, sad and fearful faces tended to be less disruptive than happy faces, suggesting a secondary and specific valence effect. Working memory appears to be most vulnerable to social-emotional information at intermediate loads. At low loads, spare capacity is capable of accommodating the combinatorial load (1-syllable plus facial distracter), whereas high loads maximised capacity and deprived facial stimuli from occupying working memory slots to cause disruption. PMID:22928750

Shared processing of planning articulatory gestures and grasping.

PubMed

Vainio, L; Tiainen, M; Tiippana, K; Vainio, M

2014-07-01

It has been proposed that articulatory gestures are shaped by tight integration in planning mouth and hand acts. This hypothesis is supported by recent behavioral evidence showing that response selection between the precision and power grip is systematically influenced by simultaneous articulation of a syllable. For example, precision grip responses are performed relatively fast when the syllable articulation employs the tongue tip (e.g., [te]), whereas power grip responses are performed relatively fast when the syllable articulation employs the tongue body (e.g., [ke]). However, this correspondence effect, and other similar effects that demonstrate the interplay between grasping and articulatory gestures, has been found when the grasping is performed during overt articulation. The present study demonstrates that merely reading the syllables silently (Experiment 1) or hearing them (Experiment 2) results in a similar correspondence effect. The results suggest that the correspondence effect is based on integration in planning articulatory gestures and grasping rather than requiring an overt articulation of the syllables. We propose that this effect reflects partially overlapped planning of goal shapes of the two distal effectors: a vocal tract shape for articulation and a hand shape for grasping. In addition, the paper shows a pitch-grip correspondence effect in which the precision grip is associated with a high-pitched vocalization of the auditory stimuli and the power grip is associated with a low-pitched vocalization. The underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon are discussed in relation to the articulation-grip correspondence.

Effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception: evidence from ERPs.

PubMed

Alsius, Agnès; Möttönen, Riikka; Sams, Mikko E; Soto-Faraco, Salvador; Tiippana, Kaisa

2014-01-01

Seeing articulatory movements influences perception of auditory speech. This is often reflected in a shortened latency of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) generated in the auditory cortex. The present study addressed whether this early neural correlate of audiovisual interaction is modulated by attention. We recorded ERPs in 15 subjects while they were presented with auditory, visual, and audiovisual spoken syllables. Audiovisual stimuli consisted of incongruent auditory and visual components known to elicit a McGurk effect, i.e., a visually driven alteration in the auditory speech percept. In a Dual task condition, participants were asked to identify spoken syllables whilst monitoring a rapid visual stream of pictures for targets, i.e., they had to divide their attention. In a Single task condition, participants identified the syllables without any other tasks, i.e., they were asked to ignore the pictures and focus their attention fully on the spoken syllables. The McGurk effect was weaker in the Dual task than in the Single task condition, indicating an effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception. Early auditory ERP components, N1 and P2, peaked earlier to audiovisual stimuli than to auditory stimuli when attention was fully focused on syllables, indicating neurophysiological audiovisual interaction. This latency decrement was reduced when attention was loaded, suggesting that attention influences early neural processing of audiovisual speech. We conclude that reduced attention weakens the interaction between vision and audition in speech.

Contrast effects on stop consonant identification.

PubMed

Diehl, R L; Elman, J L; McCusker, S B

1978-11-01

Changes in the identification of speech sounds following selective adaptation are usually attributed to a reduction in sensitivity of auditory feature detectors. An alternative explanation of these effects is based on the notion of response contrast. In several experiments, subjects identified the initial segment of synthetic consonant-vowel syllables as either the voiced stop [b] or the voiceless stop [ph]. Each test syllable had a value of voice onset time (VOT) that placed it near the English voiced-voiceless boundary. When the test syllables were preceded by a single clear [b] (VOT = -100 msec), subjects tended to identify them as [ph], whereas when they were preceded by an unambiguous [ph] (VOT = 100 msec), the syllables were predominantly labeled [b]. This contrast effect occurred even when the contextual stimuli were velar and the test stimuli were bilabial, which suggests a featural rather than a phonemic basis for the effect. To discount the possibility that these might be instances of single-trial sensory adaptation, we conducted a similar experiment in which the contextual stimuli followed the test items. Reliable contrast effects were still obtained. In view of these results, it appears likely that response contrast accounts for at least some component of the adaptation effects reported in the literature.

Within- and across-language spectral and temporal variability of vowels in different phonetic and prosodic contexts: Russian and Japanese

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gilichinskaya, Yana D.; Hisagi, Miwako; Law, Franzo F.; Berkowitz, Shari; Ito, Kikuyo

2005-04-01

Contextual variability of vowels in three languages with large vowel inventories was examined previously. Here, variability of vowels in two languages with small inventories (Russian, Japanese) was explored. Vowels were produced by three female speakers of each language in four contexts: (Vba) disyllables and in 3-syllable nonsense words (gaC1VC2a) embedded within carrier sentences; contexts included bilabial stops (bVp) in normal rate sentences and alveolar stops (dVt) in both normal and rapid rate sentences. Dependent variables were syllable durations and formant frequencies at syllable midpoint. Results showed very little variation across consonant and rate conditions in formants for /i/ in both languages. Japanese short /u, o, a/ showed fronting (F2 increases) in alveolar context relative to labial context (1.3-2.0 Barks), which was more pronounced in rapid sentences. Fronting of Japanese long vowels was less pronounced (0.3 to 0.9 Barks). Japanese long/short vowel ratios varied with speaking style (syllables versus sentences) and speaking rate. All Russian vowels except /i/ were fronted in alveolar vs labial context (1.1-3.1 Barks) but showed little change in either spectrum or duration with speaking rate. Comparisons of these patterns of variability with American English, French and German vowel results will be discussed.

The impact of lexical-semantic impairment and of executive dysfunction on the word reading performance of patients with probable Alzheimer dementia.

PubMed

Colombo, Lucia; Fonti, Cristina; Cappa, Stefano

2004-01-01

The influence of lexical-semantic impairment and of executive dysfunction on word naming performance was investigated in a group of patients with probable Alzheimer dementia (AD). The patients, who varied in the severity of the illness, were tested in a word naming task where they had to read aloud Italian three-syllable words with a dominant or subordinate stress pattern. These types of words have been shown to interact with frequency in normal adults [J. Exp. Psychol.: Hum. Percept. Perform. 18 (4) (1992) 987], so that the effect of the subordinate stress pattern (slower reading times) is only apparent for low frequency words. The frequency and stress effects on accuracy increased across dementia severity levels. Regression analyses showed that the impairment in reading low frequency words with subordinate stress depended largely on the level of lexical-semantic impairment, measured by a test of semantic memory and comprehension. Implications for the current reading models are discussed.

Joint Spatial-Spectral Feature Space Clustering for Speech Activity Detection from ECoG Signals

PubMed Central

Kanas, Vasileios G.; Mporas, Iosif; Benz, Heather L.; Sgarbas, Kyriakos N.; Bezerianos, Anastasios; Crone, Nathan E.

2014-01-01

Brain machine interfaces for speech restoration have been extensively studied for more than two decades. The success of such a system will depend in part on selecting the best brain recording sites and signal features corresponding to speech production. The purpose of this study was to detect speech activity automatically from electrocorticographic signals based on joint spatial-frequency clustering of the ECoG feature space. For this study, the ECoG signals were recorded while a subject performed two different syllable repetition tasks. We found that the optimal frequency resolution to detect speech activity from ECoG signals was 8 Hz, achieving 98.8% accuracy by employing support vector machines (SVM) as a classifier. We also defined the cortical areas that held the most information about the discrimination of speech and non-speech time intervals. Additionally, the results shed light on the distinct cortical areas associated with the two syllable repetition tasks and may contribute to the development of portable ECoG-based communication. PMID:24658248

Perception of resyllabification in French.

PubMed

Gaskell, M Gareth; Spinelli, Elsa; Meunier, Fanny

2002-07-01

In three experiments, we examined the effects of phonological resyllabification processes on the perception of French speech. Enchainment involves the resyllabification of a word-final consonant across a syllable boundary (e.g., in chaque avion, the /k/ crosses the syllable boundary to become syllable initial). Liaison involves a further process of realization of a latent consonant, alongside resyllabification (e.g., the /t/ in petit avion). If the syllable is a dominant unit of perception in French (Mehler, Dommergues, Frauenfelder, & Segui, 1981), these processes should cause problems for recognition of the following word. A cross-modal priming experiment showed no cost attached to either type of resyllabification in terms of reduced activation of the following word. Furthermore, word- and sequence-monitoring experiments again showed no cost and suggested that the recognition of vowel-initial words may be facilitated when they are preceded by a word that had undergone resyllabification through enchainment or liaison. We examine the sources of information that could underpin facilitation and propose a refinement of the syllable's role in the perception of French speech.

A randomized control trial to investigate the impact of the Lidcombe Program on early stuttering in German-speaking preschoolers.

PubMed

Lattermann, Christina; Euler, Harald A; Neumann, Katrin

2008-03-01

In order to investigate whether the Lidcombe Program effects a short-term reduction of stuttered speech beyond natural recovery, 46 German preschool children were randomly assigned to a wait-contrast group or to an experimental group which received the Lidcombe Program for 16 weeks. The children were between 3;0 and 5;11 years old, their and both of their parents' native language was German, stuttering onset had been at least 6 months before, and their stuttering frequency was higher than 3% stuttered syllables. Spontaneous speech samples were recorded at home and in the clinic prior to treatment and after 4 months. Compared to the wait-contrast group, the treatment group showed a significantly higher decrease in stuttered syllables in home-measurements (6.9%SS vs. 1.6%SS) and clinic-measurements (6.8%SS vs. 3.6%SS), and the same increase in articulation rate. The program is considered an enrichment of currently applied early stuttering interventions in Germany. Readers will discuss and evaluate: (1) the short-term effects of the Lidcombe Program in comparison to natural recovery on stuttering; (2) the impact of the Lidcombe Program on early stuttering in German-speaking preschool children.

Effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception: evidence from ERPs

PubMed Central

Alsius, Agnès; Möttönen, Riikka; Sams, Mikko E.; Soto-Faraco, Salvador; Tiippana, Kaisa

2014-01-01

Seeing articulatory movements influences perception of auditory speech. This is often reflected in a shortened latency of auditory event-related potentials (ERPs) generated in the auditory cortex. The present study addressed whether this early neural correlate of audiovisual interaction is modulated by attention. We recorded ERPs in 15 subjects while they were presented with auditory, visual, and audiovisual spoken syllables. Audiovisual stimuli consisted of incongruent auditory and visual components known to elicit a McGurk effect, i.e., a visually driven alteration in the auditory speech percept. In a Dual task condition, participants were asked to identify spoken syllables whilst monitoring a rapid visual stream of pictures for targets, i.e., they had to divide their attention. In a Single task condition, participants identified the syllables without any other tasks, i.e., they were asked to ignore the pictures and focus their attention fully on the spoken syllables. The McGurk effect was weaker in the Dual task than in the Single task condition, indicating an effect of attentional load on audiovisual speech perception. Early auditory ERP components, N1 and P2, peaked earlier to audiovisual stimuli than to auditory stimuli when attention was fully focused on syllables, indicating neurophysiological audiovisual interaction. This latency decrement was reduced when attention was loaded, suggesting that attention influences early neural processing of audiovisual speech. We conclude that reduced attention weakens the interaction between vision and audition in speech. PMID:25076922

Selective Influences of Precision and Power Grips on Speech Categorization.

PubMed

Tiainen, Mikko; Tiippana, Kaisa; Vainio, Martti; Peromaa, Tarja; Komeilipoor, Naeem; Vainio, Lari

2016-01-01

Recent studies have shown that articulatory gestures are systematically associated with specific manual grip actions. Here we show that executing such actions can influence performance on a speech-categorization task. Participants watched and/or listened to speech stimuli while executing either a power or a precision grip. Grip performance influenced the syllable categorization by increasing the proportion of responses of the syllable congruent with the executed grip (power grip-[ke] and precision grip-[te]). Two follow-up experiments indicated that the effect was based on action-induced bias in selecting the syllable.

Syllable Transposition Effects in Korean Word Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lee, Chang H.; Kwon, Youan; Kim, Kyungil; Rastle, Kathleen

2015-01-01

Research on the impact of letter transpositions in visual word recognition has yielded important clues about the nature of orthographic representations. This study investigated the impact of syllable transpositions on the recognition of Korean multisyllabic words. Results showed that rejection latencies in visual lexical decision for…

The role of syllables in sign language production.

PubMed

Baus, Cristina; Gutiérrez, Eva; Carreiras, Manuel

2014-01-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional role of syllables in sign language and how the different phonological combinations influence sign production. Moreover, the influence of age of acquisition was evaluated. Deaf signers (native and non-native) of Catalan Signed Language (LSC) were asked in a picture-sign interference task to sign picture names while ignoring distractor-signs with which they shared two phonological parameters (out of three of the main sign parameters: Location, Movement, and Handshape). The results revealed a different impact of the three phonological combinations. While no effect was observed for the phonological combination Handshape-Location, the combination Handshape-Movement slowed down signing latencies, but only in the non-native group. A facilitatory effect was observed for both groups when pictures and distractors shared Location-Movement. Importantly, linguistic models have considered this phonological combination to be a privileged unit in the composition of signs, as syllables are in spoken languages. Thus, our results support the functional role of syllable units during phonological articulation in sign language production.

Monitoring Syllable Boundaries during Speech Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jansma, Bernadette M.; Schiller, Niels O.

2004-01-01

This study investigated the encoding of syllable boundary information during speech production in Dutch. Based on Levelt's model of phonological encoding, we hypothesized segments and syllable boundaries to be encoded in an incremental way. In a self-monitoring experiment, decisions about the syllable affiliation (first or second syllable) of a…

Using the self-select paradigm to delineate the nature of speech motor programming.

PubMed

Wright, David L; Robin, Don A; Rhee, Jooyhun; Vaculin, Amber; Jacks, Adam; Guenther, Frank H; Fox, Peter T

2009-06-01

The authors examined the involvement of 2 speech motor programming processes identified by S. T. Klapp (1995, 2003) during the articulation of utterances differing in syllable and sequence complexity. According to S. T. Klapp, 1 process, INT, resolves the demands of the programmed unit, whereas a second process, SEQ, oversees the serial order demands of longer sequences. A modified reaction time paradigm was used to assess INT and SEQ demands. Specifically, syllable complexity was dependent on syllable structure, whereas sequence complexity involved either repeated or unique syllabi within an utterance. INT execution was slowed when articulating single syllables in the form CCCV compared to simpler CV syllables. Planning unique syllables within a multisyllabic utterance rather than repetitions of the same syllable slowed INT but not SEQ. The INT speech motor programming process, important for mental syllabary access, is sensitive to changes in both syllable structure and the number of unique syllables in an utterance.

Orthographic vs. Phonologic Syllables in Handwriting Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kandel, Sonia; Herault, Lucie; Grosjacques, Geraldine; Lambert, Eric; Fayol, Michel

2009-01-01

French children program the words they write syllable by syllable. We examined whether the syllable the children use to segment words is determined phonologically (i.e., is derived from speech production processes) or orthographically. Third, 4th and 5th graders wrote on a digitiser words that were mono-syllables phonologically (e.g.…

Auditory-Visual Speech Integration by Adults with and without Language-Learning Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Norrix, Linda W.; Plante, Elena; Vance, Rebecca

2006-01-01

Auditory and auditory-visual (AV) speech perception skills were examined in adults with and without language-learning disabilities (LLD). The AV stimuli consisted of congruent consonant-vowel syllables (auditory and visual syllables matched in terms of syllable being produced) and incongruent McGurk syllables (auditory syllable differed from…

Listening Natively across Perceptual Domains?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Langus, Alan; Seyed-Allaei, Shima; Uysal, Ertugrul; Pirmoradian, Sahar; Marino, Caterina; Asaadi, Sina; Eren, Ömer; Toro, Juan M.; Peña, Marcela; Bion, Ricardo A. H.; Nespor, Marina

2016-01-01

Our native tongue influences the way we perceive other languages. But does it also determine the way we perceive nonlinguistic sounds? The authors investigated how speakers of Italian, Turkish, and Persian group sequences of syllables, tones, or visual shapes alternating in either frequency or duration. We found strong native listening effects…

Novel Topic Impact on Authorship Attribution

DTIC Science & Technology

2009-12-01

sentences on a printed page. The work of Wilhelm Fucks in [7] attributed authorship based on the frequency distribution over word syllables. The most...Unitarian Review, vol. 30, pp. 452–460, 1888. [7] W. Fucks , "On Mathematical Analysis of Style," Biometrika, vol. 39, pp. 122–129, 1952. [8

SyllabO+: A new tool to study sublexical phenomena in spoken Quebec French.

PubMed

Bédard, Pascale; Audet, Anne-Marie; Drouin, Patrick; Roy, Johanna-Pascale; Rivard, Julie; Tremblay, Pascale

2017-10-01

Sublexical phonotactic regularities in language have a major impact on language development, as well as on speech processing and production throughout the entire lifespan. To understand the impact of phonotactic regularities on speech and language functions at the behavioral and neural levels, it is essential to have access to oral language corpora to study these complex phenomena in different languages. Yet, probably because of their complexity, oral language corpora remain less common than written language corpora. This article presents the first corpus and database of spoken Quebec French syllables and phones: SyllabO+. This corpus contains phonetic transcriptions of over 300,000 syllables (over 690,000 phones) extracted from recordings of 184 healthy adult native Quebec French speakers, ranging in age from 20 to 97 years. To ensure the representativeness of the corpus, these recordings were made in both formal and familiar communication contexts. Phonotactic distributional statistics (e.g., syllable and co-occurrence frequencies, percentages, percentile ranks, transition probabilities, and pointwise mutual information) were computed from the corpus. An open-access online application to search the database was developed, and is available at www.speechneurolab.ca/syllabo . In this article, we present a brief overview of the corpus, as well as the syllable and phone databases, and we discuss their practical applications in various fields of research, including cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, experimental psychology, phonetics, and phonology. Nonacademic practical applications are also discussed, including uses in speech-language pathology.

The perception of sentence stress in cochlear implant recipients.

PubMed

Meister, Hartmut; Landwehr, Markus; Pyschny, Verena; Wagner, Petra; Walger, Martin

2011-01-01

Sentence stress is a vital attribute of speech since it indicates the importance of specific words within an utterance. Basic acoustic correlates of stress are syllable duration, intensity, and fundamental frequency (F0). Objectives of the study were to determine cochlear implant (CI) users' perception of the acoustic correlates and to uncover which cues are used for stress identification. Several experiments addressed the discrimination of changes in syllable duration, intensity, and F0 as well as stress identification based on these cues. Moreover, the discrimination of combined cues and identification of stress in conversational speech was examined. Both natural utterances and artificial manipulations of the acoustic cues were used as stimuli. Discrimination of syllable duration did not differ significantly between CI recipients and a control group of normal-hearing listeners. In contrast, CI users performed significantly worse on tasks of discrimination and stress identification based on F0 as well as on intensity. Results from these measurements were significantly correlated with the ability to identify stress in conversational speech. Discrimination performance for covarying F0 and intensity changes was more strongly correlated to identification performance than was found for discrimination of either F0 or intensity alone. Syllable duration was not related to stress identification in natural utterances. The outcome emphasizes the importance of both F0 and intensity for CI users' identification of sentence-based stress. Both cues were used separately for stress perception, but combining the cues provided extra benefit for most of the subjects.

Using the Self-Select Paradigm to Delineate the Nature of Speech Motor Programming

PubMed Central

Wright, David L.; Robin, Don A.; Rhee, Jooyhun; Vaculin, Amber; Jacks, Adam; Guenther, Frank H.; Fox, Peter T.

2015-01-01

Purpose The authors examined the involvement of 2 speech motor programming processes identified by S. T. Klapp (1995, 2003) during the articulation of utterances differing in syllable and sequence complexity. According to S. T. Klapp, 1 process, INT, resolves the demands of the programmed unit, whereas a second process, SEQ, oversees the serial order demands of longer sequences. Method A modified reaction time paradigm was used to assess INT and SEQ demands. Specifically, syllable complexity was dependent on syllable structure, whereas sequence complexity involved either repeated or unique syllabi within an utterance. Results INT execution was slowed when articulating single syllables in the form CCCV compared to simpler CV syllables. Planning unique syllables within a multisyllabic utterance rather than repetitions of the same syllable slowed INT but not SEQ. Conclusions The INT speech motor programming process, important for mental syllabary access, is sensitive to changes in both syllable structure and the number of unique syllables in an utterance. PMID:19474396

Effect of Syllable Congruency in Sixth Graders in the Lexical Decision Task with Masked Priming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chetail, Fabienne; Mathey, Stephanie

2012-01-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of the syllable in visual recognition of French words in Grade 6. To do so, the syllabic congruency effect was examined in the lexical decision task combined with masked priming. Target words were preceded by pseudoword primes sharing the first letters that either corresponded to the syllable…

Highly Complex Syllable Structure: A Typological Study of Its Phonological Characteristics and Diachronic Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Easterday, Shelece Michelle

2017-01-01

The syllable is a natural unit of organization in spoken language. Strong cross-linguistic tendencies in syllable size and shape are often explained in terms of a universal preference for the CV structure, a type which is also privileged in abstract models of the syllable. Syllable patterns such as those found in Itelmen "qsa?txt??"…

A Neural Basis for Interindividual Differences in the McGurk Effect, a Multisensory Speech Illusion

PubMed Central

Nath, Audrey R.; Beauchamp, Michael S.

2011-01-01

The McGurk effect is a compelling illusion in which humans perceive mismatched audiovisual speech as a completely different syllable. However, some normal individuals do not experience the illusion, reporting that the stimulus sounds the same with or without visual input. Converging evidence suggests that the left superior temporal sulcus (STS) is critical for audiovisual integration during speech perception. We used blood-oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) to measure brain activity as McGurk perceivers and non-perceivers were presented with congruent audiovisual syllables, McGurk audiovisual syllables, and non-McGurk incongruent syllables. The inferior frontal gyrus showed an effect of stimulus condition (greater responses for incongruent stimuli) but not susceptibility group, while the left auditory cortex showed an effect of susceptibility group (greater response in susceptible individuals) but not stimulus condition. Only one brain region, the left STS, showed a significant effect of both susceptibility and stimulus condition. The amplitude of the response in the left STS was significantly correlated with the likelihood of perceiving the McGurk effect: a weak STS response meant that a subject was less likely to perceive the McGurk effect, while a strong response meant that a subject was more likely to perceive it. These results suggest that the left STS is a key locus for interindividual differences in speech perception. PMID:21787869

Stress priming in picture naming: an SOA study.

PubMed

Schiller, Niels O; Fikkert, Paula; Levelt, Clara C

2004-01-01

This study investigates whether or not the representation of lexical stress information can be primed during speech production. In four experiments, we attempted to prime the stress position of bisyllabic target nouns (picture names) having initial and final stress with auditory prime words having either the same or different stress as the target (e.g., WORtel-MOtor vs. koSTUUM-MOtor; capital letters indicate stressed syllables in prime-target pairs). Furthermore, half of the prime words were semantically related, the other half unrelated. Overall, picture names were not produced faster when the prime word had the same stress as the target than when the prime had different stress, i.e., there was no stress-priming effect in any experiment. This result would not be expected if stress were stored in the lexicon. However, targets with initial stress were responded to faster than final-stress targets. The reason for this effect was neither the quality of the pictures nor frequency of occurrence or voice-key characteristics. We hypothesize here that this stress effect is a genuine encoding effect, i.e., words with stress on the second syllable take longer to be encoded because their stress pattern is irregular with respect to the lexical distribution of bisyllabic stress patterns, even though it can be regular with respect to metrical stress rules in Dutch. The results of the experiments are discussed in the framework of models of phonological encoding.

Effects of frequency shifts and visual gender information on vowel category judgments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Glidden, Catherine; Assmann, Peter F.

2003-10-01

Visual morphing techniques were used together with a high-quality vocoder to study the audiovisual contribution of talker gender to the identification of frequency-shifted vowels. A nine-step continuum ranging from ``bit'' to ``bet'' was constructed from natural recorded syllables spoken by an adult female talker. Upward and downward frequency shifts in spectral envelope (scale factors of 0.85 and 1.0) were applied in combination with shifts in fundamental frequency, F0 (scale factors of 0.5 and 1.0). Downward frequency shifts generally resulted in malelike voices whereas upward shifts were perceived as femalelike. Two separate nine-step visual continua from ``bit'' to ``bet'' were also constructed, one from a male face and the other a female face, each producing the end-point words. Each step along the two visual continua was paired with the corresponding step on the acoustic continuum, creating natural audiovisual utterances. Category boundary shifts were found for both acoustic cues (F0 and formant frequency shifts) and visual cues (visual gender). The visual gender effect was larger when acoustic and visual information were matched appropriately. These results suggest that visual information provided by the speech signal plays an important supplemental role in talker normalization.

Word naming times and psycholinguistic norms for Italian nouns.

PubMed

Barca, Laura; Burani, Cristina; Arduino, Lisa S

2002-08-01

The present study describes normative measures for 626 Italian simple nouns. The database (LEXVAR.XLS) is freely available for down-loading on the Web site http://wwwistc.ip.rm.cnr.it/materia/database/. For each of the 626 nouns, values for the following variables are reported: age of acquisition, familiarity, imageability, concreteness, adult written frequency, child written frequency, adult spoken frequency, number of orthographic neighbors, mean bigram frequency, length in syllables, and length in letters. A classification of lexical stress and of the type of word-initial phoneme is also provided. The intercorrelations among the variables, a factor analysis, and the effects of variables and of the extracted factors on word naming are reported. Naming latencies were affected primarily by a factor including word length and neighborhood size and by a word frequency factor. Neither a semantic factor including imageability, concreteness, and age of acquisition nor a factor defined by mean bigram frequency had significant effects on pronunciation times. These results hold for a language with shallow orthography, like Italian, for which lexical nonsemantic properties have been shown to affect reading aloud. These norms are useful in a variety of research areas involving the manipulation and control of stimulus attributes.

Subtlety of Ambient-Language Effects in Babbling: A Study of English- and Chinese-Learning Infants at 8, 10, and 12 Months

PubMed Central

Lee, Chia-Cheng; Jhang, Yuna; Chen, Li-mei; Relyea, George; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2016-01-01

Prior research on ambient-language effects in babbling has often suggested infants produce language-specific phonological features within the first year. These results have been questioned in research failing to find such effects and challenging the positive findings on methodological grounds. We studied English- and Chinese-learning infants at 8, 10, and 12 months and found listeners could not detect ambient-language effects in the vast majority of infant utterances, but only in items deemed to be words or to contain canonical syllables that may have made them sound like words with language-specific shapes. Thus, the present research suggests the earliest ambient-language effects may be found in emerging lexical items or in utterances influenced by language-specific features of lexical items. Even the ambient-language effects for infant canonical syllables and words were very small compared with ambient-language effects for meaningless but phonotactically well-formed syllable sequences spoken by adult native speakers of English and Chinese. PMID:28496393

Visual Influences on Perception of Speech and Nonspeech Vocal-Tract Events

PubMed Central

Brancazio, Lawrence; Best, Catherine T.; Fowler, Carol A.

2009-01-01

We report four experiments designed to determine whether visual information affects judgments of acoustically-specified nonspeech events as well as speech events (the “McGurk effect”). Previous findings have shown only weak McGurk effects for nonspeech stimuli, whereas strong effects are found for consonants. We used click sounds that serve as consonants in some African languages, but that are perceived as nonspeech by American English listeners. We found a significant McGurk effect for clicks presented in isolation that was much smaller than that found for stop-consonant-vowel syllables. In subsequent experiments, we found strong McGurk effects, comparable to those found for English syllables, for click-vowel syllables, and weak effects, comparable to those found for isolated clicks, for excised release bursts of stop consonants presented in isolation. We interpret these findings as evidence that the potential contributions of speech-specific processes on the McGurk effect are limited, and discuss the results in relation to current explanations for the McGurk effect. PMID:16922061

Interaction in planning vocalizations and grasping.

PubMed

Tiainen, Mikko; Tiippana, Kaisa; Vainio, Martti; Komeilipoor, Naeem; Vainio, Lari

2017-08-01

Previous studies have shown a congruency effect between manual grasping and syllable articulation. For instance, a power grip is associated with syllables whose articulation involves the tongue body and/or large mouth aperture ([kɑ]) whereas a precision grip is associated with articulations that involve the tongue tip and/or small mouth aperture ([ti]). Previously, this effect has been observed in manual reaction times. The primary aim of the current study was to investigate whether this congruency effect also takes place in vocal responses and to investigate involvement of action selection processes in the effect. The congruency effect was found in vocal and manual responses regardless of whether or not the syllable or grip was known a priori, suggesting that the effect operates with minimal or absent action selection processes. In addition, the effect was observed in vocal responses even when the grip was only prepared but not performed, suggesting that merely planning a grip response primes the corresponding articulatory response. These results support the view that articulation and grasping are processed in a partially overlapping network.

The role of syllables in sign language production

PubMed Central

Baus, Cristina; Gutiérrez, Eva; Carreiras, Manuel

2014-01-01

The aim of the present study was to investigate the functional role of syllables in sign language and how the different phonological combinations influence sign production. Moreover, the influence of age of acquisition was evaluated. Deaf signers (native and non-native) of Catalan Signed Language (LSC) were asked in a picture-sign interference task to sign picture names while ignoring distractor-signs with which they shared two phonological parameters (out of three of the main sign parameters: Location, Movement, and Handshape). The results revealed a different impact of the three phonological combinations. While no effect was observed for the phonological combination Handshape-Location, the combination Handshape-Movement slowed down signing latencies, but only in the non-native group. A facilitatory effect was observed for both groups when pictures and distractors shared Location-Movement. Importantly, linguistic models have considered this phonological combination to be a privileged unit in the composition of signs, as syllables are in spoken languages. Thus, our results support the functional role of syllable units during phonological articulation in sign language production. PMID:25431562

Prosodic Similarity Effects in Short-Term Memory in Developmental Dyslexia.

PubMed

Goswami, Usha; Barnes, Lisa; Mead, Natasha; Power, Alan James; Leong, Victoria

2016-11-01

Children with developmental dyslexia are characterized by phonological difficulties across languages. Classically, this 'phonological deficit' in dyslexia has been investigated with tasks using single-syllable words. Recently, however, several studies have demonstrated difficulties in prosodic awareness in dyslexia. Potential prosodic effects in short-term memory have not yet been investigated. Here we create a new instrument based on three-syllable words that vary in stress patterns, to investigate whether prosodic similarity (the same prosodic pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables) exerts systematic effects on short-term memory. We study participants with dyslexia and age-matched and younger reading-level-matched typically developing controls. We find that all participants, including dyslexic participants, show prosodic similarity effects in short-term memory. All participants exhibited better retention of words that differed in prosodic structure, although participants with dyslexia recalled fewer words accurately overall compared to age-matched controls. Individual differences in prosodic memory were predicted by earlier vocabulary abilities, by earlier sensitivity to syllable stress and by earlier phonological awareness. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of prosodic similarity effects in short-term memory. The implications of a prosodic similarity effect for theories of lexical representation and of dyslexia are discussed. © 2016 The Authors. Dyslexia published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. © 2016 The Authors. Dyslexia published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Stress Domain Effects in French Phonology and Phonological Development.

PubMed

Rose, Yvan; Dos Santos, Christophe

In this paper, we discuss two distinct data sets. The first relates to the so-called allophonic process of closed-syllable laxing in Québec French, which targets final (stressed) vowels even though these vowels are arguably syllabified in open syllables in lexical representations. The second is found in the forms produced by a first language learner of European French, who displays an asymmetry in her production of CVC versus CVCV target (adult) forms. The former display full preservation (with concomitant manner harmony) of both consonants. The latter undergoes deletion of the initial syllable if the consonants are not manner-harmonic in the input. We argue that both patterns can be explained through a phonological process of prosodic strengthening targeting the head of the prosodic domain which, in the contexts described above, yields the incorporation of final consonants into the coda of the stressed syllable.

Common and distinct neural substrates for the perception of speech rhythm and intonation.

PubMed

Zhang, Linjun; Shu, Hua; Zhou, Fengying; Wang, Xiaoyi; Li, Ping

2010-07-01

The present study examines the neural substrates for the perception of speech rhythm and intonation. Subjects listened passively to synthesized speech stimuli that contained no semantic and phonological information, in three conditions: (1) continuous speech stimuli with fixed syllable duration and fundamental frequency in the standard condition, (2) stimuli with varying vocalic durations of syllables in the speech rhythm condition, and (3) stimuli with varying fundamental frequency in the intonation condition. Compared to the standard condition, speech rhythm activated the right middle superior temporal gyrus (mSTG), whereas intonation activated the bilateral superior temporal gyrus and sulcus (STG/STS) and the right posterior STS. Conjunction analysis further revealed that rhythm and intonation activated a common area in the right mSTG but compared to speech rhythm, intonation elicited additional activations in the right anterior STS. Findings from the current study reveal that the right mSTG plays an important role in prosodic processing. Implications of our findings are discussed with respect to neurocognitive theories of auditory processing. (c) 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

ESCOLEX: a grade-level lexical database from European Portuguese elementary to middle school textbooks.

PubMed

Soares, Ana Paula; Medeiros, José Carlos; Simões, Alberto; Machado, João; Costa, Ana; Iriarte, Álvaro; de Almeida, José João; Pinheiro, Ana P; Comesaña, Montserrat

2014-03-01

In this article, we introduce ESCOLEX, the first European Portuguese children's lexical database with grade-level-adjusted word frequency statistics. Computed from a 3.2-million-word corpus, ESCOLEX provides 48,381 word forms extracted from 171 elementary and middle school textbooks for 6- to 11-year-old children attending the first six grades in the Portuguese educational system. Like other children's grade-level databases (e.g., Carroll, Davies, & Richman, 1971; Corral, Ferrero, & Goikoetxea, Behavior Research Methods, 41, 1009-1017, 2009; Lété, Sprenger-Charolles, & Colé, Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 36, 156-166, 2004; Zeno, Ivens, Millard, Duvvuri, 1995), ESCOLEX provides four frequency indices for each grade: overall word frequency (F), index of dispersion across the selected textbooks (D), estimated frequency per million words (U), and standard frequency index (SFI). It also provides a new measure, contextual diversity (CD). In addition, the number of letters in the word and its part(s) of speech, number of syllables, syllable structure, and adult frequencies taken from P-PAL (a European Portuguese corpus-based lexical database; Soares, Comesaña, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, …, Machado, 2010; Soares, Iriarte, Almeida, Simões, Costa, França, …, Comesaña, in press) are provided. ESCOLEX will be a useful tool both for researchers interested in language processing and development and for professionals in need of verbal materials adjusted to children's developmental stages. ESCOLEX can be downloaded along with this article or from http://p-pal.di.uminho.pt/about/databases .

Synthesis of Polysyllabic Sequences of Thai Tones Using a Generative Model of Fundamental Frequency Contours

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Seresangtakul, Pusadee; Takara, Tomio

In this paper, the distinctive tones of Thai in running speech are studied. We present rules to synthesize F0 contours of Thai tones in running speech by using the generative model of F0 contours. Along with our method, the pitch contours of Thai polysyllabic words, both disyllabic and trisyllabic words, were analyzed. The coarticulation effect of Thai tones in running speech were found. Based on the analysis of the polysyllabic words using this model, rules are derived and applied to synthesize Thai polysyllabic tone sequences. We performed listening tests to evaluate intelligibility of the rules for Thai tones generation. The average intelligibility scores became 98.8%, and 96.6% for disyllabic and trisyllabic words, respectively. From these result, the rule of the tones' generation was shown to be effective. Furthermore, we constructed the connecting rules to synthesize suprasegmental F0 contours using the trisyllable training rules' parameters. The parameters of the first, the third, and the second syllables were selected and assigned to the initial, the ending, and the remaining syllables in a sentence, respectively. Even such a simple rule, the synthesized phrases/senetences were completely identified in listening tests. The MOSs (Mean Opinion Score) was 3.50 while the original and analysis/synthesis samples were 4.82 and 3.59, respectively.

Comparison of Percentage of Syllables Stuttered With Parent-Reported Severity Ratings as a Primary Outcome Measure in Clinical Trials of Early Stuttering Treatment.

PubMed

Onslow, Mark; Jones, Mark; O'Brian, Sue; Packman, Ann; Menzies, Ross; Lowe, Robyn; Arnott, Simone; Bridgman, Kate; de Sonneville, Caroline; Franken, Marie-Christine

2018-04-17

This report investigates whether parent-reported stuttering severity ratings (SRs) provide similar estimates of effect size as percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) for randomized trials of early stuttering treatment with preschool children. Data sets from 3 randomized controlled trials of an early stuttering intervention were selected for analyses. Analyses included median changes and 95% confidence intervals per treatment group, Bland-Altman plots, analysis of covariance, and Spearman rho correlations. Both SRs and %SS showed large effect sizes from pretreatment to follow-up, although correlations between the 2 measures were moderate at best. Absolute agreement between the 2 measures improved as percentage reduction of stuttering frequency and severity increased, probably due to innate measurement limitations for participants with low baseline severity. Analysis of covariance for the 3 trials showed consistent results. There is no statistical reason to favor %SS over parent-reported stuttering SRs as primary outcomes for clinical trials of early stuttering treatment. However, there are logistical reasons to favor parent-reported stuttering SRs. We conclude that parent-reported rating of the child's typical stuttering severity for the week or month prior to each assessment is a justifiable alternative to %SS as a primary outcome measure in clinical trials of early stuttering treatment.

Dissociable Effects on Birdsong of Androgen Signaling in Cortex-Like Brain Regions of Canaries

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

The neural basis of how learned vocalizations change during development and in adulthood represents a major challenge facing cognitive neuroscience. This plasticity in the degree to which learned vocalizations can change in both humans and songbirds is linked to the actions of sex steroid hormones during ontogeny but also in adulthood in the context of seasonal changes in birdsong. We investigated the role of steroid hormone signaling in the brain on distinct features of birdsong using adult male canaries (Serinus canaria), which show extensive seasonal vocal plasticity as adults. Specifically, we bilaterally implanted the potent androgen receptor antagonist flutamide in two key brain regions that control birdsong. We show that androgen signaling in the motor cortical-like brain region, the robust nucleus of the arcopallium (RA), controls syllable and trill bandwidth stereotypy, while not significantly affecting higher order features of song such syllable-type usage (i.e., how many times each syllable type is used) or syllable sequences. In contrast, androgen signaling in the premotor cortical-like brain region, HVC (proper name), controls song variability by increasing the variability of syllable-type usage and syllable sequences, while having no effect on syllable or trill bandwidth stereotypy. Other aspects of song, such as the duration of trills and the number of syllables per song, were also differentially affected by androgen signaling in HVC versus RA. These results implicate androgens in regulating distinct features of complex motor output in a precise and nonredundant manner. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Vocal plasticity is linked to the actions of sex steroid hormones, but the precise mechanisms are unclear. We investigated this question in adult male canaries (Serinus canaria), which show extensive vocal plasticity throughout their life. We show that androgens in two cortex-like vocal control brain regions regulate distinct aspects of vocal plasticity. For example, in HVC (proper name), androgens regulate variability in syntax but not phonology, whereas androgens in the robust nucleus of the arcopallium (RA) regulate variability in phonology but not syntax. Temporal aspects of song were also differentially affected by androgen signaling in HVC versus RA. Thus, androgen signaling may reduce vocal plasticity by acting in a nonredundant and precise manner in the brain. PMID:28821656

Some phonatory and resonatory characteristics of the rock, pop, soul, and Swedish dance band styles of singing.

PubMed

Borch, D Zangger; Sundberg, Johan

2011-09-01

This investigation aims at describing voice function of four nonclassical styles of singing, Rock, Pop, Soul, and Swedish Dance Band. A male singer, professionally experienced in performing in these genres, sang representative tunes, both with their original lyrics and on the syllable /pae/. In addition, he sang tones in a triad pattern ranging from the pitch Bb2 to the pitch C4 on the syllable /pae/ in pressed and neutral phonation. An expert panel was successful in classifying the samples, thus suggesting that the samples were representative of the various styles. Subglottal pressure was estimated from oral pressure during the occlusion for the consonant [p]. Flow glottograms were obtained from inverse filtering. The four lowest formant frequencies differed between the styles. The mean of the subglottal pressure and the mean of the normalized amplitude quotient (NAQ), that is, the ratio between the flow pulse amplitude and the product of period and maximum flow declination rate, were plotted against the mean of fundamental frequency. In these graphs, Rock and Swedish Dance Band assumed opposite extreme positions with respect to subglottal pressure and mean phonation frequency, whereas the mean NAQ values differed less between the styles. Copyright © 2011 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Primary phonological planning units in spoken word production are language-specific: Evidence from an ERP study.

PubMed

Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Wang, Suiping; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2017-07-19

It is widely acknowledged in Germanic languages that segments are the primary planning units at the phonological encoding stage of spoken word production. Mixed results, however, have been found in Chinese, and it is still unclear what roles syllables and segments play in planning Chinese spoken word production. In the current study, participants were asked to first prepare and later produce disyllabic Mandarin words upon picture prompts and a response cue while electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded. Each two consecutive pictures implicitly formed a pair of prime and target, whose names shared the same word-initial atonal syllable or the same word-initial segments, or were unrelated in the control conditions. Only syllable repetition induced significant effects on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) after target onset: a widely distributed positivity in the 200- to 400-ms interval and an anterior positivity in the 400- to 600-ms interval. We interpret these to reflect syllable-size representations at the phonological encoding and phonetic encoding stages. Our results provide the first electrophysiological evidence for the distinct role of syllables in producing Mandarin spoken words, supporting a language specificity hypothesis about the primary phonological units in spoken word production.

Effects of prosody and position on the timing of deictic gestures.

PubMed

Rusiewicz, Heather Leavy; Shaiman, Susan; Iverson, Jana M; Szuminsky, Neil

2013-04-01

In this study, the authors investigated the hypothesis that the perceived tight temporal synchrony of speech and gesture is evidence of an integrated spoken language and manual gesture communication system. It was hypothesized that experimental manipulations of the spoken response would affect the timing of deictic gestures. The authors manipulated syllable position and contrastive stress in compound words in multiword utterances by using a repeated-measures design to investigate the degree of synchronization of speech and pointing gestures produced by 15 American English speakers. Acoustic measures were compared with the gesture movement recorded via capacitance. Although most participants began a gesture before the target word, the temporal parameters of the gesture changed as a function of syllable position and prosody. Syllables with contrastive stress in the 2nd position of compound words were the longest in duration and also most consistently affected the timing of gestures, as measured by several dependent measures. Increasing the stress of a syllable significantly affected the timing of a corresponding gesture, notably for syllables in the 2nd position of words that would not typically be stressed. The findings highlight the need to consider the interaction of gestures and spoken language production from a motor-based perspective of coordination.

The Effect of Uni- and Bilateral Thalamic Deep Brain Stimulation on Speech in Patients With Essential Tremor: Acoustics and Intelligibility.

PubMed

Becker, Johannes; Barbe, Michael T; Hartinger, Mariam; Dembek, Till A; Pochmann, Jil; Wirths, Jochen; Allert, Niels; Mücke, Doris; Hermes, Anne; Meister, Ingo G; Visser-Vandewalle, Veerle; Grice, Martine; Timmermann, Lars

2017-04-01

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the ventral intermediate nucleus (VIM) is performed to suppress medically-resistant essential tremor (ET). However, stimulation induced dysarthria (SID) is a common side effect, limiting the extent to which tremor can be suppressed. To date, the exact pathogenesis of SID in VIM-DBS treated ET patients is unknown. We investigate the effect of inactivated, uni- and bilateral VIM-DBS on speech production in patients with ET. We employ acoustic measures, tempo, and intelligibility ratings and patient's self-estimated speech to quantify SID, with a focus on comparing bilateral to unilateral stimulation effects and the effect of electrode position on speech. Sixteen German ET patients participated in this study. Each patient was acoustically recorded with DBS-off, unilateral-right-hemispheric-DBS-on, unilateral-left-hemispheric-DBS-on, and bilateral-DBS-on during an oral diadochokinesis task and a read German standard text. To capture the extent of speech impairment, we measured syllable duration and intensity ratio during the DDK task. Naïve listeners rated speech tempo and speech intelligibility of the read text on a 5-point-scale. Patients had to rate their "ability to speak". We found an effect of bilateral compared to unilateral and inactivated stimulation on syllable durations and intensity ratio, as well as on external intelligibility ratings and patients' VAS scores. Additionally, VAS scores are associated with more laterally located active contacts. For speech ratings, we found an effect of syllable duration such that tempo and intelligibility was rated worse for speakers exhibiting greater syllable durations. Our data confirms that SID is more pronounced under bilateral compared to unilateral stimulation. Laterally located electrodes are associated with more severe SID according to patient's self-ratings. We can confirm the relation between diadochokinetic rate and SID in that listener's tempo and intelligibility ratings can be predicted by measured syllable durations from DDK tasks. © 2017 International Neuromodulation Society.

The Effect of Pitch Peak Alignment on Sentence Type Identification in Russian

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Makarova, Veronika

2007-01-01

This paper reports the results of an experimental phonetic study examining pitch peak alignment in production and perception of three-syllable one-word sentences with phonetic rising-falling pitch movement by speakers of Russian. The first part of the study (Experiment 1) utilizes 22 one-word three-syllable utterances read by five female speakers…

Fluctuations in Unimanual Hand Preference in Infants Following the Onset of Duplicated Syllable Babbling.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramsay, Douglas S.

1985-01-01

Infants were tested for unimanual handedness at weekly intervals for a 14-week period beginning with the week of onset of duplicated syllable babbling. Group analyses indicating effects of sex and/or birth order on fluctuations and date review for individual infants suggested considerable variability across infants in occurrence and/or timing of…

The Influence of Phonological Mechanisms in Written Spelling of Profoundly Deaf Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Colombo, Lucia; Arfe, Barbara; Bronte, Tiziana

2012-01-01

In the present study, the effect of phonological and working memory mechanisms involved in spelling Italian single words was explored in two groups of children matched for grade level: a group of normally hearing children and a group of pre-verbally deaf children, with severe-to-profound hearing loss. Three-syllable and four-syllable familiar…

Lingual Kinematics during Rapid Syllable Repetition in Parkinson's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wong, Min Ney; Murdoch, Bruce E.; Whelan, Brooke-Mai

2012-01-01

Background: Rapid syllable repetition tasks are commonly used in the assessment of motor speech disorders. However, little is known about the articulatory kinematics during rapid syllable repetition in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Aims: To investigate and compare lingual kinematics during rapid syllable repetition in dysarthric…

Analysis of error type and frequency in apraxia of speech among Portuguese speakers.

PubMed

Cera, Maysa Luchesi; Minett, Thaís Soares Cianciarullo; Ortiz, Karin Zazo

2010-01-01

Most studies characterizing errors in the speech of patients with apraxia involve English language. To analyze the types and frequency of errors produced by patients with apraxia of speech whose mother tongue was Brazilian Portuguese. 20 adults with apraxia of speech caused by stroke were assessed. The types of error committed by patients were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, and frequencies compared. We observed the presence of substitution, omission, trial-and-error, repetition, self-correction, anticipation, addition, reiteration and metathesis, in descending order of frequency, respectively. Omission type errors were one of the most commonly occurring whereas addition errors were infrequent. These findings differed to those reported in English speaking patients, probably owing to differences in the methodologies used for classifying error types; the inclusion of speakers with apraxia secondary to aphasia; and the difference in the structure of Portuguese language to English in terms of syllable onset complexity and effect on motor control. The frequency of omission and addition errors observed differed to the frequency reported for speakers of English.

Predictors of photo naming: Dutch norms for 327 photos.

PubMed

Shao, Zeshu; Stiegert, Julia

2016-06-01

In the present study, we report naming latencies and norms for 327 photos of objects in Dutch. We provide norms for eight psycholinguistic variables: age of acquisition, familiarity, imageability, image agreement, objective and subjective visual complexity, word frequency, word length in syllables and letters, and name agreement. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses revealed that the significant predictors of photo-naming latencies were name agreement, word frequency, imageability, and image agreement. The naming latencies, norms, and stimuli are provided as supplemental materials.

On the edge of language acquisition: inherent constraints on encoding multisyllabic sequences in the neonate brain.

PubMed

Ferry, Alissa L; Fló, Ana; Brusini, Perrine; Cattarossi, Luigi; Macagno, Francesco; Nespor, Marina; Mehler, Jacques

2016-05-01

To understand language, humans must encode information from rapid, sequential streams of syllables - tracking their order and organizing them into words, phrases, and sentences. We used Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to determine whether human neonates are born with the capacity to track the positions of syllables in multisyllabic sequences. After familiarization with a six-syllable sequence, the neonate brain responded to the change (as shown by an increase in oxy-hemoglobin) when the two edge syllables switched positions but not when two middle syllables switched positions (Experiment 1), indicating that they encoded the syllables at the edges of sequences better than those in the middle. Moreover, when a 25 ms pause was inserted between the middle syllables as a segmentation cue, neonates' brains were sensitive to the change (Experiment 2), indicating that subtle cues in speech can signal a boundary, with enhanced encoding of the syllables located at the edges of that boundary. These findings suggest that neonates' brains can encode information from multisyllabic sequences and that this encoding is constrained. Moreover, subtle segmentation cues in a sequence of syllables provide a mechanism with which to accurately encode positional information from longer sequences. Tracking the order of syllables is necessary to understand language and our results suggest that the foundations for this encoding are present at birth. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

General perceptual contributions to lexical tone normalization.

PubMed

Huang, Jingyuan; Holt, Lori L

2009-06-01

Within tone languages that use pitch variations to contrast meaning, large variability exists in the pitches produced by different speakers. Context-dependent perception may help to resolve this perceptual challenge. However, whether speakers rely on context in contour tone perception is unclear; previous studies have produced inconsistent results. The present study aimed to provide an unambiguous test of the effect of context on contour lexical tone perception and to explore its underlying mechanisms. In three experiments, Mandarin listeners' perception of Mandarin first and second (high-level and mid-rising) tones was investigated with preceding speech and non-speech contexts. Results indicate that the mean fundamental frequency (f0) of a preceding sentence affects perception of contour lexical tones and the effect is contrastive. Following a sentence with a higher-frequency mean f0, the following syllable is more likely to be perceived as a lower frequency lexical tone and vice versa. Moreover, non-speech precursors modeling the mean spectrum of f0 also elicit this effect, suggesting general perceptual processing rather than articulatory-based or speaker-identity-driven mechanisms.

Syllable Structure in Arabic Varieties with a Focus on Superheavy Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bamakhramah, Majdi A.

2010-01-01

This thesis has two broad goals. The first is to contribute to the study of Arabic phonology particularly syllable structure and syllabification. This will be achieved through examining phenomena related to syllable structure and syllabic weight such as syllabification, stress assignment, epenthesis, syncope, and sonority in three different…

The mismatch negativity as a measure of auditory stream segregation in a simulated "cocktail-party" scenario: effect of age.

PubMed

Getzmann, Stephan; Näätänen, Risto

2015-11-01

With age the ability to understand speech in multitalker environments usually deteriorates. The central auditory system has to perceptually segregate and group the acoustic input into sequences of distinct auditory objects. The present study used electrophysiological measures to study effects of age on auditory stream segregation in a multitalker scenario. Younger and older adults were presented with streams of short speech stimuli. When a single target stream was presented, the occurrence of a rare (deviant) syllable among a frequent (standard) syllable elicited the mismatch negativity (MMN), an electrophysiological correlate of automatic deviance detection. The presence of a second, concurrent stream consisting of the deviant syllable of the target stream reduced the MMN amplitude, especially when located nearby the target stream. The decrease in MMN amplitude indicates that the rare syllable of the target stream was less perceived as deviant, suggesting reduced stream segregation with decreasing stream distance. Moreover, the presence of a concurrent stream increased the MMN peak latency of the older group but not that of the younger group. The results provide neurophysiological evidence for the effects of concurrent speech on auditory processing in older adults, suggesting that older adults need more time for stream segregation in the presence of concurrent speech. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

ERP index of the morphological family size effect during word recognition.

PubMed

Kwon, Youan; Nam, Kichun; Lee, Yoonhyoung

2012-12-01

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the N400 is affected by the semantic richness of associated neighboring word members or by the density of the orthographic syllable neighborhood. Another purpose of this study was to investigate the source of the different LPC in respect to the semantic richness. To do so, the density of the syllable neighborhood and the size of the morphological family of a word were orthogonally manipulated. ERPs from 24 participants were collected during a go/no-go semantic categorization task. The results showed that the N400 effect was mainly influenced by the density of the syllable neighborhood rather than by the morphological family size. The results also showed that words with a larger morphological family size generate significantly larger LPC than words with a smaller morphological family size. The present study did not support the assumption that the main source of the N400 effect is the semantic richness of the associated neighbors. The present results suggest that the N400 is more sensitive to the density of the syllable neighborhood and LPC is sensitive to the density of the semantic neighborhood reflected by the morphological family size. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Cross-linguistic differences in the use of durational cues for the segmentation of a novel language.

PubMed

Ordin, Mikhail; Polyanskaya, Leona; Laka, Itziar; Nespor, Marina

2017-07-01

It is widely accepted that duration can be exploited as phonological phrase final lengthening in the segmentation of a novel language, i.e., in extracting discrete constituents from continuous speech. The use of final lengthening for segmentation and its facilitatory effect has been claimed to be universal. However, lengthening in the world languages can also mark lexically stressed syllables. Stress-induced lengthening can potentially be in conflict with right edge phonological phrase boundary lengthening. Thus the processing of durational cues in segmentation can be dependent on the listener's linguistic background, e.g., on the specific correlates and unmarked location of lexical stress in the native language of the listener. We tested this prediction and found that segmentation by both German and Basque speakers is facilitated when lengthening is aligned with the word final syllable and is not affected by lengthening on either the penultimate or the antepenultimate syllables. Lengthening of the word final syllable, however, does not help Italian and Spanish speakers to segment continuous speech, and lengthening of the antepenultimate syllable impedes their performance. We have also found a facilitatory effect of penultimate lengthening on segmentation by Italians. These results confirm our hypothesis that processing of lengthening cues is not universal, and interpretation of lengthening as a phonological phrase final boundary marker in a novel language of exposure can be overridden by the phonology of lexical stress in the native language of the listener.

Noise Equally Degrades Central Auditory Processing in 2- and 4-Year-Old Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Niemitalo-Haapola, Elina; Haapala, Sini; Kujala, Teija; Raappana, Antti; Kujala, Tiia; Jansson-Verkasalo, Eira

2017-01-01

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate developmental and noise-induced changes in central auditory processing indexed by event-related potentials in typically developing children. Method: P1, N2, and N4 responses as well as mismatch negativities (MMNs) were recorded for standard syllables and consonants, frequency, intensity, vowel, and…

Stress Regularity or Consistency? Reading Aloud Italian Polysyllables with Different Stress Patterns

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Burani, Cristina; Arduino, Lisa S.

2004-01-01

Stress assignment to three- and four-syllable Italian words is not predictable by rule, but needs lexical look-up. The present study investigated whether stress assignment to low-frequency Italian words is determined by stress regularity, or by the number of words sharing the final phonological segment and the stress pattern (stress neighborhood…

Cognitive Conflict and Inhibition in Primed Dichotic Listening

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saetrevik, Bjorn; Specht, Karsten

2009-01-01

In previous behavioral studies, a prime syllable was presented just prior to a dichotic syllable pair, with instructions to ignore the prime and report one syllable from the dichotic pair. When the prime matched one of the syllables in the dichotic pair, response selection was biased towards selecting the unprimed target. The suggested mechanism…

Authorship Attribution in the E-mail Domain: A Study of the Effect of Size of Author Corpus and Topic on Accuracy of Identification

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-03-01

Wilhelm Fucks discriminated between authors using the average number of syllables per word and average distance between equal-syllabled words. He concluded...363–390, 1939. [4] Conrad Mascol. Curves of pauline and pseudo-pauline style. Unitarian Review, 1888. [5] Wilhelm Fucks . On mathmatical analysis of

Temporal order processing of syllables in the left parietal lobe.

PubMed

Moser, Dana; Baker, Julie M; Sanchez, Carmen E; Rorden, Chris; Fridriksson, Julius

2009-10-07

Speech processing requires the temporal parsing of syllable order. Individuals suffering from posterior left hemisphere brain injury often exhibit temporal processing deficits as well as language deficits. Although the right posterior inferior parietal lobe has been implicated in temporal order judgments (TOJs) of visual information, there is limited evidence to support the role of the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) in processing syllable order. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the left inferior parietal lobe is recruited during temporal order judgments of speech stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected on 14 normal participants while they completed the following forced-choice tasks: (1) syllable order of multisyllabic pseudowords, (2) syllable identification of single syllables, and (3) gender identification of both multisyllabic and monosyllabic speech stimuli. Results revealed increased neural recruitment in the left inferior parietal lobe when participants made judgments about syllable order compared with both syllable identification and gender identification. These findings suggest that the left inferior parietal lobe plays an important role in processing syllable order and support the hypothesized role of this region as an interface between auditory speech and the articulatory code. Furthermore, a breakdown in this interface may explain some components of the speech deficits observed after posterior damage to the left hemisphere.

Temporal Order Processing of Syllables in the Left Parietal Lobe

PubMed Central

Baker, Julie M.; Sanchez, Carmen E.; Rorden, Chris; Fridriksson, Julius

2009-01-01

Speech processing requires the temporal parsing of syllable order. Individuals suffering from posterior left hemisphere brain injury often exhibit temporal processing deficits as well as language deficits. Although the right posterior inferior parietal lobe has been implicated in temporal order judgments (TOJs) of visual information, there is limited evidence to support the role of the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL) in processing syllable order. The purpose of this study was to examine whether the left inferior parietal lobe is recruited during temporal order judgments of speech stimuli. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were collected on 14 normal participants while they completed the following forced-choice tasks: (1) syllable order of multisyllabic pseudowords, (2) syllable identification of single syllables, and (3) gender identification of both multisyllabic and monosyllabic speech stimuli. Results revealed increased neural recruitment in the left inferior parietal lobe when participants made judgments about syllable order compared with both syllable identification and gender identification. These findings suggest that the left inferior parietal lobe plays an important role in processing syllable order and support the hypothesized role of this region as an interface between auditory speech and the articulatory code. Furthermore, a breakdown in this interface may explain some components of the speech deficits observed after posterior damage to the left hemisphere. PMID:19812331

Effects of Word Position on the Acoustic Realization of Vietnamese Final Consonants.

PubMed

Tran, Thi Thuy Hien; Vallée, Nathalie; Granjon, Lionel

2018-05-28

A variety of studies have shown differences between phonetic features of consonants according to their prosodic and/or syllable (onset vs. coda) positions. However, differences are not always found, and interactions between the various factors involved are complex and not well understood. Our study compares acoustical characteristics of coda consonants in Vietnamese taking into account their position within words. Traditionally described as monosyllabic, Vietnamese is partially polysyllabic at the lexical level. In this language, tautosyllabic consonant sequences are prohibited, and adjacent consonants are only found at syllable boundaries either within polysyllabic words (CVC.CVC) or across monosyllabic words (CVC#CVC). This study is designed to examine whether or not syllable boundary types (interword vs. intraword) have an effect on the acoustic realization of codas. The results show significant acoustic differences in consonant realizations according to syllable boundary type, suggesting different coarticulation patterns between nuclei and codas. In addition, as Vietnamese voiceless stops are generally unreleased in coda position, with no burst to carry consonantal information, our results show that a vowel's second half contains acoustic cues which are available to aid in the discrimination of place of articulation of the vowel's following consonant. © 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel.

The neural dynamics of song syntax in songbirds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jin, Dezhe

2010-03-01

Songbird is ``the hydrogen atom'' of the neuroscience of complex, learned vocalizations such as human speech. Songs of Bengalese finch consist of sequences of syllables. While syllables are temporally stereotypical, syllable sequences can vary and follow complex, probabilistic syntactic rules, which are rudimentarily similar to grammars in human language. Songbird brain is accessible to experimental probes, and is understood well enough to construct biologically constrained, predictive computational models. In this talk, I will discuss the structure and dynamics of neural networks underlying the stereotypy of the birdsong syllables and the flexibility of syllable sequences. Recent experiments and computational models suggest that a syllable is encoded in a chain network of projection neurons in premotor nucleus HVC (proper name). Precisely timed spikes propagate along the chain, driving vocalization of the syllable through downstream nuclei. Through a computational model, I show that that variable syllable sequences can be generated through spike propagations in a network in HVC in which the syllable-encoding chain networks are connected into a branching chain pattern. The neurons mutually inhibit each other through the inhibitory HVC interneurons, and are driven by external inputs from nuclei upstream of HVC. At a branching point that connects the final group of a chain to the first groups of several chains, the spike activity selects one branch to continue the propagation. The selection is probabilistic, and is due to the winner-take-all mechanism mediated by the inhibition and noise. The model predicts that the syllable sequences statistically follow partially observable Markov models. Experimental results supporting this and other predictions of the model will be presented. We suggest that the syntax of birdsong syllable sequences is embedded in the connection patterns of HVC projection neurons.

Support for context effects on segmentation and segments depends on the context.

PubMed

Heffner, Christopher C; Newman, Rochelle S; Idsardi, William J

2017-04-01

Listeners must adapt to differences in speech rate across talkers and situations. Speech rate adaptation effects are strong for adjacent syllables (i.e., proximal syllables). For studies that have assessed adaptation effects on speech rate information more than one syllable removed from a point of ambiguity in speech (i.e., distal syllables), the difference in strength between different types of ambiguity is stark. Studies of word segmentation have shown large shifts in perception as a result of distal rate manipulations, while studies of segmental perception have shown only weak, or even nonexistent, effects. However, no study has standardized methods and materials to study context effects for both types of ambiguity simultaneously. Here, a set of sentences was created that differed as minimally as possible except for whether the sentences were ambiguous to the voicing of a consonant or ambiguous to the location of a word boundary. The sentences were then rate-modified to slow down the distal context speech rate to various extents, dependent on three different definitions of distal context that were adapted from previous experiments, along with a manipulation of proximal context to assess whether proximal effects were comparable across ambiguity types. The results indicate that the definition of distal influenced the extent of distal rate effects strongly for both segments and segmentation. They also establish the presence of distal rate effects on word-final segments for the first time. These results were replicated, with some caveats regarding the perception of individual segments, in an Internet-based sample recruited from Mechanical Turk.

Two-Month-Old Infants' Sensitivity to Changes in Arbitrary Syllable-Object Pairings: The Role of Temporal Synchrony

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gogate, Lakshmi J.; Prince, Christopher G.; Matatyaho, Dalit J.

2009-01-01

To explore early lexical development, the authors examined infants' sensitivity to changes in spoken syllables and objects given different temporal relations between syllable-object pairings. In Experiment 1, they habituated 2-month-olds to 1 syllable, /tah/ or /gah/, paired with an object in "synchronous" (utterances coincident with object…

The Role of the Syllable in the Segmentation of Cairene Spoken Arabic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Aquil, Rajaa

2012-01-01

The syllable as a perceptual unit has been investigated cross linguistically. In Cairene Arabic syllables fall into three categories, light CV, heavy CVC/CVV and superheavy CVCC/CVVC. However, heavy syllables in Cariene Arabic have varied weight depending on their position in a word, whether internal or final. The present paper investigates the…

Syllable timing and pausing: evidence from Cantonese.

PubMed

Perry, Conrad; Wong, Richard Kwok-Shing; Matthews, Stephen

2009-01-01

We examined the relationship between the acoustic duration of syllables and the silent pauses that follow them in Cantonese. The results showed that at major syntactic junctures, acoustic plus silent pause durations were quite similar for a number of different syllable types whose acoustic durations differed substantially. In addition, it appeared that CV: syllables, which had the longest acoustic duration of all syllable types that were examined, were also the least likely to have silent pauses after them. These results suggest that cross-language differences between the probability that silent pauses are used at major syntactic junctures might potentially be explained by the accuracy at which timing slots can be assigned for syllables, rather than more complex explanations that have been proposed.

Syllabic encoding during overt speech production in Cantonese: Evidence from temporal brain responses.

PubMed

Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Wang, Jie; Ng, Tin-Yan; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2016-10-01

The time course of phonological encoding in overt Cantonese disyllabic word production was investigated using a picture-word interference task with concurrent recording of the event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Participants were asked to name aloud individually presented pictures and ignore a distracting Chinese character. Participants' naming responses were faster, relative to an unrelated control, when the distractor overlapped with the target's word-initial or word-final syllables. Furthermore, ERP waves in the syllable-related conditions were more positive-going than those in the unrelated control conditions from 500ms to 650ms post target onset (i.e., a late positivity). The mean and peak amplitudes of this late positivity correlated with the size of phonological facilitation. More importantly, the onset of the late positivity associated with word-initial syllable priming was 44ms earlier than that associated with word-final syllable priming, suggesting that phonological encoding in overt speech runs incrementally and the encoding duration for one syllable unit is approximately 44ms. Although the size of effective phonological units might vary across languages, as suggested by previous speech production studies, the present data indicate that the incremental nature of phonological encoding is a universal mechanism. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Compensation for pitch-shifted auditory feedback during the production of Mandarin tone sequences

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Yi; Larson, Charles R.; Bauer, Jay J.; Hain, Timothy C.

2004-08-01

Recent research has found that while speaking, subjects react to perturbations in pitch of voice auditory feedback by changing their voice fundamental frequency (F0) to compensate for the perceived pitch-shift. The long response latencies (150-200 ms) suggest they may be too slow to assist in on-line control of the local pitch contour patterns associated with lexical tones on a syllable-to-syllable basis. In the present study, we introduced pitch-shifted auditory feedback to native speakers of Mandarin Chinese while they produced disyllabic sequences /ma ma/ with different tonal combinations at a natural speaking rate. Voice F0 response latencies (100-150 ms) to the pitch perturbations were shorter than syllable durations reported elsewhere. Response magnitudes increased from 50 cents during static tone to 85 cents during dynamic tone productions. Response latencies and peak times decreased in phrases involving a dynamic change in F0. The larger response magnitudes and shorter latency and peak times in tasks requiring accurate, dynamic control of F0, indicate this automatic system for regulation of voice F0 may be task-dependent. These findings suggest that auditory feedback may be used to help regulate voice F0 during production of bi-tonal Mandarin phrases.

Learning of Syllable-Object Relations by Preverbal Infants: The Role of Temporal Synchrony and Syllable Distinctiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gogate, Lakshmi J.

2010-01-01

The role of temporal synchrony and syllable distinctiveness in preverbal infants' learning of word-object relations was investigated. In Experiment 1, 7- and 8-month-olds (N=64) were habituated under conditions where two "similar-sounding" syllables, /tah/ and /gah/, were spoken simultaneously with the motions of one of two sets of…

A Prominence Account of Syllable Reduction in Early Speech Development: The Child's Prosodic Phonology of "Tiger" and "Giraffe."

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snow, David

1998-01-01

This paper tested a theory of syllable prominence with 11 children (ages 11 to 26 months). The theory proposes that syllable prominence is a product of two orthogonal suprasegmental systems: stress/accent peaks and phrase boundaries. Use of the developed prominence scale found it parsimoniously accounted for observed biases in syllable omissions…

The Acquisition of Sight-Singing Skills in Second-Grade General Music: Effects of Using Solfege and of Relating Tonal Patterns to Songs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reifinger, James L., Jr.

2012-01-01

This study was designed to examine two aspects of sight-singing instruction: (1) solfege syllables versus the syllable "loo" for singing patterns and (2) the use of related songs (songs that began with tonal patterns being studied) as compared with unrelated songs. Second-grade students (N = 193) enrolled in general music classes…

Syllable-related breathing in infants in the second year of life.

PubMed

Parham, Douglas F; Buder, Eugene H; Oller, D Kimbrough; Boliek, Carol A

2011-08-01

This study explored whether breathing behaviors of infants within the 2nd year of life differ between tidal breathing and breathing supporting single unarticulated syllables and canonical/articulated syllables. Vocalizations and breathing kinematics of 9 infants between 53 and 90 weeks of age were recorded. A strict selection protocol was used to identify analyzable breath cycles. Syllables were categorized on the basis of consensus coding. Inspiratory and expiratory durations, excursions, and slopes were calculated for the 3 breath cycle types and were normalized using mean tidal breath measures. Tidal breathing cycles were significantly different from syllable-related cycles on all breathing measures. There were no significant differences between unarticulated syllable cycles and canonical syllable cycles, even after controlling for utterance duration and sound pressure level. Infants in the 2nd year of life exhibit clear differences between tidal breathing and speech-related breathing, but categorically distinct breath support for syllable types with varying articulatory demands was not evident in the present findings. Speech development introduces increasingly complex utterances, so older infants may produce detectable articulation-related adaptations of breathing kinematics. For younger infants, breath support may vary systematically among utterance types, due more to phonatory variations than to articulatory demands.

Syllable-Related Breathing in Infants in the Second Year of Life

PubMed Central

Parham, Douglas F.; Buder, Eugene H.; Oller, D. Kimbrough; Boliek, Carol A.

2010-01-01

Purpose This study explored whether breathing behaviors of infants within the second year of life differ between tidal breathing and breathing supporting single unarticulated syllables and canonical/articulated syllables. Method Vocalizations and breathing kinematics of nine infants between 53 and 90 weeks of age were recorded. A strict selection protocol was used to identify analyzable breath cycles. Syllables were categorized based on consensus coding. Inspiratory and expiratory durations, excursions, and slopes were calculated for the three breath cycle types and normalized using mean tidal breath measures. Results Tidal breathing cycles were significantly different from syllable-related cycles on all breathing measures. There were no significant differences between unarticulated syllable cycles and canonical syllable cycles, even after controlling for utterance duration and sound pressure level. Conclusions Infants in the second year of life exhibit clear differences between tidal breathing and speech-related breathing, but categorically distinct breath support for syllable types with varying articulatory demands was not evident in the current findings. Speech development introduces increasingly complex utterances, so older infants may produce detectable articulation-related adaptations of breathing kinematics. For younger infants, breath support may vary systematically among utterance types, due more to phonatory variations than to articulatory demands. PMID:21173390

The influence of linguistic experience on pitch perception in speech and nonspeech sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bent, Tessa; Bradlow, Ann R.; Wright, Beverly A.

2003-04-01

How does native language experience with a tone or nontone language influence pitch perception? To address this question 12 English and 13 Mandarin listeners participated in an experiment involving three tasks: (1) Mandarin tone identification-a clearly linguistic task where a strong effect of language background was expected, (2) pure-tone and pulse-train frequency discrimination-a clearly nonlinguistic auditory discrimination task where no effect of language background was expected, and (3) pitch glide identification-a nonlinguistic auditory categorization task where some effect of language background was expected. As anticipated, Mandarin listeners identified Mandarin tones significantly more accurately than English listeners (Task 1) and the two groups' pure-tone and pulse-train frequency discrimination thresholds did not differ (Task 2). For pitch glide identification (Task 3), Mandarin listeners made more identification errors: in comparison with English listeners, Mandarin listeners more frequently misidentified falling pitch glides as level, and more often misidentified level pitch ``glides'' with relatively high frequencies as rising and those with relatively low frequencies as falling. Thus, it appears that the effect of long-term linguistic experience can extend beyond lexical tone category identification in syllables to pitch class identification in certain nonspeech sounds. [Work supported by Sigma Xi and NIH.

Syllable acoustics, temporal patterns, and call composition vary with behavioral context in Mexican free-tailed bats

PubMed Central

Bohn, Kirsten M.; Schmidt-French, Barbara; Ma, Sean T.; Pollak, George D.

2008-01-01

Recent research has shown that some bat species have rich vocal repertoires with diverse syllable acoustics. Few studies, however, have compared vocalizations across different behavioral contexts or examined the temporal emission patterns of vocalizations. In this paper, a comprehensive examination of the vocal repertoire of Mexican free-tailed bats, T. brasiliensis, is presented. Syllable acoustics and temporal emission patterns for 16 types of vocalizations including courtship song revealed three main findings. First, although in some cases syllables are unique to specific calls, other syllables are shared among different calls. Second, entire calls associated with one behavior can be embedded into more complex vocalizations used in entirely different behavioral contexts. Third, when different calls are composed of similar syllables, distinctive temporal emission patterns may facilitate call recognition. These results indicate that syllable acoustics alone do not likely provide enough information for call recognition; rather, the acoustic context and temporal emission patterns of vocalizations may affect meaning. PMID:19045674

Acquisition of Malay word recognition skills: lessons from low-progress early readers.

PubMed

Lee, Lay Wah; Wheldall, Kevin

2011-02-01

Malay is a consistent alphabetic orthography with complex syllable structures. The focus of this research was to investigate word recognition performance in order to inform reading interventions for low-progress early readers. Forty-six Grade 1 students were sampled and 11 were identified as low-progress readers. The results indicated that both syllable awareness and phoneme blending were significant predictors of word recognition, suggesting that both syllable and phonemic grain-sizes are important in Malay word recognition. Item analysis revealed a hierarchical pattern of difficulty based on the syllable and the phonic structure of the words. Error analysis identified the sources of errors to be errors due to inefficient syllable segmentation, oversimplification of syllables, insufficient grapheme-phoneme knowledge and inefficient phonemic code assembly. Evidence also suggests that direct instruction in syllable segmentation, phonemic awareness and grapheme-phoneme correspondence is necessary for low-progress readers to acquire word recognition skills. Finally, a logical sequence to teach grapheme-phoneme decoding in Malay is suggested. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Rhythmic speech and stuttering reduction in a syllable-timed language.

PubMed

Law, Thomas; Packman, Ann; Onslow, Mark; To, Carol K-S; Tong, Michael C-F; Lee, Kathy Y-S

2018-06-06

Speaking rhythmically, also known as syllable-timed speech (STS), has been known for centuries to be a fluency-inducing condition for people who stutter. Cantonese is a tonal syllable-timed language and it has been shown that, of all languages, Cantonese is the most rhythmic (Mok, 2009). However, it is not known if STS reduces stuttering in Cantonese as it does in English. This is the first study to investigate the effects of STS on stuttering in a syllable-timed language. Nineteen native Cantonese-speaking adults who stutter were engaged in conversational tasks in Cantonese under two conditions: one in their usual speaking style and one using STS. The speakers' percentage syllables stuttered (%SS) and speech rhythmicity were rated. The rhythmicity ratings were used to estimate the extent to which speakers were using STS in the syllable-timed condition. Results revealed a statistically significant reduction in %SS in the STS condition; however, this reduction was not as large as in previous studies in other languages and the amount of stuttering reduction varied across speakers. The rhythmicity ratings showed that some speakers were perceived to be speaking more rhythmically than others and that the perceived rhythmicity correlated positively with reductions in stuttering. The findings were unexpected, as it was anticipated that speakers of a highly rhythmic language such as Cantonese would find STS easy to use and that the consequent reductions in stuttering would be great, even greater perhaps than in a stress-timed language such as English. The theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

The Locus of Naming Difficulties in Children with Dyslexia: Evidence of Inefficient Phonological Encoding

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Truman, Amanda; Hennessey, Neville W.

2006-01-01

Twenty-four children with dyslexia (aged 7;7 to 12;1) and twenty-four age-matched controls named pictures aloud while hearing nonsense syllables either phonologically related (i.e., part of) or unrelated to the target picture name. Compared with controls, dyslexics had slower reaction times overall and, for low frequency items, the degree of…

Cross-Linguistic Perception and Learning of Japanese Lexical Prosody by English Listeners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shport, Irina A.

2011-01-01

The focus of this dissertation is on how language experience shapes perception of a non-native prosodic contrast. In Tokyo Japanese, fundamental frequency (F0) peak and fall are acoustic cues to lexically contrastive pitch patterns, in which a word may be accented on a particular syllable or unaccented (e.g., "tsuru" "a crane", "tsuru" "a vine",…

Long term stability and individual distinctiveness in captive orca vocalizations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Noonan, Michael; Suchak, Malini

2005-04-01

With focus on the question of signature calling in killer whales, recordings from five captive orcas (of Icelandic origin) held at Marineland of Canada were compared. For the present analysis, samples of three different call syllables were selected from recordings made five years apart and from instances in which the identity of the calling whale was unambiguous due to temporary isolation, concomitant bubbling, and/or head nodding. The Raven software package was used to ascertain the frequency range, frequency (max), duration, and timing of maximum and minimum power within each sample. For two of the three call syllables, statistically significant differences were found among the five whales for call length and for the timing of maximums and minimums (p<0.01-0.001). This similarly proved true for nearly all pairwise comparisons between whales, including mother-offspring dyads. By contrast, for three of four whales for which we had sufficient samples, no significant differences were found on any measure between samples taken from the same whales five years apart. These findings therefore support the notion that the voices of individual orcas are distinct from one another in ways that are stable over the course of multiple years.

Processing Complex Sounds Passing through the Rostral Brainstem: The New Early Filter Model

PubMed Central

Marsh, John E.; Campbell, Tom A.

2016-01-01

The rostral brainstem receives both “bottom-up” input from the ascending auditory system and “top-down” descending corticofugal connections. Speech information passing through the inferior colliculus of elderly listeners reflects the periodicity envelope of a speech syllable. This information arguably also reflects a composite of temporal-fine-structure (TFS) information from the higher frequency vowel harmonics of that repeated syllable. The amplitude of those higher frequency harmonics, bearing even higher frequency TFS information, correlates positively with the word recognition ability of elderly listeners under reverberatory conditions. Also relevant is that working memory capacity (WMC), which is subject to age-related decline, constrains the processing of sounds at the level of the brainstem. Turning to the effects of a visually presented sensory or memory load on auditory processes, there is a load-dependent reduction of that processing, as manifest in the auditory brainstem responses (ABR) evoked by to-be-ignored clicks. Wave V decreases in amplitude with increases in the visually presented memory load. A visually presented sensory load also produces a load-dependent reduction of a slightly different sort: The sensory load of visually presented information limits the disruptive effects of background sound upon working memory performance. A new early filter model is thus advanced whereby systems within the frontal lobe (affected by sensory or memory load) cholinergically influence top-down corticofugal connections. Those corticofugal connections constrain the processing of complex sounds such as speech at the level of the brainstem. Selective attention thereby limits the distracting effects of background sound entering the higher auditory system via the inferior colliculus. Processing TFS in the brainstem relates to perception of speech under adverse conditions. Attentional selectivity is crucial when the signal heard is degraded or masked: e.g., speech in noise, speech in reverberatory environments. The assumptions of a new early filter model are consistent with these findings: A subcortical early filter, with a predictive selectivity based on acoustical (linguistic) context and foreknowledge, is under cholinergic top-down control. A prefrontal capacity limitation constrains this top-down control as is guided by the cholinergic processing of contextual information in working memory. PMID:27242396

Processing Complex Sounds Passing through the Rostral Brainstem: The New Early Filter Model.

PubMed

Marsh, John E; Campbell, Tom A

2016-01-01

The rostral brainstem receives both "bottom-up" input from the ascending auditory system and "top-down" descending corticofugal connections. Speech information passing through the inferior colliculus of elderly listeners reflects the periodicity envelope of a speech syllable. This information arguably also reflects a composite of temporal-fine-structure (TFS) information from the higher frequency vowel harmonics of that repeated syllable. The amplitude of those higher frequency harmonics, bearing even higher frequency TFS information, correlates positively with the word recognition ability of elderly listeners under reverberatory conditions. Also relevant is that working memory capacity (WMC), which is subject to age-related decline, constrains the processing of sounds at the level of the brainstem. Turning to the effects of a visually presented sensory or memory load on auditory processes, there is a load-dependent reduction of that processing, as manifest in the auditory brainstem responses (ABR) evoked by to-be-ignored clicks. Wave V decreases in amplitude with increases in the visually presented memory load. A visually presented sensory load also produces a load-dependent reduction of a slightly different sort: The sensory load of visually presented information limits the disruptive effects of background sound upon working memory performance. A new early filter model is thus advanced whereby systems within the frontal lobe (affected by sensory or memory load) cholinergically influence top-down corticofugal connections. Those corticofugal connections constrain the processing of complex sounds such as speech at the level of the brainstem. Selective attention thereby limits the distracting effects of background sound entering the higher auditory system via the inferior colliculus. Processing TFS in the brainstem relates to perception of speech under adverse conditions. Attentional selectivity is crucial when the signal heard is degraded or masked: e.g., speech in noise, speech in reverberatory environments. The assumptions of a new early filter model are consistent with these findings: A subcortical early filter, with a predictive selectivity based on acoustical (linguistic) context and foreknowledge, is under cholinergic top-down control. A prefrontal capacity limitation constrains this top-down control as is guided by the cholinergic processing of contextual information in working memory.

A common neural circuit mechanism for internally guided and externally reinforced forms of motor learning.

PubMed

Hisey, Erin; Kearney, Matthew Gene; Mooney, Richard

2018-04-01

The complex skills underlying verbal and musical expression can be learned without external punishment or reward, indicating their learning is internally guided. The neural mechanisms that mediate internally guided learning are poorly understood, but a circuit comprising dopamine-releasing neurons in the midbrain ventral tegmental area (VTA) and their targets in the basal ganglia are important to externally reinforced learning. Juvenile zebra finches copy a tutor song in a process that is internally guided and, in adulthood, can learn to modify the fundamental frequency (pitch) of a target syllable in response to external reinforcement with white noise. Here we combined intersectional genetic ablation of VTA neurons, reversible blockade of dopamine receptors in the basal ganglia, and singing-triggered optogenetic stimulation of VTA terminals to establish that a common VTA-basal ganglia circuit enables internally guided song copying and externally reinforced syllable pitch learning.

Automatic initial and final segmentation in cleft palate speech of Mandarin speakers

PubMed Central

Liu, Yin; Yin, Heng; Zhang, Junpeng; Zhang, Jing; Zhang, Jiang

2017-01-01

The speech unit segmentation is an important pre-processing step in the analysis of cleft palate speech. In Mandarin, one syllable is composed of two parts: initial and final. In cleft palate speech, the resonance disorders occur at the finals and the voiced initials, while the articulation disorders occur at the unvoiced initials. Thus, the initials and finals are the minimum speech units, which could reflect the characteristics of cleft palate speech disorders. In this work, an automatic initial/final segmentation method is proposed. It is an important preprocessing step in cleft palate speech signal processing. The tested cleft palate speech utterances are collected from the Cleft Palate Speech Treatment Center in the Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, which has the largest cleft palate patients in China. The cleft palate speech data includes 824 speech segments, and the control samples contain 228 speech segments. The syllables are extracted from the speech utterances firstly. The proposed syllable extraction method avoids the training stage, and achieves a good performance for both voiced and unvoiced speech. Then, the syllables are classified into with “quasi-unvoiced” or with “quasi-voiced” initials. Respective initial/final segmentation methods are proposed to these two types of syllables. Moreover, a two-step segmentation method is proposed. The rough locations of syllable and initial/final boundaries are refined in the second segmentation step, in order to improve the robustness of segmentation accuracy. The experiments show that the initial/final segmentation accuracies for syllables with quasi-unvoiced initials are higher than quasi-voiced initials. For the cleft palate speech, the mean time error is 4.4ms for syllables with quasi-unvoiced initials, and 25.7ms for syllables with quasi-voiced initials, and the correct segmentation accuracy P30 for all the syllables is 91.69%. For the control samples, P30 for all the syllables is 91.24%. PMID:28926572

Automatic initial and final segmentation in cleft palate speech of Mandarin speakers.

PubMed

He, Ling; Liu, Yin; Yin, Heng; Zhang, Junpeng; Zhang, Jing; Zhang, Jiang

2017-01-01

The speech unit segmentation is an important pre-processing step in the analysis of cleft palate speech. In Mandarin, one syllable is composed of two parts: initial and final. In cleft palate speech, the resonance disorders occur at the finals and the voiced initials, while the articulation disorders occur at the unvoiced initials. Thus, the initials and finals are the minimum speech units, which could reflect the characteristics of cleft palate speech disorders. In this work, an automatic initial/final segmentation method is proposed. It is an important preprocessing step in cleft palate speech signal processing. The tested cleft palate speech utterances are collected from the Cleft Palate Speech Treatment Center in the Hospital of Stomatology, Sichuan University, which has the largest cleft palate patients in China. The cleft palate speech data includes 824 speech segments, and the control samples contain 228 speech segments. The syllables are extracted from the speech utterances firstly. The proposed syllable extraction method avoids the training stage, and achieves a good performance for both voiced and unvoiced speech. Then, the syllables are classified into with "quasi-unvoiced" or with "quasi-voiced" initials. Respective initial/final segmentation methods are proposed to these two types of syllables. Moreover, a two-step segmentation method is proposed. The rough locations of syllable and initial/final boundaries are refined in the second segmentation step, in order to improve the robustness of segmentation accuracy. The experiments show that the initial/final segmentation accuracies for syllables with quasi-unvoiced initials are higher than quasi-voiced initials. For the cleft palate speech, the mean time error is 4.4ms for syllables with quasi-unvoiced initials, and 25.7ms for syllables with quasi-voiced initials, and the correct segmentation accuracy P30 for all the syllables is 91.69%. For the control samples, P30 for all the syllables is 91.24%.

McGurk stimuli for the investigation of multisensory integration in cochlear implant users: The Oldenburg Audio Visual Speech Stimuli (OLAVS).

PubMed

Stropahl, Maren; Schellhardt, Sebastian; Debener, Stefan

2017-06-01

The concurrent presentation of different auditory and visual syllables may result in the perception of a third syllable, reflecting an illusory fusion of visual and auditory information. This well-known McGurk effect is frequently used for the study of audio-visual integration. Recently, it was shown that the McGurk effect is strongly stimulus-dependent, which complicates comparisons across perceivers and inferences across studies. To overcome this limitation, we developed the freely available Oldenburg audio-visual speech stimuli (OLAVS), consisting of 8 different talkers and 12 different syllable combinations. The quality of the OLAVS set was evaluated with 24 normal-hearing subjects. All 96 stimuli were characterized based on their stimulus disparity, which was obtained from a probabilistic model (cf. Magnotti & Beauchamp, 2015). Moreover, the McGurk effect was studied in eight adult cochlear implant (CI) users. By applying the individual, stimulus-independent parameters of the probabilistic model, the predicted effect of stronger audio-visual integration in CI users could be confirmed, demonstrating the validity of the new stimulus material.

The Parsing Syllable Envelopes Test for Assessment of Amplitude Modulation Discrimination Skills in Children: Development, Normative Data, and Test-Retest Reliability Studies.

PubMed

Cameron, Sharon; Chong-White, Nicky; Mealings, Kiri; Beechey, Tim; Dillon, Harvey; Young, Taegan

2018-02-01

Intensity peaks and valleys in the acoustic signal are salient cues to syllable structure, which is accepted to be a crucial early step in phonological processing. As such, the ability to detect low-rate (envelope) modulations in signal amplitude is essential to parse an incoming speech signal into smaller phonological units. The Parsing Syllable Envelopes (ParSE) test was developed to quantify the ability of children to recognize syllable boundaries using an amplitude modulation detection paradigm. The envelope of a 750-msec steady-state /a/ vowel is modulated into two or three pseudo-syllables using notches with modulation depths varying between 0% and 100% along an 11-step continuum. In an adaptive three-alternative forced-choice procedure, the participant identified whether one, two, or three pseudo-syllables were heard. Development of the ParSE stimuli and test protocols, and collection of normative and test-retest reliability data. Eleven adults (aged 23 yr 10 mo to 50 yr 9 mo, mean 32 yr 10 mo) and 134 typically developing, primary-school children (aged 6 yr 0 mo to 12 yr 4 mo, mean 9 yr 3 mo). There were 73 males and 72 females. Data were collected using a touchscreen computer. Psychometric functions (PFs) were automatically fit to individual data by the ParSE software. Performance was related to the modulation depth at which syllables can be detected with 88% accuracy (referred to as the upper boundary of the uncertainty region [UBUR]). A shallower PF slope reflected a greater level of uncertainty. Age effects were determined based on raw scores. z Scores were calculated to account for the effect of age on performance. Outliers, and individual data for which the confidence interval of the UBUR exceeded a maximum allowable value, were removed. Nonparametric tests were used as the data were skewed toward negative performance. Across participants, the performance criterion (UBUR) was met with a median modulation depth of 42%. The effect of age on the UBUR was significant (p < 0.00001). The UBUR ranged from 50% modulation depth for 6-yr-olds to 25% for adults. Children aged 6-10 had significantly higher uncertainty region boundaries than adults. A skewed distribution toward negative performance occurred (p = 0.00007). There was no significant difference in performance on the ParSE between males and females (p = 0.60). Test-retest z scores were strongly correlated (r = 0.68, p < 0.0000001). The ParSE normative data show that the ability to identify syllable boundaries based on changes in amplitude modulation improves with age, and that some children in the general population have performance much worse than their age peers. The test is suitable for use in planned studies in a clinical population. American Academy of Audiology

Diminutives facilitate word segmentation in natural speech: cross-linguistic evidence.

PubMed

Kempe, Vera; Brooks, Patricia J; Gillis, Steven; Samson, Graham

2007-06-01

Final-syllable invariance is characteristic of diminutives (e.g., doggie), which are a pervasive feature of the child-directed speech registers of many languages. Invariance in word endings has been shown to facilitate word segmentation (Kempe, Brooks, & Gillis, 2005) in an incidental-learning paradigm in which synthesized Dutch pseudonouns were used. To broaden the cross-linguistic evidence for this invariance effect and to increase its ecological validity, adult English speakers (n=276) were exposed to naturally spoken Dutch or Russian pseudonouns presented in sentence contexts. A forced choice test was given to assess target recognition, with foils comprising unfamiliar syllable combinations in Experiments 1 and 2 and syllable combinations straddling word boundaries in Experiment 3. A control group (n=210) received the recognition test with no prior exposure to targets. Recognition performance improved with increasing final-syllable rhyme invariance, with larger increases for the experimental group. This confirms that word ending invariance is a valid segmentation cue in artificial, as well as naturalistic, speech and that diminutives may aid segmentation in a number of languages.

Growth and splitting of neural sequences in songbird vocal development

PubMed Central

Okubo, Tatsuo S.; Mackevicius, Emily L.; Payne, Hannah L.; Lynch, Galen F.; Fee, Michale S.

2015-01-01

Neural sequences are a fundamental feature of brain dynamics underlying diverse behaviors, but the mechanisms by which they develop during learning remain unknown. Songbirds learn vocalizations composed of syllables; in adult birds, each syllable is produced by a different sequence of action potential bursts in the premotor cortical area HVC. Here we carried out recordings of large populations of HVC neurons in singing juvenile birds throughout learning to examine the emergence of neural sequences. Early in vocal development, HVC neurons begin producing rhythmic bursts, temporally locked to a ‘prototype’ syllable. Different neurons are active at different latencies relative to syllable onset to form a continuous sequence. Through development, as new syllables emerge from the prototype syllable, initially highly overlapping burst sequences become increasingly distinct. We propose a mechanistic model in which multiple neural sequences can emerge from the growth and splitting of a common precursor sequence. PMID:26618871

Evaluating cognitive models of visual word recognition using fMRI: Effects of lexical and sublexical variables.

PubMed

Protopapas, Athanassios; Orfanidou, Eleni; Taylor, J S H; Karavasilis, Efstratios; Kapnoula, Efthymia C; Panagiotaropoulou, Georgia; Velonakis, Georgios; Poulou, Loukia S; Smyrnis, Nikolaos; Kelekis, Dimitrios

2016-03-01

In this study predictions of the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model of word reading were tested using fMRI. Specifically, patterns of co-localization were investigated: (a) between pseudoword length effects and a pseudowords vs. fixation contrast, to reveal the sublexical grapho-phonemic conversion (GPC) system; and (b) between word frequency effects and a words vs. pseudowords contrast, to reveal the orthographic and phonological lexicon. Forty four native speakers of Greek were scanned at 3T in an event-related lexical decision task with three event types: (a) 150 words in which frequency, length, bigram and syllable frequency, neighborhood, and orthographic consistency were decorrelated; (b) 150 matched pseudowords; and (c) fixation. Whole-brain analysis failed to reveal the predicted co-localizations. Further analysis with participant-specific regions of interest defined within masks from the group contrasts revealed length effects in left inferior parietal cortex and frequency effects in the left middle temporal gyrus. These findings could be interpreted as partially consistent with the existence of the GPC system and phonological lexicon of the model, respectively. However, there was no evidence in support of an orthographic lexicon, weakening overall support for the model. The results are discussed with respect to the prospect of using neuroimaging in cognitive model evaluation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The relative roles of cultural drift and acoustic adaptation in shaping syllable repertoires of island bird populations change with time since colonization.

PubMed

Potvin, Dominique A; Clegg, Sonya M

2015-02-01

In birds, song divergence often precedes and facilitates divergence of other traits. We assessed the relative roles of cultural drift, innovation, and acoustic adaptation in divergence of island bird dialects, using silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis). In recently colonized populations, syllable diversity was not significantly lower than source populations, shared syllables between populations decreased with increasing number of founder events, and dialect variation displayed contributions from both habitat features and drift. The breadth of multivariate space occupied by recently colonized Z. l. lateralis populations was comparable to evolutionarily old forms that have diverged over thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. In evolutionarily old subspecies, syllable diversity was comparable to the mainland and the amount of variation in syllable composition explained by habitat features increased by two- to threefold compared to recently colonized populations. Together these results suggest that cultural drift influences syllable repertoires in recently colonized populations, but innovation likely counters syllable loss from colonization. In evolutionarily older populations, the influence of acoustic adaptation increases, possibly favoring a high diversity of syllables. These results suggest that the relative importance of cultural drift and acoustic adaptation changes with time since colonization in island bird populations, highlighting the value of considering multiple mechanisms and timescale of divergence when investigating island song divergence. © 2014 The Author(s). Evolution © 2014 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

EHME: a new word database for research in Basque language.

PubMed

Acha, Joana; Laka, Itziar; Landa, Josu; Salaburu, Pello

2014-11-14

This article presents EHME, the frequency dictionary of Basque structure, an online program that enables researchers in psycholinguistics to extract word and nonword stimuli, based on a broad range of statistics concerning the properties of Basque words. The database consists of 22.7 million tokens, and properties available include morphological structure frequency and word-similarity measures, apart from classical indexes: word frequency, orthographic structure, orthographic similarity, bigram and biphone frequency, and syllable-based measures. Measures are indexed at the lemma, morpheme and word level. We include reliability and validation analysis. The application is freely available, and enables the user to extract words based on concrete statistical criteria 1 , as well as to obtain statistical characteristics from a list of words

A Musical Approach to Speech Melody

PubMed Central

Chow, Ivan; Brown, Steven

2018-01-01

We present here a musical approach to speech melody, one that takes advantage of the intervallic precision made possible with musical notation. Current phonetic and phonological approaches to speech melody either assign localized pitch targets that impoverish the acoustic details of the pitch contours and/or merely highlight a few salient points of pitch change, ignoring all the rest of the syllables. We present here an alternative model using musical notation, which has the advantage of representing the pitch of all syllables in a sentence as well as permitting a specification of the intervallic excursions among syllables and the potential for group averaging of pitch use across speakers. We tested the validity of this approach by recording native speakers of Canadian English reading unfamiliar test items aloud, spanning from single words to full sentences containing multiple intonational phrases. The fundamental-frequency trajectories of the recorded items were converted from hertz into semitones, averaged across speakers, and transcribed into musical scores of relative pitch. Doing so allowed us to quantify local and global pitch-changes associated with declarative, imperative, and interrogative sentences, and to explore the melodic dynamics of these sentence types. Our basic observation is that speech is atonal. The use of a musical score ultimately has the potential to combine speech rhythm and melody into a unified representation of speech prosody, an important analytical feature that is not found in any current linguistic approach to prosody. PMID:29556206

Why Early Tactile Speech Aids May Have Failed: No Perceptual Integration of Tactile and Auditory Signals.

PubMed

Rizza, Aurora; Terekhov, Alexander V; Montone, Guglielmo; Olivetti-Belardinelli, Marta; O'Regan, J Kevin

2018-01-01

Tactile speech aids, though extensively studied in the 1980's and 1990's, never became a commercial success. A hypothesis to explain this failure might be that it is difficult to obtain true perceptual integration of a tactile signal with information from auditory speech: exploitation of tactile cues from a tactile aid might require cognitive effort and so prevent speech understanding at the high rates typical of everyday speech. To test this hypothesis, we attempted to create true perceptual integration of tactile with auditory information in what might be considered the simplest situation encountered by a hearing-impaired listener. We created an auditory continuum between the syllables /BA/ and /VA/, and trained participants to associate /BA/ to one tactile stimulus and /VA/ to another tactile stimulus. After training, we tested if auditory discrimination along the continuum between the two syllables could be biased by incongruent tactile stimulation. We found that such a bias occurred only when the tactile stimulus was above, but not when it was below its previously measured tactile discrimination threshold. Such a pattern is compatible with the idea that the effect is due to a cognitive or decisional strategy, rather than to truly perceptual integration. We therefore ran a further study (Experiment 2), where we created a tactile version of the McGurk effect. We extensively trained two Subjects over 6 days to associate four recorded auditory syllables with four corresponding apparent motion tactile patterns. In a subsequent test, we presented stimulation that was either congruent or incongruent with the learnt association, and asked Subjects to report the syllable they perceived. We found no analog to the McGurk effect, suggesting that the tactile stimulation was not being perceptually integrated with the auditory syllable. These findings strengthen our hypothesis according to which tactile aids failed because integration of tactile cues with auditory speech occurred at a cognitive or decisional level, rather than truly at a perceptual level.

Why Early Tactile Speech Aids May Have Failed: No Perceptual Integration of Tactile and Auditory Signals

PubMed Central

Rizza, Aurora; Terekhov, Alexander V.; Montone, Guglielmo; Olivetti-Belardinelli, Marta; O’Regan, J. Kevin

2018-01-01

Tactile speech aids, though extensively studied in the 1980’s and 1990’s, never became a commercial success. A hypothesis to explain this failure might be that it is difficult to obtain true perceptual integration of a tactile signal with information from auditory speech: exploitation of tactile cues from a tactile aid might require cognitive effort and so prevent speech understanding at the high rates typical of everyday speech. To test this hypothesis, we attempted to create true perceptual integration of tactile with auditory information in what might be considered the simplest situation encountered by a hearing-impaired listener. We created an auditory continuum between the syllables /BA/ and /VA/, and trained participants to associate /BA/ to one tactile stimulus and /VA/ to another tactile stimulus. After training, we tested if auditory discrimination along the continuum between the two syllables could be biased by incongruent tactile stimulation. We found that such a bias occurred only when the tactile stimulus was above, but not when it was below its previously measured tactile discrimination threshold. Such a pattern is compatible with the idea that the effect is due to a cognitive or decisional strategy, rather than to truly perceptual integration. We therefore ran a further study (Experiment 2), where we created a tactile version of the McGurk effect. We extensively trained two Subjects over 6 days to associate four recorded auditory syllables with four corresponding apparent motion tactile patterns. In a subsequent test, we presented stimulation that was either congruent or incongruent with the learnt association, and asked Subjects to report the syllable they perceived. We found no analog to the McGurk effect, suggesting that the tactile stimulation was not being perceptually integrated with the auditory syllable. These findings strengthen our hypothesis according to which tactile aids failed because integration of tactile cues with auditory speech occurred at a cognitive or decisional level, rather than truly at a perceptual level. PMID:29875719

Verbal cues effectively orient children's auditory attention in a CV-syllable dichotic listening paradigm.

PubMed

Phélip, Marion; Donnot, Julien; Vauclair, Jacques

2015-12-18

In their groundbreaking work featuring verbal dichotic listening tasks, Mondor and Bryden showed that tone cues do not enhance children's attentional orienting, in contrast to adults. The magnitude of the children's right-ear advantage was not attenuated when their attention was directed to the left ear. Verbal cues did, however, appear to favour the orientation of attention at around 10 years, although stimulus-onset asynchronies (SOAs), which ranged between 450 and 750 ms, were not rigorously controlled. The aim of our study was therefore to investigate the role of both types of cues in a typical CV-syllable dichotic listening task administered to 8- to 10-year-olds, applying a protocol as similar as possible to that used by Mondor and Bryden, but controlling for SOA as well as for cued ear. Results confirmed that verbal cues are more effective than tone cues in orienting children's attention. However, in contrast to adults, no effect of SOA was observed. We discuss the relative difficulty young children have processing CV syllables, as well as the role of top-down processes in attentional orienting abilities.

Who do you love, your mother or your horse? An event-related brain potential analysis of tone processing in Mandarin Chinese.

PubMed

Brown-Schmidt, Sarah; Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta

2004-03-01

In Mandarin Chinese, word meaning is partially determined by lexical tone (Wang, 1973). Previous studies suggest that lexical tone is processed as linguistic information and not as pure tonal information (Gandour, 1998; Van Lanker & Fromkin, 1973). The current study explored the online processing of lexical tones. Event-related potentials were obtained from 25 Mandarin speakers while they listened to normal and anomalous sentences containing one of three types of semantic anomalies created by manipulating the tone, the syllable, or both tone and syllable (double-anomaly) of sentence-final words. We hypothesized N400 effects elicited by all three types of anomalies and the largest by the double-anomaly. As expected, all three elicited N400 effects starting approximately 150 ms poststimulus and continuing until 1000 ms in some areas. Surprisingly, onset of the double-anomaly effect was approximately 50 ms later than the rest. Delayed detection of errors in this condition may be responsible for the apparent delay. Slight differences between syllable and tone conditions may be due to the relative timing of these acoustic cues.

Deconstructing the Southeast Asian Sesquisyllable: A Gestural Account

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler, Becky Ann

2014-01-01

This dissertation explores a purportedly unusual word type known as the "sesquisyllable," which has long been considered characteristic of mainland Southeast Asian languages. Sesquisyllables are traditionally defined as "one and a half" syllables, or as one "major" syllable preceded by one "minor" syllable,…

The effects of study task on prestimulus subsequent memory effects in the hippocampus.

PubMed

de Chastelaine, Marianne; Rugg, Michael D

2015-11-01

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was employed to examine the effects of a study task manipulation on pre-stimulus activity in the hippocampus predictive of later successful recollection. Eighteen young participants were scanned while making either animacy or syllable judgments on visually presented study words. Cues presented before each word denoted which judgment should be made. Following the study phase, a surprise recognition memory test was administered in which each test item had to be endorsed as "Remembered," "Known," or "New." As expected, "deep" animacy judgments led to better memory for study items than did "shallow" syllable judgments. In both study tasks, pre-stimulus subsequent recollection effects were evident in the interval between the cue and the study item in bilateral anterior hippocampus. However, the direction of the effects differed according to the study task: whereas pre-stimulus hippocampal activity on animacy trials was greater for later recollected items than items judged old on the basis of familiarity (replicating prior findings), these effects reversed for syllable trials. We propose that the direction of pre-stimulus hippocampal subsequent memory effects depends on whether an optimal pre-stimulus task set facilitates study processing that is conducive or unconducive to the formation of contextually rich episodic memories. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Polar-phase indices of perioral muscle reciprocity during syllable production in Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Chu, Shin Ying; Barlow, Steven M; Lee, Jaehoon; Wang, Jingyan

2017-12-01

This research characterised perioral muscle reciprocity and amplitude ratio in lower lip during bilabial syllable production [pa] at three rates to understand the neuromotor dynamics and scaling of motor speech patterns in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD). Electromyographic (EMG) signals of the orbicularis oris superior [OOS], orbicularis oris inferior [OOI] and depressor labii inferioris [DLI] were recorded during syllable production and expressed as polar-phase notations. PD participants exhibited the general features of reciprocity between OOS, OOI and DLI muscles as reflected in the EMG during syllable production. The control group showed significantly higher integrated EMG amplitude ratio in the DLI:OOS muscle pairs than PD participants. No speech rate effects were found in EMG muscle reciprocity and amplitude magnitude across all muscle pairs. Similar patterns of muscle reciprocity in PD and controls suggest that corticomotoneuronal output to the facial nucleus and respective perioral muscles is relatively well-preserved in our cohort of mild idiopathic PD participants. Reduction of EMG amplitude ratio among PD participants is consistent with the putative reduction in the thalamocortical activation characteristic of this disease which limits motor cortex drive from generating appropriate commands which contributes to bradykinesia and hypokinesia of the orofacial mechanism.

The Basis of the Syllable Hierarchy: Articulatory Pressures or Universal Phonological Constraints?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Zhao, Xu; Berent, Iris

2018-01-01

Across languages, certain syllable types are systematically preferred to others (e.g., "blif" ? "bnif" ? "bdif" ? "lbif" where ? indicates a preference). Previous research has shown that these preferences are active in the brains of individual speakers, they are evident even when none of these syllable types…

Syllable Durations of Preword and Early Word Vocalizations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robb, Michael P.; Saxman, John H.

1990-01-01

The continuity in development of syllable duration patterns was examined in seven young children as they progressed from preword to multiword periods of vocalization development. Results revealed no systematic increase or decrease in the duration of bisyllables produced by the children as a group, whereas lengthening of final syllables was…

Two genetic loci control syllable sequences of ultrasonic courtship vocalizations in inbred mice

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

Background The ultrasonic vocalizations (USV) of courting male mice are known to possess a phonetic structure with a complex combination of several syllables. The genetic mechanisms underlying the syllable sequence organization were investigated. Results This study compared syllable sequence organization in two inbred strains of mice, 129S4/SvJae (129) and C57BL6J (B6), and demonstrated that they possessed two mutually exclusive phenotypes. The 129S4/SvJae (129) strain frequently exhibited a "chevron-wave" USV pattern, which was characterized by the repetition of chevron-type syllables. The C57BL/6J strain produced a "staccato" USV pattern, which was characterized by the repetition of short-type syllables. An F1 strain obtained by crossing the 129S4/SvJae and C57BL/6J strains produced only the staccato phenotype. The chevron-wave and staccato phenotypes reappeared in the F2 generations, following the Mendelian law of independent assortment. Conclusions These results suggest that two genetic loci control the organization of syllable sequences. These loci were occupied by the staccato and chevron-wave alleles in the B6 and 129 mouse strains, respectively. Recombination of these alleles might lead to the diversity of USV patterns produced by mice. PMID:22018021

A preliminary investigation of daily variability of stuttering in adults.

PubMed

Constantino, Christopher D; Leslie, Paula; Quesal, Robert W; Yaruss, J Scott

2016-01-01

Variability in frequency of stuttering has made the results of treatment outcome studies difficult to interpret. Many factors that affect variability have been investigated; yet the typical range of variability experienced by speakers remains unknown. This study examined the day-to-day variability in the percentage of syllables containing stuttered and nonstuttered disfluencies in the speech of six adult speakers in three spontaneous speaking situations and two reading tasks. The frequency of moments stuttering during the tasks were compared within and between speakers and days to document the degree of variability in stuttering frequency and explore whether there were any consistent patterns. The Stuttering Severity Instrument-Fourth Edition (SSI-4) and Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering for Adults (OASES-A) were also tested for day-to-day variability. Correlations between frequency, severity, and life impact were made. The primary result of this study was the large range over which frequency of stuttering varied from day to day for the same individual. This variability did not correlate with any measures of stuttering severity but did correlate with life impact as measured by the OASES-A. No global pattern was detected in variability from day to day within or between participants. However, there were significantly more nonstuttered disfluencies present during the spontaneous speaking tasks than during the reading tasks. The day-to-day variability in the life impact of the disorder (OASES-A) was less than the day-to-day variability in observable stuttering behavior (percentage of syllables stuttered and SSI-4). Frequency of stuttering varies significantly from situation to situation and day to day, with observed variability exceeding the degree of change often reported in treatment outcomes studies from before to after treatment. This variability must be accounted for in future clinical and scientific work. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Sonority contours in word recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

McLennan, Sean

2003-04-01

Contrary to the Generativist distinction between competence and performance which asserts that speech or perception errors are due to random, nonlinguistic factors, it seems likely that errors are principled and possibly governed by some of the same constraints as language. A preliminary investigation of errors modeled after the child's ``Chain Whisper'' game (a degraded stimulus task) suggests that a significant number of recognition errors can be characterized as an improvement in syllable sonority contour towards the linguistically least-marked, voiceless-stop-plus-vowel syllable. An independent study of sonority contours showed that approximately half of the English lexicon can be uniquely identified by their contour alone. Additionally, ``sororities'' (groups of words that share a single sonority contour), surprisingly, show no correlation to familiarity or frequency in either size or membership. Together these results imply that sonority contours may be an important factor in word recognition and in defining word ``neighborhoods.'' Moreover, they suggest that linguistic markedness constraints may be more prevalent in performance-related phenomena than previously accepted.

Nonlinear frequency compression: Influence of start frequency and input bandwidth on consonant and vowel recognitiona)

PubMed Central

Alexander, Joshua M.

2016-01-01

By varying parameters that control nonlinear frequency compression (NFC), this study examined how different ways of compressing inaudible mid- and/or high-frequency information at lower frequencies influences perception of consonants and vowels. Twenty-eight listeners with mild to moderately severe hearing loss identified consonants and vowels from nonsense syllables in noise following amplification via a hearing aid simulator. Low-pass filtering and the selection of NFC parameters fixed the output bandwidth at a frequency representing a moderately severe (3.3 kHz, group MS) or a mild-to-moderate (5.0 kHz, group MM) high-frequency loss. For each group (n = 14), effects of six combinations of NFC start frequency (SF) and input bandwidth [by varying the compression ratio (CR)] were examined. For both groups, the 1.6 kHz SF significantly reduced vowel and consonant recognition, especially as CR increased; whereas, recognition was generally unaffected if SF increased at the expense of a higher CR. Vowel recognition detriments for group MS were moderately correlated with the size of the second formant frequency shift following NFC. For both groups, significant improvement (33%–50%) with NFC was confined to final /s/ and /z/ and to some VCV tokens, perhaps because of listeners' limited exposure to each setting. No set of parameters simultaneously maximized recognition across all tokens. PMID:26936574

Onset of Duplicated Syllable Babbling and Unimanual Handedness in Infancy: Evidence for Developmental Change in Hemispheric Specialization?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ramsay, Douglas S.

1984-01-01

Examines the possible developmental relationship between unimanual handedness and duplicated syllable babbling. Thirty infants were tested at weekly intervals between five months of age and eight weeks after the onset of duplicated syllable babbling. Results suggest developmental change in hemispheric specialization or at least asymmetrical…

Syllable-Related Breathing in Infants in the Second Year of Life

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Parham, Douglas F.; Buder, Eugene H.; Oller, D. Kimbrough; Boliek, Carol A.

2011-01-01

Purpose: This study explored whether breathing behaviors of infants within the 2nd year of life differ between tidal breathing and breathing supporting single unarticulated syllables and canonical/articulated syllables. Method: Vocalizations and breathing kinematics of 9 infants between 53 and 90 weeks of age were recorded. A strict selection…

Intersensory Redundancy and Seven-Month-Old Infants' Memory for Arbitrary Syllable-Object Relations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gogate, Lakshmi J.; Bahrick, Lorraine E.

Seven-month-old infants require redundant information such as temporal synchrony to learn arbitrary syllable-object relations. Infants learned the relations between spoken syllables, /a/ and /i/, and two moving objects only when temporal synchrony was present during habituation. Two experiments examined infants' memory for these relations. In…

Clinical Application of the Mean Babbling Level and Syllable Structure Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morris, Sherrill R.

2010-01-01

Purpose: This clinical exchange reviews two independent phonological assessment measures: mean babbling level (MBL) and syllable structure level (SSL). Both measures summarize phonetic inventory and syllable shape in a calculated average and have been used in research to describe the phonological abilities of children ages 9 to 36 months. An…

Rise Time Perception and Detection of Syllable Stress in Adults with Developmental Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leong, Victoria; Hamalainen, Jarmo; Soltesz, Fruzsina; Goswami, Usha

2011-01-01

Introduction: The perception of syllable stress has not been widely studied in developmental dyslexia, despite strong evidence for auditory rhythmic perceptual difficulties. Here we investigate the hypothesis that perception of sound rise time is related to the perception of syllable stress in adults with developmental dyslexia. Methods: A…

Spoken Word Recognition of Chinese Words in Continuous Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yip, Michael C. W.

2015-01-01

The present study examined the role of positional probability of syllables played in recognition of spoken word in continuous Cantonese speech. Because some sounds occur more frequently at the beginning position or ending position of Cantonese syllables than the others, so these kinds of probabilistic information of syllables may cue the locations…

Lexical Stress and Reading: A Study with Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Palma, Nicolas Gutierrez; Reyes, Alfonso Palma

2004-01-01

Introduction: Stress in Spanish is associated with an orthographic mark that indicates stress, but there are also other clues that point to it. Most words have the same stress (on the penultimate syllable), and closed syllables (syllables ending in a consonant) attract the stress. In this paper we study these clues, and consequently the function…

Spatial and Temporal Properties of Gestures in North American English /r/

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campbell, Fiona; Gick, Bryan; Wilson, Ian; Vatikiotis-Bateson, Eric

2010-01-01

Systematic syllable-based variation has been observed in the relative spatial and temporal properties of supralaryngeal gestures in a number of complex segments. Generally, more anterior gestures tend to appear at syllable peripheries while less anterior gestures occur closer to syllable peaks. Because previous studies compared only two gestures,…

The influence of musical experience on lateralisation of auditory processing.

PubMed

Spajdel, Marián; Jariabková, Katarína; Riecanský, Igor

2007-11-01

The influence of musical experience on free-recall dichotic listening to environmental sounds, two-tone sequences, and consonant-vowel (CV) syllables was investigated. A total of 60 healthy right-handed participants were divided into two groups according to their active musical competence ("musicians" and "non-musicians"). In both groups, we found a left ear advantage (LEA) for nonverbal stimuli (environmental sounds and two-tone sequences) and a right ear advantage (REA) for CV syllables. Dichotic listening to environmental sounds was uninfluenced by musical experience. The total accuracy of recall for two-tone sequences was higher in musicians than in non-musicians but the lateralisation was similar in both groups. For CV syllables a lower REA was found in male but not female musicians in comparison to non-musicians. The results indicate a specific sex-dependent effect of musical experience on lateralisation of phonological auditory processing.

The Phoneme Identification Test for Assessment of Spectral and Temporal Discrimination Skills in Children: Development, Normative Data, and Test-Retest Reliability Studies.

PubMed

Cameron, Sharon; Chong-White, Nicky; Mealings, Kiri; Beechey, Tim; Dillon, Harvey; Young, Taegan

2018-02-01

Previous research suggests that a proportion of children experiencing reading and listening difficulties may have an underlying primary deficit in the way that the central auditory nervous system analyses the perceptually important, rapidly varying, formant frequency components of speech. The Phoneme Identification Test (PIT) was developed to investigate the ability of children to use spectro-temporal cues to perceptually categorize speech sounds based on their rapidly changing formant frequencies. The PIT uses an adaptive two-alternative forced-choice procedure whereby the participant identifies a synthesized consonant-vowel (CV) (/ba/ or /da/) syllable. CV syllables differed only in the second formant (F2) frequency along an 11-step continuum (between 0% and 100%-representing an ideal /ba/ and /da/, respectively). The CV syllables were presented in either quiet (PIT Q) or noise at a 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio (PIT N). Development of the PIT stimuli and test protocols, and collection of normative and test-retest reliability data. Twelve adults (aged 23 yr 10 mo to 50 yr 9 mo, mean 32 yr 5 mo) and 137 typically developing, primary-school children (aged 6 yr 0 mo to 12 yr 4 mo, mean 9 yr 3 mo). There were 73 males and 76 females. Data were collected using a touchscreen computer. Psychometric functions were automatically fit to individual data by the PIT software. Performance was determined by the width of the continuum for which responses were neither clearly /ba/ nor /da/ (referred to as the uncertainty region [UR]). A shallower psychometric function slope reflected greater uncertainty. Age effects were determined based on raw scores. Z scores were calculated to account for the effect of age on performance. Outliers, and individual data for which the confidence interval of the UR exceeded a maximum allowable value, were removed. Nonparametric tests were used as the data were skewed toward negative performance. Across participants, the median value of the F2 range that resulted in uncertain responses was 33% in quiet and 40% in noise. There was a significant effect of age on the width of this UR (p < 0.00001) in both quiet and noise, with performance becoming adult like by age 9 on the PIT Q and age 10 on the PIT N. A skewed distribution toward negative performance occurred in both quiet (p = 0.01) and noise (p = 0.006). Median UR scores were significantly wider in noise than in quiet (T = 2041, p < 0.0000001). Performance (z scores) across the two tests was significantly correlated (r = 0.36, p = 0.000009). Test-retest z scores were significantly correlated in both quiet and noise (r = 0.4 and 0.37, respectively, p < 0.0001). The PIT normative data show that the ability to identify phonemes based on changes in formant transitions improves with age, and that some children in the general population have performance much worse than their age peers. In children, uncertainty increases when the stimuli are presented in noise. The test is suitable for use in planned studies in a clinical population. American Academy of Audiology

Automatic processing of tones and speech stimuli in children with specific language impairment.

PubMed

Uwer, Ruth; Albrecht, Ronald; von Suchodoletz, W

2002-08-01

It is well known from behavioural experiments that children with specific language impairment (SLI) have difficulties discriminating consonant-vowel (CV) syllables such as /ba/, /da/, and /ga/. Mismatch negativity (MMN) is an auditory event-related potential component that represents the outcome of an automatic comparison process. It could, therefore, be a promising tool for assessing central auditory processing deficits for speech and non-speech stimuli in children with SLI. MMN is typically evoked by occasionally occurring 'deviant' stimuli in a sequence of identical 'standard' sounds. In this study MMN was elicited using simple tone stimuli, which differed in frequency (1000 versus 1200 Hz) and duration (175 versus 100 ms) and to digitized CV syllables which differed in place of articulation (/ba/, /da/, and /ga/) in children with expressive and receptive SLI and healthy control children (n=21 in each group, 46 males and 17 females; age range 5 to 10 years). Mean MMN amplitudes between groups were compared. Additionally, the behavioural discrimination performance was assessed. Children with SLI had attenuated MMN amplitudes to speech stimuli, but there was no significant difference between the two diagnostic subgroups. MMN to tone stimuli did not differ between the groups. Children with SLI made more errors in the discrimination task, but discrimination scores did not correlate with MMN amplitudes. The present data suggest that children with SLI show a specific deficit in automatic discrimination of CV syllables differing in place of articulation, whereas the processing of simple tone differences seems to be unimpaired.

Influence of Syllable Structure on L2 Auditory Word Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hamada, Megumi; Goya, Hideki

2015-01-01

This study investigated the role of syllable structure in L2 auditory word learning. Based on research on cross-linguistic variation of speech perception and lexical memory, it was hypothesized that Japanese L1 learners of English would learn English words with an open-syllable structure without consonant clusters better than words with a…

Implicit Segmentation of a Stream of Syllables Based on Transitional Probabilities: An MEG Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teinonen, Tuomas; Huotilainen, Minna

2012-01-01

Statistical segmentation of continuous speech, i.e., the ability to utilise transitional probabilities between syllables in order to detect word boundaries, is reflected in the brain's auditory event-related potentials (ERPs). The N1 and N400 ERP components are typically enhanced for word onsets compared to random syllables during active…

Perceptual rate normalization in naturally produced bilabial stops

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nagao, Kyoko; de Jong, Kenneth

2003-10-01

The perception of voicing categories is affected by the speaking rate, so that listeners' category boundaries on a VOT continuum shift to a lower value when the syllable duration decreases (Miller and Volaitis, 1989; Volaitis and Miller, 1992). Previous rate normalization effects have been found using computer-generated stimuli. This study examines the effect of speech rate on voicing categorization in naturally produced speech. Four native speakers of American English repeated syllables (/bi/ and /pi/) at increasing rates in time with a metronome. Three-syllable stimuli were spliced from the repetitive speech. These stimuli contained natural decreases in VOT with faster speech rates. Besides, this rate effect on VOT was larger for /p/ than /b/, so that VOT values for /b/ and /p/ overlapped at the fastest rates. Eighteen native listeners of American English were presented with 168 stimuli and asked to identify the consonant. Perceptual category boundaries occur at VOT values 15 ms shorter than the values reported for synthesized stimuli. This difference may be due to the extraordinarily wide range of VOT values in previous studies. The values found in the current study closely match the actual division point for /b/ and /p/. The underlying mechanism of perceptual normalization will be discussed.

Subband-Based Group Delay Segmentation of Spontaneous Speech into Syllable-Like Units

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nagarajan, T.; Murthy, H. A.

2004-12-01

In the development of a syllable-centric automatic speech recognition (ASR) system, segmentation of the acoustic signal into syllabic units is an important stage. Although the short-term energy (STE) function contains useful information about syllable segment boundaries, it has to be processed before segment boundaries can be extracted. This paper presents a subband-based group delay approach to segment spontaneous speech into syllable-like units. This technique exploits the additive property of the Fourier transform phase and the deconvolution property of the cepstrum to smooth the STE function of the speech signal and make it suitable for syllable boundary detection. By treating the STE function as a magnitude spectrum of an arbitrary signal, a minimum-phase group delay function is derived. This group delay function is found to be a better representative of the STE function for syllable boundary detection. Although the group delay function derived from the STE function of the speech signal contains segment boundaries, the boundaries are difficult to determine in the context of long silences, semivowels, and fricatives. In this paper, these issues are specifically addressed and algorithms are developed to improve the segmentation performance. The speech signal is first passed through a bank of three filters, corresponding to three different spectral bands. The STE functions of these signals are computed. Using these three STE functions, three minimum-phase group delay functions are derived. By combining the evidence derived from these group delay functions, the syllable boundaries are detected. Further, a multiresolution-based technique is presented to overcome the problem of shift in segment boundaries during smoothing. Experiments carried out on the Switchboard and OGI-MLTS corpora show that the error in segmentation is at most 25 milliseconds for 67% and 76.6% of the syllable segments, respectively.

A Longitudinal Study of Handwriting Skills in Pre-Schoolers: The Acquisition of Syllable Oriented Programming Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Soler Vilageliu, Olga; Kandel, Sonia

2012-01-01

Previous studies have shown the relevance of the syllable as a programming unit in handwriting production, both in adults and elementary school children. This longitudinal study focuses on the acquisition of writing skills in a group of preschoolers. It examines how and when the syllable structure of the word starts regulating motor programming in…

Native language shapes automatic neural processing of speech.

PubMed

Intartaglia, Bastien; White-Schwoch, Travis; Meunier, Christine; Roman, Stéphane; Kraus, Nina; Schön, Daniele

2016-08-01

The development of the phoneme inventory is driven by the acoustic-phonetic properties of one's native language. Neural representation of speech is known to be shaped by language experience, as indexed by cortical responses, and recent studies suggest that subcortical processing also exhibits this attunement to native language. However, most work to date has focused on the differences between tonal and non-tonal languages that use pitch variations to convey phonemic categories. The aim of this cross-language study is to determine whether subcortical encoding of speech sounds is sensitive to language experience by comparing native speakers of two non-tonal languages (French and English). We hypothesized that neural representations would be more robust and fine-grained for speech sounds that belong to the native phonemic inventory of the listener, and especially for the dimensions that are phonetically relevant to the listener such as high frequency components. We recorded neural responses of American English and French native speakers, listening to natural syllables of both languages. Results showed that, independently of the stimulus, American participants exhibited greater neural representation of the fundamental frequency compared to French participants, consistent with the importance of the fundamental frequency to convey stress patterns in English. Furthermore, participants showed more robust encoding and more precise spectral representations of the first formant when listening to the syllable of their native language as compared to non-native language. These results align with the hypothesis that language experience shapes sensory processing of speech and that this plasticity occurs as a function of what is meaningful to a listener. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Articulation rate and its relationship to disfluency type, duration, and temperament in preschool children who stutter.

PubMed

Tumanova, Victoria; Zebrowski, Patricia M; Throneburg, Rebecca N; Kulak Kayikci, Mavis E

2011-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between articulation rate, frequency and duration of disfluencies of different types, and temperament in preschool children who stutter (CWS). In spontaneous speech samples from 19 CWS (mean age=3:9; years:months), we measured articulation rate, the frequency and duration of (a) sound prolongations; (b) sound-syllable repetitions; (c) single syllable whole word repetitions; and (d) clusters. Temperament was assessed with the Children's Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart et al., 2001). There was a significant negative correlation between articulation rate and average duration of sound prolongations (p<0.01), and between articulation rate and frequency of stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs) (p<0.05). No other relationships proved statistically significant. Results do not support models of stuttering development that implicate particular characteristics of temperament as proximal contributors to stuttering; however, this is likely due to the fact that current methods, including the ones used in the present study, do not allow for the identification of a functional relationship between temperament and speech production. Findings do indicate that for some CWS, relatively longer sound prolongations co-occur with relatively slower speech rate, which suggests that sound prolongations, across a range of durations, may represent a distinct type of SLD, not just in their obvious perceptual characteristics, but in their potential influence on overall speech production at multiple levels. Readers will be able to describe the relationship between stuttering-like disfluencies, articulation rate and temperament in children who stutter, and discuss different measurements of articulation rate. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Hierarchical Organization of Auditory and Motor Representations in Speech Perception: Evidence from Searchlight Similarity Analysis

PubMed Central

Evans, Samuel; Davis, Matthew H.

2015-01-01

How humans extract the identity of speech sounds from highly variable acoustic signals remains unclear. Here, we use searchlight representational similarity analysis (RSA) to localize and characterize neural representations of syllables at different levels of the hierarchically organized temporo-frontal pathways for speech perception. We asked participants to listen to spoken syllables that differed considerably in their surface acoustic form by changing speaker and degrading surface acoustics using noise-vocoding and sine wave synthesis while we recorded neural responses with functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found evidence for a graded hierarchy of abstraction across the brain. At the peak of the hierarchy, neural representations in somatomotor cortex encoded syllable identity but not surface acoustic form, at the base of the hierarchy, primary auditory cortex showed the reverse. In contrast, bilateral temporal cortex exhibited an intermediate response, encoding both syllable identity and the surface acoustic form of speech. Regions of somatomotor cortex associated with encoding syllable identity in perception were also engaged when producing the same syllables in a separate session. These findings are consistent with a hierarchical account of how variable acoustic signals are transformed into abstract representations of the identity of speech sounds. PMID:26157026

On the function of stress rhythms in speech: evidence of a link with grouping effects on serial memory.

PubMed

Boucher, Victor J

2006-01-01

Language learning requires a capacity to recall novel series of speech sounds. Research shows that prosodic marks create grouping effects enhancing serial recall. However, any restriction on memory affecting the reproduction of prosody would limit the set of patterns that could be learned and subsequently used in speech. By implication, grouping effects of prosody would also be limited to reproducible patterns. This view of the role of prosody and the contribution of memory processes in the organization of prosodic patterns is examined by evaluating the correspondence between a reported tendency to restrict stress intervals in speech and size limits on stress-grouping effects. French speech is used where stress defines the endpoints of groups. In Experiment 1, 40 speakers recalled novel series of syllables containing stress-groups of varying size. Recall was not enhanced by groupings exceeding four syllables, which corresponded to a restriction on the reproducibility of stress-groups. In Experiment 2, the subjects produced given sentences containing phrases of differing length. The results show a strong tendency to insert stress within phrases that exceed four syllables. Since prosody can arise in the recall of syntactically unstructured lists, the results offer initial support for viewing memory processes as a factor of stress-rhythm organization.

An EMA analysis of the effect of increasing word length on consonant production in apraxia of speech: a case study.

PubMed

Bartle, Carly J; Goozée, Justine V; Murdoch, Bruce E

2007-03-01

The effect of increasing word length on the articulatory dynamics (i.e. duration, distance, maximum acceleration, maximum deceleration, and maximum velocity) of consonant production in acquired apraxia of speech was investigated using electromagnetic articulography (EMA). Tongue-tip and tongue-back movement of one apraxic patient was recorded using the AG-200 EMA system during word-initial consonant productions in one, two, and three syllable words. Significantly deviant articulatory parameters were recorded for each of the target consonants during one, two, and three syllables words. Word length effects were most evident during the release phase of target consonant productions. The results are discussed with respect to theories of speech motor control as they relate to AOS.

The Hyphen as a Syllabification Cue in Reading Bisyllabic and Multisyllabic Words among Finnish 1st and 2nd Graders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Häikiö, Tuomo; Bertram, Raymond; Hyönä, Jukka

2016-01-01

Finnish ABC books present words with hyphens inserted at syllable boundaries. Syllabification by hyphens is abandoned in the 2nd grade for bisyllabic words, but continues for words with three or more syllables. The current eye movement study investigated how and to what extent syllable hyphens in bisyllabic ("kah-vi" "cof-fee")…

Speech Recognition: Acoustic Phonetic and Lexical Knowledge Representation.

DTIC Science & Technology

1984-02-01

be very powerful. We have also conducted a number of experiments examining the functional loads carried by segments in stressed versus unstressed...syllables. We found that the stressed * syllables provide a significantly greater amount of constraining power than unstressed syllables. This implies that...we started to investigate the constraints imposed by the stress pattern of words. Preliminary results indicate that knowledge about the stress pattern

The Role of Syllables in Intermediate-Depth Stress-Timed Languages: Masked Priming Evidence in European Portuguese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campos, Ana Duarte; Mendes Oliveira, Helena; Soares, Ana Paula

2018-01-01

The role of syllables as a sublexical unit in visual word recognition and reading is well established in deep and shallow syllable-timed languages such as French and Spanish, respectively. However, its role in intermediate stress-timed languages remains unclear. This paper aims to overcome this gap by studying for the first time the role of…

The Role of Secondary-Stressed and Unstressed-Unreduced Syllables in Word Recognition: Acoustic and Perceptual Studies with Russian Learners of English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Banzina, Elina; Dilley, Laura C.; Hewitt, Lynne E.

2016-01-01

The importance of secondary-stressed (SS) and unstressed-unreduced (UU) syllable accuracy for spoken word recognition in English is as yet unclear. An acoustic study first investigated Russian learners' of English production of SS and UU syllables. Significant vowel quality and duration reductions in Russian-spoken SS and UU vowels were found,…

Stochastic Time Models of Syllable Structure

PubMed Central

Shaw, Jason A.; Gafos, Adamantios I.

2015-01-01

Drawing on phonology research within the generative linguistics tradition, stochastic methods, and notions from complex systems, we develop a modelling paradigm linking phonological structure, expressed in terms of syllables, to speech movement data acquired with 3D electromagnetic articulography and X-ray microbeam methods. The essential variable in the models is syllable structure. When mapped to discrete coordination topologies, syllabic organization imposes systematic patterns of variability on the temporal dynamics of speech articulation. We simulated these dynamics under different syllabic parses and evaluated simulations against experimental data from Arabic and English, two languages claimed to parse similar strings of segments into different syllabic structures. Model simulations replicated several key experimental results, including the fallibility of past phonetic heuristics for syllable structure, and exposed the range of conditions under which such heuristics remain valid. More importantly, the modelling approach consistently diagnosed syllable structure proving resilient to multiple sources of variability in experimental data including measurement variability, speaker variability, and contextual variability. Prospects for extensions of our modelling paradigm to acoustic data are also discussed. PMID:25996153

The Nature of the Phonological Processing in French Dyslexic Children: Evidence for the Phonological Syllable and Linguistic Features' Role in Silent Reading and Speech Discrimination

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maionchi-Pino, Norbert; Magnan, Annie; Ecalle, Jean

2010-01-01

This study investigated the status of phonological representations in French dyslexic children (DY) compared with reading level- (RL) and chronological age-matched (CA) controls. We focused on the syllable's role and on the impact of French linguistic features. In Experiment 1, we assessed oral discrimination abilities of pairs of syllables that…

Hierarchical Organization of Auditory and Motor Representations in Speech Perception: Evidence from Searchlight Similarity Analysis.

PubMed

Evans, Samuel; Davis, Matthew H

2015-12-01

How humans extract the identity of speech sounds from highly variable acoustic signals remains unclear. Here, we use searchlight representational similarity analysis (RSA) to localize and characterize neural representations of syllables at different levels of the hierarchically organized temporo-frontal pathways for speech perception. We asked participants to listen to spoken syllables that differed considerably in their surface acoustic form by changing speaker and degrading surface acoustics using noise-vocoding and sine wave synthesis while we recorded neural responses with functional magnetic resonance imaging. We found evidence for a graded hierarchy of abstraction across the brain. At the peak of the hierarchy, neural representations in somatomotor cortex encoded syllable identity but not surface acoustic form, at the base of the hierarchy, primary auditory cortex showed the reverse. In contrast, bilateral temporal cortex exhibited an intermediate response, encoding both syllable identity and the surface acoustic form of speech. Regions of somatomotor cortex associated with encoding syllable identity in perception were also engaged when producing the same syllables in a separate session. These findings are consistent with a hierarchical account of how variable acoustic signals are transformed into abstract representations of the identity of speech sounds. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press.

Perception of steady-state vowels and vowelless syllables by adults and children

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nittrouer, Susan

2005-04-01

Vowels can be produced as long, isolated, and steady-state, but that is not how they are found in natural speech. Instead natural speech consists of almost continuously changing (i.e., dynamic) acoustic forms from which mature listeners recover underlying phonetic form. Some theories suggest that children need steady-state information to recognize vowels (and so learn vowel systems), even though that information is sparse in natural speech. The current study examined whether young children can recover vowel targets from dynamic forms, or whether they need steady-state information. Vowel recognition was measured for adults and children (3, 5, and 7 years) for natural productions of /dæd/, /dUd/ /æ/, /U/ edited to make six stimulus sets: three dynamic (whole syllables; syllables with middle 50-percent replaced by cough; syllables with all but the first and last three pitch periods replaced by cough), and three steady-state (natural, isolated vowels; reiterated pitch periods from those vowels; reiterated pitch periods from the syllables). Adults scored nearly perfectly on all but first/last three pitch period stimuli. Children performed nearly perfectly only when the entire syllable was heard, and performed similarly (near 80%) for all other stimuli. Consequently, children need dynamic forms to perceive vowels; steady-state forms are not preferred.

Multiple functional units in the preattentive segmentation of speech in Japanese: evidence from word illusions.

PubMed

Nakamura, Miyoko; Kolinsky, Régine

2014-12-01

We explored the functional units of speech segmentation in Japanese using dichotic presentation and a detection task requiring no intentional sublexical analysis. Indeed, illusory perception of a target word might result from preattentive migration of phonemes, morae, or syllables from one ear to the other. In Experiment I, Japanese listeners detected targets presented in hiragana and/or kanji. Phoneme migrations did occur, suggesting that orthography-independent sublexical constituents play some role in segmentation. However, syllable and especially mora migrations were more numerous. This pattern of results was not observed in French speakers (Experiment 2), suggesting that it reflects native segmentation in Japanese. To control for the intervention of kanji representations (many words are written in kanji, and one kanji often corresponds to one syllable), in Experiment 3, Japanese listeners were presented with target loanwords that can be written only in katakana. Again, phoneme migrations occurred, while the first mora and syllable led to similar rates of illusory percepts. No migration occurred for the second, "special" mora (/J/ or/N/), probably because this constitutes the latter part of a heavy syllable. Overall, these findings suggest that multiple units, such as morae, syllables, and even phonemes, function independently of orthographic knowledge in Japanese preattentive speech segmentation.

E-Hitz: a word frequency list and a program for deriving psycholinguistic statistics in an agglutinative language (Basque).

PubMed

Perea, Manuel; Urkia, Miriam; Davis, Colin J; Agirre, Ainhoa; Laseka, Edurne; Carreiras, Manuel

2006-11-01

We describe a Windows program that enables users to obtain a broad range of statistics concerning the properties of word and nonword stimuli in an agglutinative language (Basque), including measures of word frequency (at the whole-word and lemma levels), bigram and biphone frequency, orthographic similarity, orthographic and phonological structure, and syllable-based measures. It is designed for use by researchers in psycholinguistics, particularly those concerned with recognition of isolated words and morphology. In addition to providing standard orthographic and phonological neighborhood measures, the program can be used to obtain information about other forms of orthographic similarity, such as transposed-letter similarity and embedded-word similarity. It is available free of charge from www .uv.es/mperea/E-Hitz.zip.

[Two cases of fluent aphasia with selective difficulty of syllable identification].

PubMed

Endo, K; Suzuki, K; Yamadori, A; Fujii, T; Tobita, M; Ohtake, H

1999-10-01

We report two aphasic patients who could discriminate Japanese syllables but could not identify them. Case 1 was a 51-year-old right handed woman with 12-year education. Case 2 was a 50-year-old right handed man with 9-year education. They developed fluent aphasia after a cerebral infarction. Brain MRI of case 1 revealed widely distributed lesions including inferior frontal, superior temporal, angular and supramarginal gyri. Lesions revealed by Brain CT in case 2 included the left superior and middle temporal, angular and supramarginal gyri. Both showed severe impairment of repetition and confrontation naming. No difference of performance was present between repetition of single syllables and polysyllabic words. On the contrary, oral reading of Kana characters were preserved. We examined their ability to perceive syllables in detail. In the discrimination task, they judged whether a pair of heard syllables was same or different. Case 1 was correct in 85% of the tasks and case 2 in 98%. In an identification task, they heard a syllable and chose a corresponding Kana, Kanji, or picture out of 10 respective candidates. Case 1 was correct only in 30% and case 2 in 50% of these tasks. On the other hand, selection of a correct target in response to a polysyllabic word was much better, i.e. 70% in case 1 and 90% in case 2. Based on these data we concluded that (1) syllabic identification is a different process from syllabic discrimination, and (2) comprehension of a polysyllabic word can be achieved even when the precise phonological analysis of continuent syllables are impaired.

The influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation in spoken word production.

PubMed

Li, Chuchu; Wang, Min

2017-08-01

Three sets of experiments using the picture naming tasks with the form preparation paradigm investigated the influence of orthographic experience on the development of phonological preparation unit in spoken word production in native Mandarin-speaking children. Participants included kindergarten children who have not received formal literacy instruction, Grade 1 children who are comparatively more exposed to the alphabetic pinyin system and have very limited Chinese character knowledge, Grades 2 and 4 children who have better character knowledge and more exposure to characters, and skilled adult readers who have the most advanced character knowledge and most exposure to characters. Only Grade 1 children showed the form preparation effect in the same initial consonant condition (i.e., when a list of target words shared the initial consonant). Both Grade 4 children and adults showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable (but not tone) among target words was shared. Kindergartners and Grade 2 children only showed the preparation effect when the initial syllable including tonal information was shared. These developmental changes in phonological preparation could be interpreted as a joint function of the modification of phonological representation and attentional shift. Extensive pinyin experience encourages speakers to attend to and select onset phoneme in phonological preparation, whereas extensive character experience encourages speakers to prepare spoken words in syllables.

Revisiting the "enigma" of musicians with dyslexia: Auditory sequencing and speech abilities.

PubMed

Zuk, Jennifer; Bishop-Liebler, Paula; Ozernov-Palchik, Ola; Moore, Emma; Overy, Katie; Welch, Graham; Gaab, Nadine

2017-04-01

Previous research has suggested a link between musical training and auditory processing skills. Musicians have shown enhanced perception of auditory features critical to both music and speech, suggesting that this link extends beyond basic auditory processing. It remains unclear to what extent musicians who also have dyslexia show these specialized abilities, considering often-observed persistent deficits that coincide with reading impairments. The present study evaluated auditory sequencing and speech discrimination in 52 adults comprised of musicians with dyslexia, nonmusicians with dyslexia, and typical musicians. An auditory sequencing task measuring perceptual acuity for tone sequences of increasing length was administered. Furthermore, subjects were asked to discriminate synthesized syllable continua varying in acoustic components of speech necessary for intraphonemic discrimination, which included spectral (formant frequency) and temporal (voice onset time [VOT] and amplitude envelope) features. Results indicate that musicians with dyslexia did not significantly differ from typical musicians and performed better than nonmusicians with dyslexia for auditory sequencing as well as discrimination of spectral and VOT cues within syllable continua. However, typical musicians demonstrated superior performance relative to both groups with dyslexia for discrimination of syllables varying in amplitude information. These findings suggest a distinct profile of speech processing abilities in musicians with dyslexia, with specific weaknesses in discerning amplitude cues within speech. Because these difficulties seem to remain persistent in adults with dyslexia despite musical training, this study only partly supports the potential for musical training to enhance the auditory processing skills known to be crucial for literacy in individuals with dyslexia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Psychophysics of the McGurk and Other Audiovisual Speech Integration Effects

PubMed Central

Jiang, Jintao; Bernstein, Lynne E.

2011-01-01

When the auditory and visual components of spoken audiovisual nonsense syllables are mismatched, perceivers produce four different types of perceptual responses, auditory correct, visual correct, fusion (the so-called McGurk effect), and combination (i.e., two consonants are reported). Here, quantitative measures were developed to account for the distribution of types of perceptual responses to 384 different stimuli from four talkers. The measures included mutual information, the presented acoustic signal versus the acoustic signal recorded with the presented video, and the correlation between the presented acoustic and video stimuli. In Experiment 1, open-set perceptual responses were obtained for acoustic /bA/ or /lA/ dubbed to video /bA, dA, gA, vA, zA, lA, wA, ΔA/. The talker, the video syllable, and the acoustic syllable significantly influenced the type of response. In Experiment 2, the best predictors of response category proportions were a subset of the physical stimulus measures, with the variance accounted for in the perceptual response category proportions between 17% and 52%. That audiovisual stimulus relationships can account for response distributions supports the possibility that internal representations are based on modality-specific stimulus relationships. PMID:21574741

Age effects on acquisition of word stress in Spanish-English bilinguals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guion, Susan G.; Clark, J. J.; Harada, Tetsuo

2003-10-01

Based on studies of syntactic and semantic learning, it has been proposed that certain aspects of second language learning may be more adversely affected by delays in language learning than others. Here, this proposal is extended to the phonological domain in which the acquisition of English word stress patterns by early (AOA <6 years) and late (AOA >14 years) Spanish-English bilinguals is investigated. The knowledge of English word stress was investigated by three behavioral tasks. In a production task, participants produced two syllable nonwords in both noun and verb sentence frames. In a perception task, participants indicated a preference for first or last syllable stress on the nonwords. Real words that were phonologically similar to the test items were also collected from each participant. Regression analyses and ANOVAs were conducted to determine the effect of syllable structure, lexical class, and stress pattern of phonologically similar words on the data from the production and perception tasks. Early bilinguals patterned similarly to the native English participants. Late bilinguals showed little evidence of learning prosodically based stress patterns but did show evidence of application of distributional patterns based on lexical class and analogy in stress assignment. [Research supported by NIH.

Possible-word constraints in Cantonese speech segmentation.

PubMed

Yip, Michael C

2004-03-01

A Cantonese syllable-spotting experiment was conducted to examine whether the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC), proposed by Norris, McQueen, Cutler, and Butterfield (1997), can apply in Cantonese speech segmentation. In the experiment, listeners were asked to spot out the target Cantonese syllable from a series of nonsense sound strings. Results suggested that listeners found it more difficult to spot out the target syllable [kDm1] in the nonsense sound strings that attached with a single consonant [tkDm1] than in the nonsense sound strings that attached either with a vowel [a:kDm1] or a pseudo-syllable [khow1kDm1]. Finally, the current set of results further supported that the PWC appears to be a language-universal mechanism in segmenting continuous speech.

Phrase-Final Words in Greek Storytelling Speech: A Study on the Effect of a Culturally-Specific Prosodic Feature on Short-Term Memory.

PubMed

Loutrari, Ariadne; Tselekidou, Freideriki; Proios, Hariklia

2018-02-27

Prosodic patterns of speech appear to make a critical contribution to memory-related processing. We considered the case of a previously unexplored prosodic feature of Greek storytelling and its effect on free recall in thirty typically developing children between the ages of 10 and 12 years, using short ecologically valid auditory stimuli. The combination of a falling pitch contour and, more notably, extensive final-syllable vowel lengthening, which gives rise to the prosodic feature in question, led to statistically significantly higher performance in comparison to neutral phrase-final prosody. Number of syllables in target words did not reveal substantial difference in performance. The current study presents a previously undocumented culturally-specific prosodic pattern and its effect on short-term memory.

Can Chunk Size Differences Explain Developmental Changes in Lexical Learning?

PubMed Central

Smalle, Eleonore H. M.; Bogaerts, Louisa; Simonis, Morgane; Duyck, Wouter; Page, Michael P. A.; Edwards, Martin G.; Szmalec, Arnaud

2016-01-01

In three experiments, we investigated Hebb repetition learning (HRL) differences between children and adults, as a function of the type of item (lexical vs. sub-lexical) and the level of item-overlap between sequences. In a first experiment, it was shown that when non-repeating and repeating (Hebb) sequences of words were all permutations of the same words, HRL was slower than when the sequences shared no words. This item-overlap effect was observed in both children and adults. In a second experiment, we used syllable sequences and we observed reduced HRL due to item-overlap only in children. The findings are explained within a chunking account of the HRL effect on the basis of which we hypothesize that children, compared with adults, chunk syllable sequences in smaller units. By hypothesis, small chunks are more prone to interference from anagram representations included in the filler sequences, potentially explaining the item-overlap effect in children. This hypothesis was tested in a third experiment with adults where we experimentally manipulated the chunk size by embedding pauses in the syllable sequences. Interestingly, we showed that imposing a small chunk size caused adults to show the same behavioral effects as those observed in children. Departing from the analogy between verbal HRL and lexical development, the results are discussed in light of the less-is-more hypothesis of age-related differences in language acquisition. PMID:26779065

Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of Dysarthria in Greek with a Focus on Lexical Stress

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Papakyritsis, Ioannis

The field of motor speech disorders in Greek is substantially underresearched. Additionally, acoustic studies on lexical stress in dysarthria are generally very rare (Kim et al. 2010). This dissertation examined the acoustic and perceptual effects of Greek dysarthria focusing on lexical stress. Additional possibly deviant speech characteristics were acoustically analyzed. Data from three dysarthric participants and matched controls was analyzed using a case study design. The analysis of lexical stress was based on data drawn from a single word repetition task that included pairs of disyllabic words differentiated by stress location. This data was acoustically analyzed in terms of the use of the acoustic cues for Greek stress. The ability of the dysarthric participants to signal stress in single words was further assessed in a stress identification task carried out by 14 naive Greek listeners. Overall, the acoustic and perceptual data indicated that, although all three dysarthric speakers presented with some difficulty in the patterning of stressed and unstressed syllables, each had different underlying problems that gave rise to quite distinct patterns of deviant speech characteristics. The atypical use of lexical stress cues in Anna's data obscured the prominence relations of stressed and unstressed syllables to the extent that the position of lexical stress was usually not perceptually transparent. Chris and Maria on the other hand, did not have marked difficulties signaling lexical stress location, although listeners were not 100% successful in the stress identification task. For the most part, Chris' atypical phonation patterns and Maria's very slow rate of speech did not interfere with lexical stress signaling. The acoustic analysis of the lexical stress cues was generally in agreement with the participants' performance in the stress identification task. Interestingly, in all three dysarthric participants, but more so in Anna, targets stressed on the 1st syllable were more impervious to error judgments of lexical stress location than targets stressed on the 2nd syllable, although the acoustic metrics did not always suggest a more appropriate use of lexical stress cues in 1st syllable position. The findings contribute to our limited knowledge of the speech characteristics of dysarthria across different languages.

Multi-time resolution analysis of speech: evidence from psychophysics

PubMed Central

Chait, Maria; Greenberg, Steven; Arai, Takayuki; Simon, Jonathan Z.; Poeppel, David

2015-01-01

How speech signals are analyzed and represented remains a foundational challenge both for cognitive science and neuroscience. A growing body of research, employing various behavioral and neurobiological experimental techniques, now points to the perceptual relevance of both phoneme-sized (10–40 Hz modulation frequency) and syllable-sized (2–10 Hz modulation frequency) units in speech processing. However, it is not clear how information associated with such different time scales interacts in a manner relevant for speech perception. We report behavioral experiments on speech intelligibility employing a stimulus that allows us to investigate how distinct temporal modulations in speech are treated separately and whether they are combined. We created sentences in which the slow (~4 Hz; Slow) and rapid (~33 Hz; Shigh) modulations—corresponding to ~250 and ~30 ms, the average duration of syllables and certain phonetic properties, respectively—were selectively extracted. Although Slow and Shigh have low intelligibility when presented separately, dichotic presentation of Shigh with Slow results in supra-additive performance, suggesting a synergistic relationship between low- and high-modulation frequencies. A second experiment desynchronized presentation of the Slow and Shigh signals. Desynchronizing signals relative to one another had no impact on intelligibility when delays were less than ~45 ms. Longer delays resulted in a steep intelligibility decline, providing further evidence of integration or binding of information within restricted temporal windows. Our data suggest that human speech perception uses multi-time resolution processing. Signals are concurrently analyzed on at least two separate time scales, the intermediate representations of these analyses are integrated, and the resulting bound percept has significant consequences for speech intelligibility—a view compatible with recent insights from neuroscience implicating multi-timescale auditory processing. PMID:26136650

Imaging auditory representations of song and syllables in populations of sensorimotor neurons essential to vocal communication.

PubMed

Peh, Wendy Y X; Roberts, Todd F; Mooney, Richard

2015-04-08

Vocal communication depends on the coordinated activity of sensorimotor neurons important to vocal perception and production. How vocalizations are represented by spatiotemporal activity patterns in these neuronal populations remains poorly understood. Here we combined intracellular recordings and two-photon calcium imaging in anesthetized adult zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) to examine how learned birdsong and its component syllables are represented in identified projection neurons (PNs) within HVC, a sensorimotor region important for song perception and production. These experiments show that neighboring HVC PNs can respond at markedly different times to song playback and that different syllables activate spatially intermingled PNs within a local (~100 μm) region of HVC. Moreover, noise correlations were stronger between PNs that responded most strongly to the same syllable and were spatially graded within and between classes of PNs. These findings support a model in which syllabic and temporal features of song are represented by spatially intermingled PNs functionally organized into cell- and syllable-type networks within local spatial scales in HVC. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/355589-17$15.00/0.

Sing that Tune: Infants’ Perception of Melody and Lyrics and the Facilitation of Phonetic Recognition in Songs

PubMed Central

Lebedeva, Gina C.; Kuhl, Patricia K.

2010-01-01

To better understand how infants process complex auditory input, this study investigated whether 11-month-old infants perceive the pitch (melodic) or the phonetic (lyric) components within songs as more salient, and whether melody facilitates phonetic recognition. Using a preferential looking paradigm, uni-dimensional and multi-dimensional songs were tested; either the pitch or syllable order of the stimuli varied. As a group, infants detected a change in pitch order in a 4-note sequence when the syllables were redundant (Experiment 1), but did not detect the identical pitch change with variegated syllables (Experiment 2). Infants were better able to detect a change in syllable order in a sung sequence (Experiment 2) than the identical syllable change in a spoken sequence (Experiment 1). These results suggest that by 11 months, infants cannot “ignore” phonetic information in the context of perceptually salient pitch variation. Moreover, the increased phonetic recognition in song contexts mirrors findings that demonstrate advantages of infant-directed speech. Findings are discussed in terms of how stimulus complexity interacts with the perception of sung speech in infancy. PMID:20472295

Brainstem transcription of speech is disrupted in children with autism spectrum disorders

PubMed Central

Russo, Nicole; Nicol, Trent; Trommer, Barbara; Zecker, Steve; Kraus, Nina

2009-01-01

Language impairment is a hallmark of autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The origin of the deficit is poorly understood although deficiencies in auditory processing have been detected in both perception and cortical encoding of speech sounds. Little is known about the processing and transcription of speech sounds at earlier (brainstem) levels or about how background noise may impact this transcription process. Unlike cortical encoding of sounds, brainstem representation preserves stimulus features with a degree of fidelity that enables a direct link between acoustic components of the speech syllable (e.g., onsets) to specific aspects of neural encoding (e.g., waves V and A). We measured brainstem responses to the syllable /da/, in quiet and background noise, in children with and without ASD. Children with ASD exhibited deficits in both the neural synchrony (timing) and phase locking (frequency encoding) of speech sounds, despite normal click-evoked brainstem responses. They also exhibited reduced magnitude and fidelity of speech-evoked responses and inordinate degradation of responses by background noise in comparison to typically developing controls. Neural synchrony in noise was significantly related to measures of core and receptive language ability. These data support the idea that abnormalities in the brainstem processing of speech contribute to the language impairment in ASD. Because it is both passively-elicited and malleable, the speech-evoked brainstem response may serve as a clinical tool to assess auditory processing as well as the effects of auditory training in the ASD population. PMID:19635083

[An oral function improvement program utilizing health behavior theories ameliorates oral functions and oral hygienic conditions of pre-frail elderly persons].

PubMed

Sakaguchi, Hideo

2014-06-01

Oral function improvement programs utilizing health behavior theories are considered to be effective in preventing the need for long-term social care. In the present study, an oral function improvement program based upon health behavior theories was designed, and its utility was assessed in 102 pre-frail elderly persons (33 males, 69 females, mean age: 76.9 +/- 5.7) considered to be in potential need of long-term social care and attending a long-term care prevention class in Sayama City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan. The degree of improvement in oral functions (7 items) and oral hygienic conditions (3 items) was assessed by comparing oral health before and after participation in the program. The results showed statistically significant improvements in the following oral functions: (1) lip functions (oral diadochokinesis, measured by the regularity of the repetition of the syllable "Pa"), (2) tongue functions, (3) tongue root motor skills (oral diadochokinesis, measured by the regularity of the repetition of the syllables "Ta" and "Ka"), (4) tongue extension/retraction, (5) side-to-side tongue movement functions, (6) cheek motor skills, and (7) repetitive saliva swallowing test (RSST). The following measures of oral hygiene also showed a statistically significant improvement: (1) debris on dentures or teeth, (2) coated tongue, and (3) frequency of oral cleaning. These findings demonstrated that an improvement program informed by health behavior theories is useful in improving oral functions and oral hygiene conditions.

Limited role of phonology in reading Chinese two-character compounds: evidence from an ERP study.

PubMed

Wong, A W-K; Wu, Y; Chen, H-C

2014-01-03

This study investigates the role of phonology in reading logographic Chinese. Specifically, whether phonological information is obligatorily activated in reading Chinese two-character compounds was examined using the masked-priming paradigm with event-related potential (ERP) recordings. Twenty-two native Cantonese Chinese speakers participated in a lexical decision experiment. The targets were visually presented Chinese two-character strings and the participants were asked to judge whether the target in each trial was a legitimate compound word in Chinese. Each target was preceded by a briefly presented word prime. The prime and target shared an identical constituent character in the Character-related condition, a syllable in the Syllable-related condition, were semantically related in the Semantic-related condition, and were unrelated (both phonologically and semantically) in the control condition. The prime–target relationship was manipulated to probe the effects of word-form (i.e., character- or syllable-relatedness) and word-semantic relatedness on phonological (as indexed by an N250 ERP component) and semantic (as indexed by an N400 ERP component) processing. Significant and comparable facilitation effects in reaction time, relative to the control, were observed in the Character-related and the Semantic-related conditions. Furthermore, a significant reduction in ERP amplitudes (N250), relative to the control, was obtained in the Character-related condition in the time window of 150-250 ms post target. In addition, attenuation in ERP amplitudes was found in the Semantic-related condition in the window of 250-500 ms (N400). However, no significant results (neither behavioral nor ERP) were found in the Syllable-related condition. These results suggest that phonological activation is not mandatory and the role of phonology is minimal at best in reading Chinese two-character compounds.

Developmental Trajectory of McGurk Effect Susceptibility in Children and Adults With Amblyopia.

PubMed

Narinesingh, Cindy; Goltz, Herbert C; Raashid, Rana Arham; Wong, Agnes M F

2015-03-05

The McGurk effect is an audiovisual illusion that involves the concurrent presentation of a phoneme (auditory syllable) and an incongruent viseme (visual syllable). Adults with amblyopia show less susceptibility to this illusion than visually normal controls, even when viewing binocularly. The present study investigated the developmental trajectory of McGurk effect susceptibility in adults, older children (10-17 years), and younger children (4-9 years) with amblyopia. A total of 62 participants with amblyopia (22 adults, 12 older children, 28 younger children) and 66 visually normal controls (25 adults, 17 older children, 24 younger children) viewed videos that combined phonemes and visemes, and were asked to report what they heard. Videos with congruent (auditory and visual matching) and incongruent (auditory and visual not matching) stimuli were presented. Incorrect responses on incongruent trials correspond to high McGurk effect susceptibility, indicating that the viseme influenced the phoneme. Participants with amblyopia (28.0% ± 3.3%) demonstrated a less consistent McGurk effect than visually normal controls (15.2% ± 2.3%) across all age groups (P = 0.0024). Effect susceptibility increased with age (P = 0.0003) for amblyopic participants and controls. Both groups showed a similar response pattern to different speakers and syllables, but amblyopic participants invariably demonstrated a less consistent effect. Amblyopia is associated with reduced McGurk effect susceptibility in children and adults. Our findings indicate that the differences do not simply indicate delayed development in children with amblyopia; rather, they represent permanent alterations that persist into adulthood. Copyright 2015 The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Inc.

Acoustic changes in the speech of children with cerebral palsy following an intensive program of dysarthria therapy.

PubMed

Pennington, Lindsay; Lombardo, Eftychia; Steen, Nick; Miller, Nick

2018-01-01

The speech intelligibility of children with dysarthria and cerebral palsy has been observed to increase following therapy focusing on respiration and phonation. To determine if speech intelligibility change following intervention is associated with change in acoustic measures of voice. We recorded 16 young people with cerebral palsy and dysarthria (nine girls; mean age 14 years, SD = 2; nine spastic type, two dyskinetic, four mixed; one Worster-Drought) producing speech in two conditions (single words, connected speech) twice before and twice after therapy focusing on respiration, phonation and rate. In both single-word and connected speech we measured vocal intensity (root mean square-RMS), period-to-period variability (Shimmer APQ, Jitter RAP and PPQ) and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR). In connected speech we also measured mean fundamental frequency, utterance duration in seconds and speech and articulation rate (syllables/s with and without pauses respectively). All acoustic measures were made using Praat. Intelligibility was calculated in previous research. In single words statistically significant but very small reductions were observed in period-to-period variability following therapy: Shimmer APQ -0.15 (95% CI = -0.21 to -0.09); Jitter RAP -0.08 (95% CI = -0.14 to -0.01); Jitter PPQ -0.08 (95% CI = -0.15 to -0.01). No changes in period-to-period perturbation across phrases in connected speech were detected. However, changes in connected speech were observed in phrase length, rate and intensity. Following therapy, mean utterance duration increased by 1.11 s (95% CI = 0.37-1.86) when measured with pauses and by 1.13 s (95% CI = 0.40-1.85) when measured without pauses. Articulation rate increased by 0.07 syllables/s (95% CI = 0.02-0.13); speech rate increased by 0.06 syllables/s (95% CI = < 0.01-0.12); and intensity increased by 0.03 Pascals (95% CI = 0.02-0.04). There was a gradual reduction in mean fundamental frequency across all time points (-11.85 Hz, 95% CI = -19.84 to -3.86). Only increases in the intensity of single words (0.37 Pascals, 95% CI = 0.10-0.65) and reductions in fundamental frequency (-0.11 Hz, 95% CI = -0.21 to -0.02) in connected speech were associated with gains in intelligibility. Mean reductions in impairment in vocal function following therapy observed were small and most are unlikely to be clinically significant. Changes in vocal control did not explain improved intelligibility. © 2017 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Speech rate reduction and "nasality" in normal speakers.

PubMed

Brancewicz, T M; Reich, A R

1989-12-01

This study explored the effects of reduced speech rate on nasal/voice accelerometric measures and nasality ratings. Nasal/voice accelerometric measures were obtained from normal adults for various speech stimuli and speaking rates. Stimuli included three sentences (one obstruent-loaded, one semivowel-loaded, and one containing a single nasal), and /pv/ syllable trains.. Speakers read the stimuli at their normal rate, half their normal rate, and as slowly as possible. In addition, a computer program paced each speaker at rates of 1, 2, and 3 syllables per second. The nasal/voice accelerometric values revealed significant stimulus effects but no rate effects. The nasality ratings of experienced listeners, evaluated as a function of stimulus and speaking rate, were compared to the accelerometric measures. The nasality scale values demonstrated small, but statistically significant, stimulus and rate effects. However, the nasality percepts were poorly correlated with the nasal/voice accelerometric measures.

The limits of metrical segmentation: intonation modulates infants' extraction of embedded trochees.

PubMed

Zahner, Katharina; Schönhuber, Muna; Braun, Bettina

2016-11-01

We tested German nine-month-olds' reliance on pitch and metrical stress for segmentation. In a headturn-preference paradigm, infants were familiarized with trisyllabic words (weak-strong-weak (WSW) stress pattern) in sentence-contexts. The words were presented in one of three naturally occurring intonation conditions: one in which high pitch was aligned with the stressed syllable and two misalignment conditions (with high pitch preceding vs. following the stressed syllable). Infants were tested on the SW unit of the WSW carriers. Experiment 1 showed recognition only when the stressed syllable was high-pitched. Intonation of test items (similar vs. dissimilar to familiarization) had no influence (Experiment 2). Thus, German nine-month-olds perceive stressed syllables as word onsets only when high-pitched, although they already generalize over different pitch contours. Different mechanisms underlying this pattern of results are discussed.

Alternating motion rate as an index of speech motor disorder in traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Wang, Yu-Tsai; Kent, Ray D; Duffy, Joseph R; Thomas, Jack E; Weismer, Gary

2004-01-01

The task of syllable alternating motion rate (AMR) (also called diadochokinesis) is suitable for examining speech disorders of varying degrees of severity and in individuals with varying levels of linguistic and cognitive ability. However, very limited information on this task has been published for subjects with traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study is a quantitative and qualitative acoustic analysis of AMR in seven subjects with TBI. The primary goal was to use acoustic analyses to assess speech motor control disturbances for the group as a whole and for individual patients. Quantitative analyses included measures of syllable rate, syllable and intersyllable gap durations, energy maxima, and voice onset time (VOT). Qualitative analyses included classification of features evident in spectrograms and waveforms to provide a more detailed description. The TBI group had (1) a slowed syllable rate due mostly to lengthened syllables and, to a lesser degree, lengthened intersyllable gaps, (2) highly correlated syllable rates between AMR and conversation, (3) temporal and energy maxima irregularities within repetition sequences, (4) normal median VOT values but with large variation, and (5) a number of speech production abnormalities revealed by qualitative analysis, including explosive speech quality, breathy voice quality, phonatory instability, multiple or missing stop bursts, continuous voicing, and spirantization. The relationships between these findings and TBI speakers' neurological status and dysarthria types are also discussed. It was concluded that acoustic analyses of the AMR task provides specific information on motor speech limitations in individuals with TBI.

Software for objective comparison of vocal acoustic features over weeks of audio recording: KLFromRecordingDays

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Soderstrom, Ken; Alalawi, Ali

KLFromRecordingDays allows measurement of Kullback-Leibler (KL) distances between 2D probability distributions of vocal acoustic features. Greater KL distance measures reflect increased phonological divergence across the vocalizations compared. The software has been used to compare *.wav file recordings made by Sound Analysis Recorder 2011 of songbird vocalizations pre- and post-drug and surgical manipulations. Recordings from individual animals in *.wav format are first organized into subdirectories by recording day and then segmented into individual syllables uttered and acoustic features of these syllables using Sound Analysis Pro 2011 (SAP). KLFromRecordingDays uses syllable acoustic feature data output by SAP to a MySQL table to generate and compare "template" (typically pre-treatment) and "target" (typically post-treatment) probability distributions. These distributions are a series of virtual 2D plots of the duration of each syllable (as x-axis) to each of 13 other acoustic features measured by SAP for that syllable (as y-axes). Differences between "template" and "target" probability distributions for each acoustic feature are determined by calculating KL distance, a measure of divergence of the target 2D distribution pattern from that of the template. KL distances and the mean KL distance across all acoustic features are calculated for each recording day and output to an Excel spreadsheet. Resulting data for individual subjects may then be pooled across treatment groups and graphically summarized and used for statistical comparisons. Because SAP-generated MySQL files are accessed directly, data limits associated with spreadsheet output are avoided, and the totality of vocal output over weeks may be objectively analyzed all at once. The software has been useful for measuring drug effects on songbird vocalizations and assessing recovery from damage to regions of vocal motor cortex. It may be useful in studies employing other species, and as part of speech therapies tracking progress in producing distinct speech sounds in isolation.

Phonotactic Probability Effects in Children Who Stutter

PubMed Central

Anderson, Julie D.; Byrd, Courtney T.

2008-01-01

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of phonotactic probability, the frequency of different sound segments and segment sequences, on the overall fluency with which words are produced by preschool children who stutter (CWS), as well as to determine whether it has an effect on the type of stuttered disfluency produced. Method A 500+ word language sample was obtained from 19 CWS. Each stuttered word was randomly paired with a fluently produced word that closely matched it in grammatical class, word length, familiarity, word and neighborhood frequency, and neighborhood density. Phonotactic probability values were obtained for the stuttered and fluent words from an online database. Results Phonotactic probability did not have a significant influence on the overall susceptibility of words to stuttering, but it did impact the type of stuttered disfluency produced. In specific, single-syllable word repetitions were significantly lower in phonotactic probability than fluently produced words, as well as part-word repetitions and sound prolongations. Conclusions In general, the differential impact of phonotactic probability on the type of stuttering-like disfluency produced by young CWS provides some support for the notion that different disfluency types may originate in the disruption of different levels of processing. PMID:18658056

The speech focus position effect on jaw-finger coordination in a pointing task.

PubMed

Rochet-Capellan, Amélie; Laboissière, Rafael; Galván, Arturo; Schwartz, Jean-Luc

2008-12-01

This article investigates jaw-finger coordination in a task involving pointing to a target while naming it with a CVCV (e.g., /papa/) versus CVCV (e.g., /papa/) word. According to the authors' working hypothesis, the pointing apex (gesture extremum) would be synchronized with the apex of the jaw-opening gesture corresponding to the stressed syllable. Jaw and finger motions were recorded using Optotrak (Northern Digital, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada). The effects of stress position on jaw-finger coordination were tested across different target positions (near vs. far) and different consonants in the target word (/t/ vs. /p/). Twenty native Portuguese Brazilian speakers participated in the experiment (all conditions). Jaw response starts earlier, and finger-target alignment period is longer for CVCV words than for CVCV ones. The apex of the jaw-opening gesture for the stressed syllable appears synchronized with the onset of the finger-target alignment period (corresponding to the pointing apex) for CVCV words and with the offset of that period for CVCV words. For both stress conditions, the stressed syllable occurs within the finger-target alignment period because of tight finger-jaw coordination. This result is interpreted as evidence for an anchoring of the speech deictic site (part of speech that shows) in the pointing gesture.

Effects of syllable-initial voicing and speaking rate on the temporal characteristics of monosyllabic words.

PubMed

Allen, J S; Miller, J L

1999-10-01

Two speech production experiments tested the validity of the traditional method of creating voice-onset-time (VOT) continua for perceptual studies in which the systematic increase in VOT across the continuum is accompanied by a concomitant decrease in the duration of the following vowel. In experiment 1, segmental durations were measured for matched monosyllabic words beginning with either a voiced stop (e.g., big, duck, gap) or a voiceless stop (e.g., pig, tuck, cap). Results from four talkers showed that the change from voiced to voiceless stop produced not only an increase in VOT, but also a decrease in vowel duration. However, the decrease in vowel duration was consistently less than the increase in VOT. In experiment 2, results from four new talkers replicated these findings at two rates of speech, as well as highlighted the contrasting temporal effects on vowel duration of an increase in VOT due to a change in syllable-initial voicing versus a change in speaking rate. It was concluded that the traditional method of creating VOT continua for perceptual experiments, although not perfect, approximates natural speech by capturing the basic trade-off between VOT and vowel duration in syllable-initial voiced versus voiceless stop consonants.

Time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Mandarin word production: Evidence from the picture-word interference paradigm.

PubMed

Wang, Jie; Wong, Andus Wing-Kuen; Chen, Hsuan-Chih

2017-06-05

The time course of phonological encoding in Mandarin monosyllabic word production was investigated by using the picture-word interference paradigm. Participants were asked to name pictures in Mandarin while visual distractor words were presented before, at, or after picture onset (i.e., stimulus-onset asynchrony/SOA = -100, 0, or +100 ms, respectively). Compared with the unrelated control, the distractors sharing atonal syllables with the picture names significantly facilitated the naming responses at -100- and 0-ms SOAs. In addition, the facilitation effect of sharing word-initial segments only appeared at 0-ms SOA, and null effects were found for sharing word-final segments. These results indicate that both syllables and subsyllabic units play important roles in Mandarin spoken word production and more critically that syllabic processing precedes subsyllabic processing. The current results lend strong support to the proximate units principle (O'Seaghdha, Chen, & Chen, 2010), which holds that the phonological structure of spoken word production is language-specific and that atonal syllables are the proximate phonological units in Mandarin Chinese. On the other hand, the significance of word-initial segments over word-final segments suggests that serial processing of segmental information seems to be universal across Germanic languages and Chinese, which remains to be verified in future studies.

Electrophysiological and hemodynamic mismatch responses in rats listening to human speech syllables.

PubMed

Mahmoudzadeh, Mahdi; Dehaene-Lambertz, Ghislaine; Wallois, Fabrice

2017-01-01

Speech is a complex auditory stimulus which is processed according to several time-scales. Whereas consonant discrimination is required to resolve rapid acoustic events, voice perception relies on slower cues. Humans, right from preterm ages, are particularly efficient to encode temporal cues. To compare the capacities of preterms to those observed in other mammals, we tested anesthetized adult rats by using exactly the same paradigm as that used in preterm neonates. We simultaneously recorded neural (using ECoG) and hemodynamic responses (using fNIRS) to series of human speech syllables and investigated the brain response to a change of consonant (ba vs. ga) and to a change of voice (male vs. female). Both methods revealed concordant results, although ECoG measures were more sensitive than fNIRS. Responses to syllables were bilateral, but with marked right-hemispheric lateralization. Responses to voice changes were observed with both methods, while only ECoG was sensitive to consonant changes. These results suggest that rats more effectively processed the speech envelope than fine temporal cues in contrast with human preterm neonates, in whom the opposite effects were observed. Cross-species comparisons constitute a very valuable tool to define the singularities of the human brain and species-specific bias that may help human infants to learn their native language.

Investigating the Retention and Time-Course of Phonotactic Constraint Learning From Production Experience

PubMed Central

Warker, Jill A.

2013-01-01

Adults can rapidly learn artificial phonotactic constraints such as /f/ only occurs at the beginning of syllables by producing syllables that contain those constraints. This implicit learning is then reflected in their speech errors. However, second-order constraints in which the placement of a phoneme depends on another characteristic of the syllable (e.g., if the vowel is /æ/, /f/ occurs at the beginning of syllables and /s/ occurs at the end of syllables but if the vowel is /I/, the reverse is true) require a longer learning period. Two experiments question the transience of second-order learning and whether consolidation plays a role in learning phonological dependencies. Using speech errors as a measure of learning, Experiment 1 investigated the durability of learning, and Experiment 2 investigated the time-course of learning. Experiment 1 found that learning is still present in speech errors a week later. Experiment 2 looked at whether more time in the form of a consolidation period or more experience in the form of more trials was necessary for learning to be revealed in speech errors. Both consolidation and more trials led to learning; however, consolidation provided a more substantial benefit. PMID:22686839

Design of Phoneme MIDI Codes Using the MIDI Encoding Tool “Auto-F” and Realizing Voice Synthesizing Functions Based on Musical Sounds

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Modegi, Toshio

Using our previously developed audio to MIDI code converter tool “Auto-F”, from given vocal acoustic signals we can create MIDI data, which enable to playback the voice-like signals with a standard MIDI synthesizer. Applying this tool, we are constructing a MIDI database, which consists of previously converted simple harmonic structured MIDI codes from a set of 71 Japanese male and female syllable recorded signals. And we are developing a novel voice synthesizing system based on harmonically synthesizing musical sounds, which can generate MIDI data and playback voice signals with a MIDI synthesizer by giving Japanese plain (kana) texts, referring to the syllable MIDI code database. In this paper, we propose an improved MIDI converter tool, which can produce temporally higher-resolution MIDI codes. Then we propose an algorithm separating a set of 20 consonant and vowel phoneme MIDI codes from 71 syllable MIDI converted codes in order to construct a voice synthesizing system. And, we present the evaluation results of voice synthesizing quality between these separated phoneme MIDI codes and their original syllable MIDI codes by our developed 4-syllable word listening tests.

Ultrasonic Songs of Male Mice

PubMed Central

Guo, Zhongsheng

2005-01-01

Previously it was shown that male mice, when they encounter female mice or their pheromones, emit ultrasonic vocalizations with frequencies ranging over 30–110 kHz. Here, we show that these vocalizations have the characteristics of song, consisting of several different syllable types, whose temporal sequencing includes the utterance of repeated phrases. Individual males produce songs with characteristic syllabic and temporal structure. This study provides a quantitative initial description of male mouse songs, and opens the possibility of studying song production and perception in an established genetic model organism. PMID:16248680

Atypical mismatch negativity to distressful voices associated with conduct disorder symptoms.

PubMed

Hung, An-Yi; Ahveninen, Jyrki; Cheng, Yawei

2013-09-01

Although a general consensus holds that emotional reactivity in youth with conduct disorder (CD) symptoms arises as one of the main causes of successive aggression, it remains to be determined whether automatic emotional processing is altered in this population. We measured auditory event-related potentials (ERP) in 20 young offenders and 20 controls, screened for DSM-IV criteria of CD and evaluated using the youth version of Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL:YV), State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Barrett Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11). In an oddball design, sadly or fearfully spoken 'deviant' syllables were randomly presented within a train of emotionally neutral 'standard' syllables. In young offenders meeting with CD criteria, the ERP component mismatch negativity (MMN), presumed to reflect preattentive auditory change detection, was significantly stronger for fearful than sad syllables. No MMN differences for fearful versus sad syllables were observed in controls. Analyses of nonvocal deviants, matched spectrally with the fearful and sad sounds, supported our interpretation that the MMN abnormalities in juvenile offenders were related to the emotional content of sounds, instead of purely acoustic factors. Further, in the young offenders with CD symptoms, strong MMN amplitudes to fearful syllables were associated with high impulsive tendencies (PCL:YV, Factor 2). Higher trait and state anxiety, assessed by STAI, were positively correlated with P3a amplitudes to fearful and sad syllables, respectively. The differences in group-interaction MMN/P3a patterns to emotional syllables and nonvocal sounds could be speculated to suggest that there is a distinct processing route for preattentive processing of species-specific emotional information in human auditory cortices. Our results suggest that youths with CD symptoms may process distressful voices in an atypical fashion already at the preattentive level. This auditory processing abnormality correlated with increased impulsivity and anxiety. Our results may help to shed light on the neural mechanisms of aggression. © 2013 The Authors. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry © 2013 Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

Rhythmic patterning in Malaysian and Singapore English.

PubMed

Tan, Rachel Siew Kuang; Low, Ee-Ling

2014-06-01

Previous work on the rhythm of Malaysian English has been based on impressionistic observations. This paper utilizes acoustic analysis to measure the rhythmic patterns of Malaysian English. Recordings of the read speech and spontaneous speech of 10 Malaysian English speakers were analyzed and compared with recordings of an equivalent sample of Singaporean English speakers. Analysis was done using two rhythmic indexes, the PVI and VarcoV. It was found that although the rhythm of read speech of the Singaporean speakers was syllable-based as described by previous studies, the rhythm of the Malaysian speakers was even more syllable-based. Analysis of the syllables in specific utterances showed that Malaysian speakers did not reduce vowels as much as Singaporean speakers in cases of syllables in utterances. Results of the spontaneous speech confirmed the findings for the read speech; that is, the same rhythmic patterning was found which normally triggers vowel reductions.

An Adapting Auditory-motor Feedback Loop Can Contribute to Generating Vocal Repetition

PubMed Central

Brainard, Michael S.; Jin, Dezhe Z.

2015-01-01

Consecutive repetition of actions is common in behavioral sequences. Although integration of sensory feedback with internal motor programs is important for sequence generation, if and how feedback contributes to repetitive actions is poorly understood. Here we study how auditory feedback contributes to generating repetitive syllable sequences in songbirds. We propose that auditory signals provide positive feedback to ongoing motor commands, but this influence decays as feedback weakens from response adaptation during syllable repetitions. Computational models show that this mechanism explains repeat distributions observed in Bengalese finch song. We experimentally confirmed two predictions of this mechanism in Bengalese finches: removal of auditory feedback by deafening reduces syllable repetitions; and neural responses to auditory playback of repeated syllable sequences gradually adapt in sensory-motor nucleus HVC. Together, our results implicate a positive auditory-feedback loop with adaptation in generating repetitive vocalizations, and suggest sensory adaptation is important for feedback control of motor sequences. PMID:26448054

Vocal learning beyond imitation: mechanisms of adaptive vocal development in songbirds and human infants

PubMed Central

Tchernichovski, Ofer; Marcus, Gary

2014-01-01

Studies of vocal learning in songbirds typically focus on the acquisition of sensory templates for song imitation and on the consequent process of matching song production to templates. However, functional vocal development also requires the capacity to adaptively diverge from sensory templates, and to flexibly assemble vocal units. Examples of adaptive divergence include the corrective imitation of abnormal songs, and the decreased tendency to copy overabundant syllables. Such frequency-dependent effects might mirror tradeoffs between the assimilation of group identity (culture) while establishing individual and flexibly expressive songs. Intriguingly, although the requirements for vocal plasticity vary across songbirds, and more so between birdsong and language, the capacity to flexibly assemble vocal sounds develops in a similar, stepwise manner across species. Therefore, universal features of vocal learning go well beyond the capacity to imitate. PMID:25005823

''1/f noise'' in music: Music from 1/f noise

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Voss, R.F.; Clarke, J.

1978-01-01

The spectral density of fluctuations in the audio power of many musical selections and of English speech varies approximately as 1/f (f is the frequency) down to a frequency of 5 x 10/sup -4/ Hz. This result implies that the audio-power fluctuations are correlated over all times in the same manner as ''1/f noise'' in electronic components. The frequency fluctuations of music also have a 1/f spectral density at frequencies down to the inverse of the length of the piece of music. The frequency fluctuations of English speech have a quite different behavior, with a single characteristic time of aboutmore » 0.1 s, the average length of a syllable. The observations on music suggest that 1/f noise is a good choice for stochastic composition. Compositions in which the frequency and duration of each note were determined by 1/f noise sources sounded pleasing. Those generated by white-noise sources sounded too random, while those generated by 1/f/sup 2/ noise sounded too correlated.« less

Effect of Probe Tube Insertion Depth on Spectral Measures of Speech

PubMed Central

Caldwell, Marc; Souza, Pamela E.; Tremblay, Kelly L.

2006-01-01

This study investigated how depth variations in the tip of the probe tube affected spectral measures of speech recorded in the external ear canal. Consonant-vowel nonsense syllables were recorded with a probe tube microphone system in 10 adult participants with normal middle ear function. Recordings were made with the probe tube tip placed 1 mm, 5 mm, and 10 mm beyond the medial tip of a custom earmold. The effect of probe depth was evaluated on spectral levels (one-third octave and one-twelfth octave band). Extending the probe tube 10 mm past the medial tip of the earmold gave the most accurate results, with relatively lower sound levels for either the 1-mm or 5-mm insertion depth. In general, the effect of insertion depth was minimal at frequencies below 3 to 4 kHz, although this varied with the specific phoneme and the width of the analysis bands. The authors found no significant difference between 1- and 5-mm insertion depths, suggesting that as long as the tip of the probe tube is sufficiently close to the tympanic membrane to capture the highest frequency of interest, it makes little difference if it is less than 5 mm beyond the earmold tip. PMID:16959735

Electrophysiological evidence of statistical learning of long-distance dependencies in 8-month-old preterm and full-term infants.

PubMed

Kabdebon, C; Pena, M; Buiatti, M; Dehaene-Lambertz, G

2015-09-01

Using electroencephalography, we examined 8-month-old infants' ability to discover a systematic dependency between the first and third syllables of successive words, concatenated into a monotonous speech stream, and to subsequently generalize this regularity to new items presented in isolation. Full-term and preterm infants, while exposed to the stream, displayed a significant entrainment (phase-locking) to the syllabic and word frequencies, demonstrating that they were sensitive to the word unit. The acquisition of the systematic dependency defining words was confirmed by the significantly different neural responses to rule-words and part-words subsequently presented during the test phase. Finally, we observed a correlation between syllabic entrainment during learning and the difference in phase coherence between the test conditions (rule-words vs part-words) suggesting that temporal processing of the syllable unit might be crucial in linguistic learning. No group difference was observed suggesting that non-adjacent statistical computations are already robust at 8 months, even in preterm infants, and thus develop during the first year of life, earlier than expected from behavioral studies. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Spoken verb processing in Spanish: An analysis using a new online resource

PubMed Central

Rivera, Semilla M.; Bates, Elizabeth A.; Orozco-Figueroa, Araceli; Wicha, Nicole Y. Y.

2012-01-01

Verbs are one of the basic building blocks of grammar, yet few studies have examined the grammatical, morphological, and phonological factors contributing to lexical access and production of Spanish verb inflection. This report describes an online data set that incorporates psycholinguistic dimensions for 50 of the most common early-acquired Spanish verbs. Using this data set, predictors of response time (RT) from stimulus onset and mean differences at offset are examined. Native Spanish speakers, randomly assigned to one of two tasks, listened to prerecorded verbs and either repeated the verb (single word shadowing) or produced its corresponding pronoun. Factors such as stimulus duration, number of syllables, syllable stress position, and specific levels of initial phoneme facilitated both shadowing of a verb and production of its pronoun. Higher frequency verbs facilitated faster verb repetition, whereas verbs with alternative pronouns increased RT to pronoun production. Mean differences at offset (stimulus duration is removed) indicated that listeners begin speaking earlier when the verb is longer and multisyllabic compared to shorter, monosyllabic words. These results highlight the association between psycholinguistic factors and RT measures of verb processing, in particular, features unique to languages like Spanish, such as alternative pronoun and tense. PMID:23002318

Speech serial control in healthy speakers and speakers with hypokinetic or ataxic dysarthria: effects of sequence length and practice

PubMed Central

Reilly, Kevin J.; Spencer, Kristie A.

2013-01-01

The current study investigated the processes responsible for selection of sounds and syllables during production of speech sequences in 10 adults with hypokinetic dysarthria from Parkinson’s disease, five adults with ataxic dysarthria, and 14 healthy control speakers. Speech production data from a choice reaction time task were analyzed to evaluate the effects of sequence length and practice on speech sound sequencing. Speakers produced sequences that were between one and five syllables in length over five experimental runs of 60 trials each. In contrast to the healthy speakers, speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria demonstrated exaggerated sequence length effects for both inter-syllable intervals (ISIs) and speech error rates. Conversely, speakers with ataxic dysarthria failed to demonstrate a sequence length effect on ISIs and were also the only group that did not exhibit practice-related changes in ISIs and speech error rates over the five experimental runs. The exaggerated sequence length effects in the hypokinetic speakers with Parkinson’s disease are consistent with an impairment of action selection during speech sequence production. The absent length effects observed in the speakers with ataxic dysarthria is consistent with previous findings that indicate a limited capacity to buffer speech sequences in advance of their execution. In addition, the lack of practice effects in these speakers suggests that learning-related improvements in the production rate and accuracy of speech sequences involves processing by structures of the cerebellum. Together, the current findings inform models of serial control for speech in healthy speakers and support the notion that sequencing deficits contribute to speech symptoms in speakers with hypokinetic or ataxic dysarthria. In addition, these findings indicate that speech sequencing is differentially impaired in hypokinetic and ataxic dysarthria. PMID:24137121

Does length or neighborhood size cause the word length effect?

PubMed

Jalbert, Annie; Neath, Ian; Surprenant, Aimée M

2011-10-01

Jalbert, Neath, Bireta, and Surprenant (2011) suggested that past demonstrations of the word length effect, the finding that words with fewer syllables are recalled better than words with more syllables, included a confound: The short words had more orthographic neighbors than the long words. The experiments reported here test two predictions that would follow if neighborhood size is a more important factor than word length. In Experiment 1, we found that concurrent articulation removed the effect of neighborhood size, just as it removes the effect of word length. Experiment 2 demonstrated that this pattern is also found with nonwords. For Experiment 3, we factorially manipulated length and neighborhood size, and found only effects of the latter. These results are problematic for any theory of memory that includes decay offset by rehearsal, but they are consistent with accounts that include a redintegrative stage that is susceptible to disruption by noise. The results also confirm the importance of lexical and linguistic factors on memory tasks thought to tap short-term memory.

Comparison of spectrographic records of two syllables pronounced from scripts in hiragana and romaji by students with different familiarity with English.

PubMed

Ototake, Harumi; Yamada, Jun

2005-10-01

The same syllables /mu/ and /ra/ written in Japanese hiragana and romaji given on a standard speeded naming task elicited phonetically or acoustically different responses in a syllabic hiragana condition and a romaji condition. The participants were two groups of Japanese college students (ns = 15 and 16) with different familiarity with English as a second language. The results suggested that the phonetic reality of syllables represented in these scripts can differ, depending on the interaction between the kind of script and speakers' orthographic familiarity.

Social Vocalizations of Big Brown Bats Vary with Behavioral Context

PubMed Central

Gadziola, Marie A.; Grimsley, Jasmine M. S.; Faure, Paul A.; Wenstrup, Jeffrey J.

2012-01-01

Bats are among the most gregarious and vocal mammals, with some species demonstrating a diverse repertoire of syllables under a variety of behavioral contexts. Despite extensive characterization of big brown bat (Eptesicus fuscus) biosonar signals, there have been no detailed studies of adult social vocalizations. We recorded and analyzed social vocalizations and associated behaviors of captive big brown bats under four behavioral contexts: low aggression, medium aggression, high aggression, and appeasement. Even limited to these contexts, big brown bats possess a rich repertoire of social vocalizations, with 18 distinct syllable types automatically classified using a spectrogram cross-correlation procedure. For each behavioral context, we describe vocalizations in terms of syllable acoustics, temporal emission patterns, and typical syllable sequences. Emotion-related acoustic cues are evident within the call structure by context-specific syllable types or variations in the temporal emission pattern. We designed a paradigm that could evoke aggressive vocalizations while monitoring heart rate as an objective measure of internal physiological state. Changes in the magnitude and duration of elevated heart rate scaled to the level of evoked aggression, confirming the behavioral state classifications assessed by vocalizations and behavioral displays. These results reveal a complex acoustic communication system among big brown bats in which acoustic cues and call structure signal the emotional state of a caller. PMID:22970247

Exploring the role of hand gestures in learning novel phoneme contrasts and vocabulary in a second language

PubMed Central

Kelly, Spencer D.; Hirata, Yukari; Manansala, Michael; Huang, Jessica

2014-01-01

Co-speech hand gestures are a type of multimodal input that has received relatively little attention in the context of second language learning. The present study explored the role that observing and producing different types of gestures plays in learning novel speech sounds and word meanings in an L2. Naïve English-speakers were taught two components of Japanese—novel phonemic vowel length contrasts and vocabulary items comprised of those contrasts—in one of four different gesture conditions: Syllable Observe, Syllable Produce, Mora Observe, and Mora Produce. Half of the gestures conveyed intuitive information about syllable structure, and the other half, unintuitive information about Japanese mora structure. Within each Syllable and Mora condition, half of the participants only observed the gestures that accompanied speech during training, and the other half also produced the gestures that they observed along with the speech. The main finding was that participants across all four conditions had similar outcomes in two different types of auditory identification tasks and a vocabulary test. The results suggest that hand gestures may not be well suited for learning novel phonetic distinctions at the syllable level within a word, and thus, gesture-speech integration may break down at the lowest levels of language processing and learning. PMID:25071646

Statistical properties of Chinese phonemic networks

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yu, Shuiyuan; Liu, Haitao; Xu, Chunshan

2011-04-01

The study of properties of speech sound systems is of great significance in understanding the human cognitive mechanism and the working principles of speech sound systems. Some properties of speech sound systems, such as the listener-oriented feature and the talker-oriented feature, have been unveiled with the statistical study of phonemes in human languages and the research of the interrelations between human articulatory gestures and the corresponding acoustic parameters. With all the phonemes of speech sound systems treated as a coherent whole, our research, which focuses on the dynamic properties of speech sound systems in operation, investigates some statistical parameters of Chinese phoneme networks based on real text and dictionaries. The findings are as follows: phonemic networks have high connectivity degrees and short average distances; the degrees obey normal distribution and the weighted degrees obey power law distribution; vowels enjoy higher priority than consonants in the actual operation of speech sound systems; the phonemic networks have high robustness against targeted attacks and random errors. In addition, for investigating the structural properties of a speech sound system, a statistical study of dictionaries is conducted, which shows the higher frequency of shorter words and syllables and the tendency that the longer a word is, the shorter the syllables composing it are. From these structural properties and dynamic properties one can derive the following conclusion: the static structure of a speech sound system tends to promote communication efficiency and save articulation effort while the dynamic operation of this system gives preference to reliable transmission and easy recognition. In short, a speech sound system is an effective, efficient and reliable communication system optimized in many aspects.

Visual processing affects the neural basis of auditory discrimination.

PubMed

Kislyuk, Daniel S; Möttönen, Riikka; Sams, Mikko

2008-12-01

The interaction between auditory and visual speech streams is a seamless and surprisingly effective process. An intriguing example is the "McGurk effect": The acoustic syllable /ba/ presented simultaneously with a mouth articulating /ga/ is typically heard as /da/ [McGurk, H., & MacDonald, J. Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature, 264, 746-748, 1976]. Previous studies have demonstrated the interaction of auditory and visual streams at the auditory cortex level, but the importance of these interactions for the qualitative perception change remained unclear because the change could result from interactions at higher processing levels as well. In our electroencephalogram experiment, we combined the McGurk effect with mismatch negativity (MMN), a response that is elicited in the auditory cortex at a latency of 100-250 msec by any above-threshold change in a sequence of repetitive sounds. An "odd-ball" sequence of acoustic stimuli consisting of frequent /va/ syllables (standards) and infrequent /ba/ syllables (deviants) was presented to 11 participants. Deviant stimuli in the unisensory acoustic stimulus sequence elicited a typical MMN, reflecting discrimination of acoustic features in the auditory cortex. When the acoustic stimuli were dubbed onto a video of a mouth constantly articulating /va/, the deviant acoustic /ba/ was heard as /va/ due to the McGurk effect and was indistinguishable from the standards. Importantly, such deviants did not elicit MMN, indicating that the auditory cortex failed to discriminate between the acoustic stimuli. Our findings show that visual stream can qualitatively change the auditory percept at the auditory cortex level, profoundly influencing the auditory cortex mechanisms underlying early sound discrimination.

Audio-visual onset differences are used to determine syllable identity for ambiguous audio-visual stimulus pairs

PubMed Central

ten Oever, Sanne; Sack, Alexander T.; Wheat, Katherine L.; Bien, Nina; van Atteveldt, Nienke

2013-01-01

Content and temporal cues have been shown to interact during audio-visual (AV) speech identification. Typically, the most reliable unimodal cue is used more strongly to identify specific speech features; however, visual cues are only used if the AV stimuli are presented within a certain temporal window of integration (TWI). This suggests that temporal cues denote whether unimodal stimuli belong together, that is, whether they should be integrated. It is not known whether temporal cues also provide information about the identity of a syllable. Since spoken syllables have naturally varying AV onset asynchronies, we hypothesize that for suboptimal AV cues presented within the TWI, information about the natural AV onset differences can aid in speech identification. To test this, we presented low-intensity auditory syllables concurrently with visual speech signals, and varied the stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of the AV pair, while participants were instructed to identify the auditory syllables. We revealed that specific speech features (e.g., voicing) were identified by relying primarily on one modality (e.g., auditory). Additionally, we showed a wide window in which visual information influenced auditory perception, that seemed even wider for congruent stimulus pairs. Finally, we found a specific response pattern across the SOA range for syllables that were not reliably identified by the unimodal cues, which we explained as the result of the use of natural onset differences between AV speech signals. This indicates that temporal cues not only provide information about the temporal integration of AV stimuli, but additionally convey information about the identity of AV pairs. These results provide a detailed behavioral basis for further neuro-imaging and stimulation studies to unravel the neurofunctional mechanisms of the audio-visual-temporal interplay within speech perception. PMID:23805110

An ERP Study of Good Production vis-à-vis Poor Perception of Tones in Cantonese: Implications for Top-Down Speech Processing

PubMed Central

Law, Sam-Po; Fung, Roxana; Kung, Carmen

2013-01-01

This study investigated a theoretically challenging dissociation between good production and poor perception of tones among neurologically unimpaired native speakers of Cantonese. The dissociation is referred to as the near-merger phenomenon in sociolinguistic studies of sound change. In a passive oddball paradigm, lexical and nonlexical syllables of the T1/T6 and T4/T6 contrasts were presented to elicit the mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a from two groups of participants, those who could produce and distinguish all tones in the language (Control) and those who could produce all tones but specifically failed to distinguish between T4 and T6 in perception (Dissociation). The presence of MMN to T1/T6 and null response to T4/T6 of lexical syllables in the dissociation group confirmed the near-merger phenomenon. The observation that the control participants exhibited a statistically reliable MMN to lexical syllables of T1/T6, weaker responses to nonlexical syllables of T1/T6 and lexical syllables of T4/T6, and finally null response to nonlexical syllables of T4/T6, suggests the involvement of top-down processing in speech perception. Furthermore, the stronger P3a response of the control group, compared with the dissociation group in the same experimental conditions, may be taken to indicate higher cognitive capability in attention switching, auditory attention or memory in the control participants. This cognitive difference, together with our speculation that constant top-down predictions without complete bottom-up analysis of acoustic signals in speech recognition may reduce one’s sensitivity to small acoustic contrasts, account for the occurrence of dissociation in some individuals but not others. PMID:23342146

Attention Is Required for Knowledge-Based Sequential Grouping: Insights from the Integration of Syllables into Words.

PubMed

Ding, Nai; Pan, Xunyi; Luo, Cheng; Su, Naifei; Zhang, Wen; Zhang, Jianfeng

2018-01-31

How the brain groups sequential sensory events into chunks is a fundamental question in cognitive neuroscience. This study investigates whether top-down attention or specific tasks are required for the brain to apply lexical knowledge to group syllables into words. Neural responses tracking the syllabic and word rhythms of a rhythmic speech sequence were concurrently monitored using electroencephalography (EEG). The participants performed different tasks, attending to either the rhythmic speech sequence or a distractor, which was another speech stream or a nonlinguistic auditory/visual stimulus. Attention to speech, but not a lexical-meaning-related task, was required for reliable neural tracking of words, even when the distractor was a nonlinguistic stimulus presented cross-modally. Neural tracking of syllables, however, was reliably observed in all tested conditions. These results strongly suggest that neural encoding of individual auditory events (i.e., syllables) is automatic, while knowledge-based construction of temporal chunks (i.e., words) crucially relies on top-down attention. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Why we cannot understand speech when not paying attention is an old question in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Speech processing is a complex process that involves multiple stages, e.g., hearing and analyzing the speech sound, recognizing words, and combining words into phrases and sentences. The current study investigates which speech-processing stage is blocked when we do not listen carefully. We show that the brain can reliably encode syllables, basic units of speech sounds, even when we do not pay attention. Nevertheless, when distracted, the brain cannot group syllables into multisyllabic words, which are basic units for speech meaning. Therefore, the process of converting speech sound into meaning crucially relies on attention. Copyright © 2018 the authors 0270-6474/18/381178-11$15.00/0.

Audio-visual onset differences are used to determine syllable identity for ambiguous audio-visual stimulus pairs.

PubMed

Ten Oever, Sanne; Sack, Alexander T; Wheat, Katherine L; Bien, Nina; van Atteveldt, Nienke

2013-01-01

Content and temporal cues have been shown to interact during audio-visual (AV) speech identification. Typically, the most reliable unimodal cue is used more strongly to identify specific speech features; however, visual cues are only used if the AV stimuli are presented within a certain temporal window of integration (TWI). This suggests that temporal cues denote whether unimodal stimuli belong together, that is, whether they should be integrated. It is not known whether temporal cues also provide information about the identity of a syllable. Since spoken syllables have naturally varying AV onset asynchronies, we hypothesize that for suboptimal AV cues presented within the TWI, information about the natural AV onset differences can aid in speech identification. To test this, we presented low-intensity auditory syllables concurrently with visual speech signals, and varied the stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) of the AV pair, while participants were instructed to identify the auditory syllables. We revealed that specific speech features (e.g., voicing) were identified by relying primarily on one modality (e.g., auditory). Additionally, we showed a wide window in which visual information influenced auditory perception, that seemed even wider for congruent stimulus pairs. Finally, we found a specific response pattern across the SOA range for syllables that were not reliably identified by the unimodal cues, which we explained as the result of the use of natural onset differences between AV speech signals. This indicates that temporal cues not only provide information about the temporal integration of AV stimuli, but additionally convey information about the identity of AV pairs. These results provide a detailed behavioral basis for further neuro-imaging and stimulation studies to unravel the neurofunctional mechanisms of the audio-visual-temporal interplay within speech perception.

[Developmental changes in reading ability of Japanese elementary school children--analysis of 4 kana reading tasks].

PubMed

Kobayashi, Tomoka; Inagaki, Masumi; Gunji, Atsuko; Yatabe, Kiyomi; Kaga, Makiko; Goto, Takaaki; Koike, Toshihide; Wakamiya, Eiji; Koeda, Tatsuya

2010-01-01

Five hundred and twenty-eight Japanese elementary school children aged from 6 (Grade 1) to 12 (Grade 6) were tested for their abilities to read Hiragana characters, words, and short sentences. They were typically developing children whom the classroom teachers judged to have no problems with reading and writing in Japanese. Each child was asked to read four tasks which were written in Hiragana script: single mora reading task, four syllable non-word reading task, four syllable word reading task, and short sentence reading task. The total articulation time for reading and performance in terms of accuracy were measured for each task. Developmental changes in these variables were evaluated. The articulation time was significantly longer for the first graders, and it gradually shortened as they moved through to the upper grades in all tasks. The articulation time reached a plateau in the 4th grade for the four syllable word and short sentence reading tasks, while it did so for the single mora and four syllable non-word reading tasks in the 5th grade. The articulation times for the four syllable word and short sentence reading tasks correlated strongly. There were very few clear errors for all tasks, and the number of such errors significantly changed between the school grades only for the single mora and four syllable word reading tasks. It was noted that more than half of the children read the beginning portion of the word or phrase twice or more, in order to read it accurately, and developmental changes were also seen in this pattern of reading. This study revealed that the combination of these reading tasks may function as a screening test for reading disorders such as developmental dyslexia in children below the age of ten or eleven years old.

An ERP study of good production vis-à-vis poor perception of tones in Cantonese: implications for top-down speech processing.

PubMed

Law, Sam-Po; Fung, Roxana; Kung, Carmen

2013-01-01

This study investigated a theoretically challenging dissociation between good production and poor perception of tones among neurologically unimpaired native speakers of Cantonese. The dissociation is referred to as the near-merger phenomenon in sociolinguistic studies of sound change. In a passive oddball paradigm, lexical and nonlexical syllables of the T1/T6 and T4/T6 contrasts were presented to elicit the mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a from two groups of participants, those who could produce and distinguish all tones in the language (Control) and those who could produce all tones but specifically failed to distinguish between T4 and T6 in perception (Dissociation). The presence of MMN to T1/T6 and null response to T4/T6 of lexical syllables in the dissociation group confirmed the near-merger phenomenon. The observation that the control participants exhibited a statistically reliable MMN to lexical syllables of T1/T6, weaker responses to nonlexical syllables of T1/T6 and lexical syllables of T4/T6, and finally null response to nonlexical syllables of T4/T6, suggests the involvement of top-down processing in speech perception. Furthermore, the stronger P3a response of the control group, compared with the dissociation group in the same experimental conditions, may be taken to indicate higher cognitive capability in attention switching, auditory attention or memory in the control participants. This cognitive difference, together with our speculation that constant top-down predictions without complete bottom-up analysis of acoustic signals in speech recognition may reduce one's sensitivity to small acoustic contrasts, account for the occurrence of dissociation in some individuals but not others.

Speaking fundamental frequency and vowel formant frequencies: effects on perception of gender.

PubMed

Gelfer, Marylou Pausewang; Bennett, Quinn E

2013-09-01

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the contribution of vowel formant frequencies to gender identification in connected speech, the distinctiveness of vowel formants in males versus females, and how ambiguous speaking fundamental frequencies (SFFs) and vowel formants might affect perception of gender. Multivalent experimental. Speakers subjects (eight tall males, eight short females, and seven males and seven females of "middle" height) were recorded saying two carrier phrases to elicit the vowels /i/ and /α/ and a sentence. The gender/height groups were selected to (presumably) maximize formant differences between some groups (tall vs short) and minimize differences between others (middle height). Each subjects' samples were digitally altered to distinct SFFs (116, 145, 155, 165, and 207 Hz) to represent SFFs typical of average males, average females, and in an ambiguous range. Listeners judged the gender of each randomized altered speech sample. Results indicated that female speakers were perceived as female even with an SFF in the typical male range. For male speakers, gender perception was less accurate at SFFs of 165 Hz and higher. Although the ranges of vowel formants had considerable overlap between genders, significant differences in formant frequencies of males and females were seen. Vowel formants appeared to be important to perception of gender, especially for SFFs in the range of 145-165 Hz; however, formants may be a more salient cue in connected speech when compared with isolated vowels or syllables. Copyright © 2013 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Oral and Hand Movement Speeds are Associated with Expressive Language Ability in Children with Speech Sound Disorder

PubMed Central

Peter, Beate

2013-01-01

This study tested the hypothesis that children with speech sound disorder have generalized slowed motor speeds. It evaluated associations among oral and hand motor speeds and measures of speech (articulation and phonology) and language (receptive vocabulary, sentence comprehension, sentence imitation), in 11 children with moderate to severe SSD and 11 controls. Syllable durations from a syllable repetition task served as an estimate of maximal oral movement speed. In two imitation tasks, nonwords and clapped rhythms, unstressed vowel durations and quarter-note clap intervals served as estimates of oral and hand movement speed, respectively. Syllable durations were significantly correlated with vowel durations and hand clap intervals. Sentence imitation was correlated with all three timed movement measures. Clustering on syllable repetition durations produced three clusters that also differed in sentence imitation scores. Results are consistent with limited movement speeds across motor systems and SSD subtypes defined by motor speeds as a corollary of expressive language abilities. PMID:22411590

Oral and hand movement speeds are associated with expressive language ability in children with speech sound disorder.

PubMed

Peter, Beate

2012-12-01

This study tested the hypothesis that children with speech sound disorder have generalized slowed motor speeds. It evaluated associations among oral and hand motor speeds and measures of speech (articulation and phonology) and language (receptive vocabulary, sentence comprehension, sentence imitation), in 11 children with moderate to severe SSD and 11 controls. Syllable durations from a syllable repetition task served as an estimate of maximal oral movement speed. In two imitation tasks, nonwords and clapped rhythms, unstressed vowel durations and quarter-note clap intervals served as estimates of oral and hand movement speed, respectively. Syllable durations were significantly correlated with vowel durations and hand clap intervals. Sentence imitation was correlated with all three timed movement measures. Clustering on syllable repetition durations produced three clusters that also differed in sentence imitation scores. Results are consistent with limited movement speeds across motor systems and SSD subtypes defined by motor speeds as a corollary of expressive language abilities.

Effects of metric hierarchy and rhyme predictability on word duration in The Cat in the Hat.

PubMed

Breen, Mara

2018-05-01

Word durations convey many types of linguistic information, including intrinsic lexical features like length and frequency and contextual features like syntactic and semantic structure. The current study was designed to investigate whether hierarchical metric structure and rhyme predictability account for durational variation over and above other features in productions of a rhyming, metrically-regular children's book: The Cat in the Hat (Dr. Seuss, 1957). One-syllable word durations and inter-onset intervals were modeled as functions of segment number, lexical frequency, word class, syntactic structure, repetition, and font emphasis. Consistent with prior work, factors predicting longer word durations and inter-onset intervals included more phonemes, lower frequency, first mention, alignment with a syntactic boundary, and capitalization. A model parameter corresponding to metric grid height improved model fit of word durations and inter-onset intervals. Specifically, speakers realized five levels of metric hierarchy with inter-onset intervals such that interval duration increased linearly with increased height in the metric hierarchy. Conversely, speakers realized only three levels of metric hierarchy with word duration, demonstrating that they shortened the highly predictable rhyme resolutions. These results further understanding of the factors that affect spoken word duration, and demonstrate the myriad cues that children receive about linguistic structure from nursery rhymes. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Brain correlates of stuttering and syllable production. A PET performance-correlation analysis.

PubMed

Fox, P T; Ingham, R J; Ingham, J C; Zamarripa, F; Xiong, J H; Lancaster, J L

2000-10-01

To distinguish the neural systems of normal speech from those of stuttering, PET images of brain blood flow were probed (correlated voxel-wise) with per-trial speech-behaviour scores obtained during PET imaging. Two cohorts were studied: 10 right-handed men who stuttered and 10 right-handed, age- and sex-matched non-stuttering controls. Ninety PET blood flow images were obtained in each cohort (nine per subject as three trials of each of three conditions) from which r-value statistical parametric images (SPI¿r¿) were computed. Brain correlates of stutter rate and syllable rate showed striking differences in both laterality and sign (i.e. positive or negative correlations). Stutter-rate correlates, both positive and negative, were strongly lateralized to the right cerebral and left cerebellar hemispheres. Syllable correlates in both cohorts were bilateral, with a bias towards the left cerebral and right cerebellar hemispheres, in keeping with the left-cerebral dominance for language and motor skills typical of right-handed subjects. For both stutters and syllables, the brain regions that were correlated positively were those of speech production: the mouth representation in the primary motor cortex; the supplementary motor area; the inferior lateral premotor cortex (Broca's area); the anterior insula; and the cerebellum. The principal difference between syllable-rate and stutter-rate positive correlates was hemispheric laterality. A notable exception to this rule was that cerebellar positive correlates for syllable rate were far more extensive in the stuttering cohort than in the control cohort, which suggests a specific role for the cerebellum in enabling fluent utterances in persons who stutter. Stutters were negatively correlated with right-cerebral regions (superior and middle temporal gyrus) associated with auditory perception and processing, regions which were positively correlated with syllables in both the stuttering and control cohorts. These findings support long-held theories that the brain correlates of stuttering are the speech-motor regions of the non-dominant (right) cerebral hemisphere, and extend this theory to include the non-dominant (left) cerebellar hemisphere. The present findings also indicate a specific role of the cerebellum in the fluent utterances of persons who stutter. Support is also offered for theories that implicate auditory processing problems in stuttering.

The effects of age, viewing distance, display type, font type, colour contrast and number of syllables on the legibility of Korean characters.

PubMed

Kong, Yong-Ku; Lee, Inseok; Jung, Myung-Chul; Song, Young-Woong

2011-05-01

This study evaluated the effects of age (20s and 60s), viewing distance (50 cm, 200 cm), display type (paper, monitor), font type (Gothic, Ming), colour contrast (black letters on white background, white letters on black background) and number of syllables (one, two) on the legibility of Korean characters by using the four legibility measures (minimum letter size for 100% correctness, maximum letter size for 0% correctness, minimum letter size for the least discomfort and maximum letter size for the most discomfort). Ten subjects in each age group read the four letters presented on a slide (letter size varied from 80 pt to 2 pt). Subjects also subjectively rated the reading discomfort of the letters on a 4-point scale (1 = no discomfort, 4 = most discomfort). According to the ANOVA procedure, age, viewing distance and font type significantly affected the four dependent variables (p < 0.05), while the main effect of colour contrast was not statistically significant for any measures. Two-syllable letters had smaller letters than one-syllable letters in the two correctness measures. The younger group could see letter sizes two times smaller than the old group could and the viewing distance of 50 cm showed letters about three times smaller than those at a 200 cm viewing distance. The Gothic fonts were smaller than the Ming fonts. Monitors were smaller than paper for correctness and maximum letter size for the most discomfort. From a comparison of the results for correctness and discomfort, people generally preferred larger letter sizes to those that they could read. The findings of this study may provide basic information for setting a global standard of letter size or font type to improve the legibility of characters written in Korean. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: Results obtained in this study will provide basic information and guidelines for setting standards of letter size and font type to improve the legibility of characters written in Korean. Also, the results might offer useful information for people who are working on design of visual displays.

Consciousness-Raising and Prepositions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hendricks, Monica

2010-01-01

For a variety of reasons, learning English prepositions is notoriously difficult and a slow, gradual process for English as a Second Language (ESL) students. To begin, English prepositions typically are short, single-syllable or two-syllable words that are seldom stressed when speaking and therefore often not articulated clearly or heard…

Serial Position Effects in Nonword Repetition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gupta, P.; Lipinski, J.; Abbs, B.; Lin, P.H.

2005-01-01

A growing body of research has emphasized the linkage between performance in immediate serial recall of lists, nonword repetition, and word learning. Recently, it has been reported that primacy and recency effects are obtained in repetition of individual syllables within nonwords (Gupta, in press). Five experiments examined whether such…

Contributions of rapid neuromuscular transmission to the fine control of acoustic parameters of birdsong.

PubMed

Mencio, Caitlin; Kuberan, Balagurunathan; Goller, Franz

2017-02-01

Neural control of complex vocal behaviors, such as birdsong and speech, requires integration of biomechanical nonlinearities through muscular output. Although control of airflow and tension of vibrating tissues are known functions of vocal muscles, it remains unclear how specific muscle characteristics contribute to specific acoustic parameters. To address this gap, we removed heparan sulfate chains using heparitinases to perturb neuromuscular transmission subtly in the syrinx of adult male zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Infusion of heparitinases into ventral syringeal muscles altered their excitation threshold and reduced neuromuscular transmission changing their ability to modulate airflow. The changes in muscle activation dynamics caused a reduction in frequency modulation rates and elimination of many high-frequency syllables but did not alter the fundamental frequency of syllables. Sound amplitude was reduced and sound onset pressure was increased, suggesting a role of muscles in the induction of self-sustained oscillations under low-airflow conditions, thus enhancing vocal efficiency. These changes were reversed to preinfusion levels by 7 days after infusion. These results illustrate complex interactions between the control of airflow and tension and further define the importance of syringeal muscle in the control of a variety of acoustic song characteristics. In summary, the findings reported here show that altering neuromuscular transmission can lead to reversible changes to the acoustic structure of song. Understanding the full extent of muscle involvement in song production is critical in decoding the motor program for the production of complex vocal behavior, including our search for parallels between birdsong and human speech motor control. It is largely unknown how fine motor control of acoustic parameters is achieved in vocal organs. Subtle manipulation of syringeal muscle function was used to test how active motor control influences acoustic parameters. Slowed activation kinetics of muscles reduced frequency modulation and, unexpectedly, caused a distinct decrease in sound amplitude and increase in phonation onset pressure. These results show that active control enhances the efficiency of energy conversion in the syrinx. Copyright © 2017 the American Physiological Society.

Typography manipulations can affect priming of word stem completion in older and younger adults.

PubMed

Gibson, J M; Brooks, J O; Friedman, L; Yesavage, J A

1993-12-01

The experiments reported here investigated whether changes of typography affected priming of word stem completion performance in older and younger adults. Across all experiments, the typeface in which a word appeared at presentation either did or did not match that of its 3-letter stem at test. In Experiment 1, no significant evidence of a typography effect was found when words were presented with a sentence judgment or letter judgment task. However, subsequent experiments revealed that, in both older and younger adults, only words presented with a syllable judgment task gave rise to the typography effect (Experiments 2-4). Specifically, performance was greater, when the presentation and test typeface matched than when they did not. Experiment 5, which used stem-cued recall, did not reveal a difference between syllable and letter judgment tasks. These findings highlight the complex nature of word stem completion performance.

Dissociating word stem completion and cued recall as a function of divided attention at retrieval.

PubMed

Clarke, A J Benjamin; Butler, Laurie T

2008-10-01

The aim of this study was to investigate the widely held, but largely untested, view that implicit memory (repetition priming) reflects an automatic form of retrieval. Specifically, in Experiment 1 we explored whether a secondary task (syllable monitoring), performed during retrieval, would disrupt performance on explicit (cued recall) and implicit (stem completion) memory tasks equally. Surprisingly, despite substantial memory and secondary costs to cued recall when performed with a syllable-monitoring task, the same manipulation had no effect on stem completion priming or on secondary task performance. In Experiment 2 we demonstrated that even when using a particularly demanding version of the stem completion task that incurred secondary task costs, the corresponding disruption to implicit memory performance was minimal. Collectively, the results are consistent with the view that implicit memory retrieval requires little or no processing capacity and is not seemingly susceptible to the effects of dividing attention at retrieval.

Truncation Without Shape Constraints: The Latter Stages of Prosodic Acquisition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kehoe, Margaret M.

2000-01-01

Evaluates the claim of uniform size and shape restrictions in prosodic development using a cross-sectional database of English-speaking children's multisyllabic word productions. Suggests children's increasing faithfulness to unstressed syllables can be explained by different constraint rankings that relate to edge alignment, syllable structure,…

Asymmetries in Generalizing Alternations to and from Initial Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Becker, Michael; Nevins, Andrew; Levine, Jonathan

2012-01-01

In the English lexicon, laryngeal alternations in the plural (e.g. "leaf" ~ "leaves") impact monosyllables more than finally stressed polysyllables. This is the opposite of what happens typologically, and would thereby run contrary to the predictions of "initial-syllable faithfulness." Despite the lexical pattern, in a wug test we found…

Quantitative Investigations in Hungarian Phonotactics and Syllable Structure

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Grimes, Stephen M.

2010-01-01

This dissertation investigates statistical properties of segment collocation and syllable geometry of the Hungarian language. A corpus and dictionary based approach to studying language phonologies is outlined. In order to conduct research on Hungarian, a phonological lexicon was created by compiling existing dictionaries and corpora and using a…

Oral-Motor and Motor-Speech Characteristics of Children with Autism.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adams, Lynn

1998-01-01

This study compared the oral-motor and motor-speech characteristics of four young children with autism and four nonautistic children. Three tasks requiring oral motor movements, simple syllable productions, and complex syllable productions were utilized. Significant differences were found in scores on the oral-motor movements and the…

Phonological Acquisition of Korean Consonants in Conversational Speech Produced by Young Korean Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kim, Minjung; Kim, Soo-Jin; Stoel-Gammon, Carol

2017-01-01

This study investigates the phonological acquisition of Korean consonants using conversational speech samples collected from sixty monolingual typically developing Korean children aged two, three, and four years. Phonemic acquisition was examined for syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants. Results showed that Korean children acquired stops…

A Vowel Is a Vowel: Generalizing Newly Learned Phonotactic Constraints to New Contexts

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chambers, Kyle E.; Onishi, Kristine H.; Fisher, Cynthia

2010-01-01

Adults can learn novel phonotactic constraints from brief listening experience. We investigated the representations underlying phonotactic learning by testing generalization to syllables containing new vowels. Adults heard consonant-vowel-consonant study syllables in which particular consonants were artificially restricted to the onset or coda…

Final Syllable Lengthening (FSL) in Infant Vocalizations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nathani, Suneeti; Oller, D. Kimbrough; Cobo-Lewis, Alan B.

2003-01-01

Sought to verify research findings that suggest there may be a U-shaped developmental trajectory for final syllable lengthening (FSL). Attempted to determine whether vocal maturity and deafness influence FSL . Eight normally hearing infants and eight deaf infants were examined at three levels of prelinguistic vocal development. (Author/VWL)

Incidence of Dysarthria in Children with Cerebellar Tumors: A Prospective Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Richter, S.; Schoch, B.; Ozimek, A.; Gorissen, B.; Hein-Kropp, C.; Kaiser, O.; Hovel, M.; Wieland, R.; Gizewski, E.; Timmann, D.

2005-01-01

The present study investigated dysarthric symptoms in children with cerebellar tumors. Ten children with cerebellar tumors and 10 orthopedic control children were tested prior and one week after surgery. Clinical dysarthric symptoms were quantified in spontaneous speech. Syllable durations were analyzed in syllable repetition and sentence…

Possible-Word Constraints in Cantonese Speech Segmentation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yip, Michael C. W.

2004-01-01

A Cantonese syllable-spotting experiment was conducted to examine whether the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC), proposed by Norris, McQueen, Cutler, and Butterfield (1997), can apply in Cantonese speech segmentation. In the experiment, listeners were asked to spot out the target Cantonese syllable from a series of nonsense sound strings. Results…

Structural Principles or Frequency of Use? An ERP Experiment on the Learnability of Consonant Clusters

PubMed Central

Wiese, Richard; Orzechowska, Paula; Alday, Phillip M.; Ulbrich, Christiane

2017-01-01

Phonological knowledge of a language involves knowledge about which segments can be combined under what conditions. Languages vary in the quantity and quality of licensed combinations, in particular sequences of consonants, with Polish being a language with a large inventory of such combinations. The present paper reports on a two-session experiment in which Polish-speaking adult participants learned nonce words with final consonant clusters. The aim was to study the role of two factors which potentially play a role in the learning of phonotactic structures: the phonological principle of sonority (ordering sound segments within the syllable according to their inherent loudness) and the (non-) existence as a usage-based phenomenon. EEG responses in two different time windows (adversely to behavioral responses) show linguistic processing by native speakers of Polish to be sensitive to both distinctions, in spite of the fact that Polish is rich in sonority-violating clusters. In particular, a general learning effect in terms of an N400 effect was found which was demonstrated to be different for sonority-obeying clusters than for sonority-violating clusters. Furthermore, significant interactions of formedness and session, and of existence and session, demonstrate that both factors, the sonority principle and the frequency pattern, play a role in the learning process. PMID:28119642

Psychophysics of the McGurk and Other Audiovisual Speech Integration Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jiang, Jintao; Bernstein, Lynne E.

2011-01-01

When the auditory and visual components of spoken audiovisual nonsense syllables are mismatched, perceivers produce four different types of perceptual responses, auditory correct, visual correct, fusion (the so-called "McGurk effect"), and combination (i.e., two consonants are reported). Here, quantitative measures were developed to account for…

A Causal Inference Model Explains Perception of the McGurk Effect and Other Incongruent Audiovisual Speech.

PubMed

Magnotti, John F; Beauchamp, Michael S

2017-02-01

Audiovisual speech integration combines information from auditory speech (talker's voice) and visual speech (talker's mouth movements) to improve perceptual accuracy. However, if the auditory and visual speech emanate from different talkers, integration decreases accuracy. Therefore, a key step in audiovisual speech perception is deciding whether auditory and visual speech have the same source, a process known as causal inference. A well-known illusion, the McGurk Effect, consists of incongruent audiovisual syllables, such as auditory "ba" + visual "ga" (AbaVga), that are integrated to produce a fused percept ("da"). This illusion raises two fundamental questions: first, given the incongruence between the auditory and visual syllables in the McGurk stimulus, why are they integrated; and second, why does the McGurk effect not occur for other, very similar syllables (e.g., AgaVba). We describe a simplified model of causal inference in multisensory speech perception (CIMS) that predicts the perception of arbitrary combinations of auditory and visual speech. We applied this model to behavioral data collected from 60 subjects perceiving both McGurk and non-McGurk incongruent speech stimuli. The CIMS model successfully predicted both the audiovisual integration observed for McGurk stimuli and the lack of integration observed for non-McGurk stimuli. An identical model without causal inference failed to accurately predict perception for either form of incongruent speech. The CIMS model uses causal inference to provide a computational framework for studying how the brain performs one of its most important tasks, integrating auditory and visual speech cues to allow us to communicate with others.

Preschool speech error patterns predict articulation and phonological awareness outcomes in children with histories of speech sound disorders

PubMed Central

Preston, Jonathan L.; Hull, Margaret; Edwards, Mary Louise

2012-01-01

Purpose To determine if speech error patterns in preschoolers with speech sound disorders (SSDs) predict articulation and phonological awareness (PA) outcomes almost four years later. Method Twenty-five children with histories of preschool SSDs (and normal receptive language) were tested at an average age of 4;6 and followed up at 8;3. The frequency of occurrence of preschool distortion errors, typical substitution and syllable structure errors, and atypical substitution and syllable structure errors were used to predict later speech sound production, PA, and literacy outcomes. Results Group averages revealed below-average school-age articulation scores and low-average PA, but age-appropriate reading and spelling. Preschool speech error patterns were related to school-age outcomes. Children for whom more than 10% of their speech sound errors were atypical had lower PA and literacy scores at school-age than children who produced fewer than 10% atypical errors. Preschoolers who produced more distortion errors were likely to have lower school-age articulation scores. Conclusions Different preschool speech error patterns predict different school-age clinical outcomes. Many atypical speech sound errors in preschool may be indicative of weak phonological representations, leading to long-term PA weaknesses. Preschool distortions may be resistant to change over time, leading to persisting speech sound production problems. PMID:23184137

Preschool speech error patterns predict articulation and phonological awareness outcomes in children with histories of speech sound disorders.

PubMed

Preston, Jonathan L; Hull, Margaret; Edwards, Mary Louise

2013-05-01

To determine if speech error patterns in preschoolers with speech sound disorders (SSDs) predict articulation and phonological awareness (PA) outcomes almost 4 years later. Twenty-five children with histories of preschool SSDs (and normal receptive language) were tested at an average age of 4;6 (years;months) and were followed up at age 8;3. The frequency of occurrence of preschool distortion errors, typical substitution and syllable structure errors, and atypical substitution and syllable structure errors was used to predict later speech sound production, PA, and literacy outcomes. Group averages revealed below-average school-age articulation scores and low-average PA but age-appropriate reading and spelling. Preschool speech error patterns were related to school-age outcomes. Children for whom >10% of their speech sound errors were atypical had lower PA and literacy scores at school age than children who produced <10% atypical errors. Preschoolers who produced more distortion errors were likely to have lower school-age articulation scores than preschoolers who produced fewer distortion errors. Different preschool speech error patterns predict different school-age clinical outcomes. Many atypical speech sound errors in preschoolers may be indicative of weak phonological representations, leading to long-term PA weaknesses. Preschoolers' distortions may be resistant to change over time, leading to persisting speech sound production problems.

Online neural monitoring of statistical learning

PubMed Central

Batterink, Laura J.; Paller, Ken A.

2017-01-01

The extraction of patterns in the environment plays a critical role in many types of human learning, from motor skills to language acquisition. This process is known as statistical learning. Here we propose that statistical learning has two dissociable components: (1) perceptual binding of individual stimulus units into integrated composites and (2) storing those integrated representations for later use. Statistical learning is typically assessed using post-learning tasks, such that the two components are conflated. Our goal was to characterize the online perceptual component of statistical learning. Participants were exposed to a structured stream of repeating trisyllabic nonsense words and a random syllable stream. Online learning was indexed by an EEG-based measure that quantified neural entrainment at the frequency of the repeating words relative to that of individual syllables. Statistical learning was subsequently assessed using conventional measures in an explicit rating task and a reaction-time task. In the structured stream, neural entrainment to trisyllabic words was higher than in the random stream, increased as a function of exposure to track the progression of learning, and predicted performance on the RT task. These results demonstrate that monitoring this critical component of learning via rhythmic EEG entrainment reveals a gradual acquisition of knowledge whereby novel stimulus sequences are transformed into familiar composites. This online perceptual transformation is a critical component of learning. PMID:28324696

Training to Improve Hearing Speech in Noise: Biological Mechanisms

PubMed Central

Song, Judy H.; Skoe, Erika; Banai, Karen

2012-01-01

We investigated training-related improvements in listening in noise and the biological mechanisms mediating these improvements. Training-related malleability was examined using a program that incorporates cognitively based listening exercises to improve speech-in-noise perception. Before and after training, auditory brainstem responses to a speech syllable were recorded in quiet and multitalker noise from adults who ranged in their speech-in-noise perceptual ability. Controls did not undergo training but were tested at intervals equivalent to the trained subjects. Trained subjects exhibited significant improvements in speech-in-noise perception that were retained 6 months later. Subcortical responses in noise demonstrated training-related enhancements in the encoding of pitch-related cues (the fundamental frequency and the second harmonic), particularly for the time-varying portion of the syllable that is most vulnerable to perceptual disruption (the formant transition region). Subjects with the largest strength of pitch encoding at pretest showed the greatest perceptual improvement. Controls exhibited neither neurophysiological nor perceptual changes. We provide the first demonstration that short-term training can improve the neural representation of cues important for speech-in-noise perception. These results implicate and delineate biological mechanisms contributing to learning success, and they provide a conceptual advance to our understanding of the kind of training experiences that can influence sensory processing in adulthood. PMID:21799207

The role of prominence in determining the scope of boundary-related lengthening in Greek.

PubMed

Katsika, Argyro

2016-03-01

This study aims at examining and accounting for the scope of the temporal effect of phrase boundaries. Previous research has indicated that there is an interaction between boundary-related lengthening and prominence such that the former extends towards the nearby prominent syllable. However, it is unclear whether this interaction is due to lexical stress and/or phrasal prominence (marked by pitch accent) and how far towards the prominent syllable the effect extends. Here, we use an electromagnetic articulography (EMA) study of Greek to examine the scope of boundary-related lengthening as a function of lexical stress and pitch accent separately. Boundaries are elicited by the means of a variety of syntactic constructions.. The results show an effect of lexical stress. Phrase-final lengthening affects the articulatory gestures of the phrase-final syllable that are immediately adjacent to the boundary in words with final stress, but is initiated earlier within phrase-final words with non-final stress. Similarly, the articulatory configurations during inter-phrasal pauses reach their point of achievement later in words with final stress than in words with non-final stress. These effects of stress hold regardless of whether the phrase-final word is accented or de-accented. Phrase-initial lengthening, on the other hand, is consistently detected on the phrase-initial constriction, independently of where the stress is within the preceding, phrase-final, word. These results indicate that the lexical aspect of prominence plays a role in determining the scope of boundary-related lengthening in Greek. Based on these results, a gestural account of prosodic boundaries in Greek is proposed in which lexical and phrasal prosody interact in a systematic and coordinated fashion. The cross-linguistic dimensions of this account and its implications for prosodic structure are discussed.

Neural Representations Used by Brain Regions Underlying Speech Production

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Segawa, Jennifer Anne

2013-01-01

Speech utterances are phoneme sequences but may not always be represented as such in the brain. For instance, electropalatography evidence indicates that as speaking rate increases, gestures within syllables are manipulated separately but those within consonant clusters act as one motor unit. Moreover, speech error data suggest that a syllable's…

ERP measures of syllable processing in 1 year olds: infant diet- and gender-related differences

USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

Language skills are generally better in females than males, but the basis for these differences has not been determined. To investigate whether variations in infant diet contribute to these differences, cortical responses to the syllable /pa/ (ERPs;124 sites) were examined in healthy 12-month-old, f...

Topography of Syllable Change-Detection Electrophysiological Indices in Children and Adults with Reading Disabilities

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hommet, Caroline; Vidal, Julie; Roux, Sylvie; Blanc, Romuald; Barthez, Marie Anne; De Becque, Brigitte; Barthelemy, Catherine; Bruneau, Nicole; Gomot, Marie

2009-01-01

Introduction: Developmental dyslexia (DD) is a frequent language-based learning disorder. The predominant etiological view postulates that reading problems originate from a phonological impairment. Method: We studied mismatch negativity (MMN) and Late Discriminative Negativity (LDN) to syllables change in both children (n = 12; 8-12 years) and…

A Cross-Language Study of Laryngeal-Oral Coordination across Varying Prosodic and Syllable-Structure Conditions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoole, Philip; Bombien, Lasse

2017-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to use prosodic and syllable-structure variation to probe the underlying representation of laryngeal kinematics in languages traditionally considered to differ in voicing typology (German vs. Dutch and French). Method: Transillumination and videofiberendoscopic filming were used to investigate the devoicing…

Prosodic Transfer: From Chinese Lexical Tone to English Pitch Accent

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ploquin, Marie

2013-01-01

Chinese tones are associated with a syllable to convey meaning, English pitch accents are prominence markers associated with stressed syllables. As both are created by pitch modulation, their pitch contours can be quite similar. The experiment reported here examines whether native speakers of Chinese produce, when speaking English, the Chinese…

Impaired Perception of Syllable Stress in Children with Dyslexia: A Longitudinal Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goswami, Usha; Mead, Natasha; Fosker, Tim; Huss, Martina; Barnes, Lisa; Leong, Victoria

2013-01-01

Prosodic patterning is a key structural element of spoken language. However, the potential role of prosodic awareness in the phonological difficulties that characterise children with developmental dyslexia has been little studied. Here we report the first longitudinal study of sensitivity to syllable stress in children with dyslexia, enabling the…

Clinician Percent Syllables Stuttered, Clinician Severity Ratings and Speaker Severity Ratings: Are They Interchangeable?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karimi, Hamid; Jones, Mark; O'Brian, Sue; Onslow, Mark

2014-01-01

Background: At present, percent syllables stuttered (%SS) is the gold standard outcome measure for behavioural stuttering treatment research. However, ordinal severity rating (SR) procedures have some inherent advantages over that method. Aims: To establish the relationship between Clinician %SS, Clinician SR and self-reported Speaker SR. To…

Syllable Structure in Dysfunctional Portuguese Children's Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Candeias, Sara; Perdigao, Fernando

2010-01-01

The goal of this work is to investigate whether children with speech dysfunctions (SD) show a deficit in planning some Portuguese syllable structures (PSS) in continuous speech production. Knowledge of which aspects of speech production are affected by SD is necessary for efficient improvement in the therapy techniques. The case-study is focused…

A Syllable Segmentation, Letter-Sound, and Initial-Sound Intervention with Students Who Are Deaf or Hard of Hearing and Use Sign Language

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tucci, Stacey L.; Easterbrooks, Susan R.

2015-01-01

This study investigated children's acquisition of three aspects of an early literacy curriculum, "Foundations for Literacy" ("Foundations"), designed specifically for prekindergarten students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH): syllable segmentation, identification of letter-sound correspondences, and initial-sound…

Speech Perception Deficits in Poor Readers: Auditory Processing or Phonological Coding?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mody, Maria; And Others

1997-01-01

Forty second-graders, 20 good and 20 poor readers, completed a /ba/-/da/ temporal order judgment (TOJ) task. The groups did not differ in TOJ when /ba/ and /da/ were paired with more easily discriminated syllables. Poor readers' difficulties with /ba/-/da/ reflected perceptual confusion between phonetically similar syllables rather than difficulty…

Phrase-Final Syllable Lengthening and Intonation in Early Child Speech.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snow, David

1994-01-01

To test opposing theories about the relationship between intonation and syllable timing, these boundary features were compared in a longitudinal study of 9 children's speech development between the mean ages of 16 and 25 months. Results suggest that young children acquire the skills that control intonation earlier than they do skills of final…

Structure of Preschool Phonological Sensitivity: Overlapping Sensitivity to Rhyme, Words, Syllables, and Phonemes.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anthony, Jason L.; Lonigan, Christopher J.; Burgess, Stephen R.; Driscoll, Kimberly; Phillips, Beth M.; Cantor, Brenlee G.

2002-01-01

This study examined relations among sensitivity to words, syllables, rhymes, and phonemes in older and younger preschoolers. Confirmatory factor analyses found that a one-factor model best explained the date from both groups of children. Only variance common to all phonological sensitivity skills was related to print knowledge and rudimentary…

Telehealth Delivery of Rapid Syllable Transitions (ReST) Treatment for Childhood Apraxia of Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas, Donna C.; McCabe, Patricia; Ballard, Kirrie J.; Lincoln, Michelle

2016-01-01

Background: Rapid Syllable Transitions (ReST) treatment uses pseudo-word targets with varying lexical stress to target simultaneously articulation, prosodic accuracy and coarticulatory transitions in childhood apraxia of speech (CAS). The treatment is efficacious for the acquisition of imitated pseudo-words, and generalization of skill to…

Investigating the Retention and Time Course of Phonotactic Constraint Learning from Production Experience

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Warker, Jill A.

2013-01-01

Adults can rapidly learn artificial phonotactic constraints such as /"f"/ "occurs only at the beginning of syllables" by producing syllables that contain those constraints. This implicit learning is then reflected in their speech errors. However, second-order constraints in which the placement of a phoneme depends on another…

Contextual Variability in American English Dark-L

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Oxley, Judith; Roussel, Nancye; Buckingham, Hugh

2007-01-01

This paper presents a four-subject study that examines the relative influence of syllable position and stress, together with vowel context on the colouring of the dark-l characteristic of speakers of General American English. Most investigators report lighter /l/ tokens in syllable onsets and darker tokens in coda positions. The present study…

Absolute and Relative Reliability of Percentage of Syllables Stuttered and Severity Rating Scales

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karimi, Hamid; O'Brian, Sue; Onslow, Mark; Jones, Mark

2014-01-01

Purpose: Percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and severity rating (SR) scales are measures in common use to quantify stuttering severity and its changes during basic and clinical research conditions. However, their reliability has not been assessed with indices measuring both relative and absolute reliability. This study was designed to provide…

Phase-Specific Vocalizations of Male Mice at the Initial Encounter during the Courtship Sequence

PubMed Central

Matsumoto, Yui K.; Okanoya, Kazuo

2016-01-01

Mice produce ultrasonic vocalizations featuring a variety of syllables. Vocalizations are observed during social interactions. In particular, males produce numerous syllables during courtship. Previous studies have shown that vocalizations change according to sexual behavior, suggesting that males vary their vocalizations depending on the phase of the courtship sequence. To examine this process, we recorded large sets of mouse vocalizations during male–female interactions and acoustically categorized these sounds into 12 vocal types. We found that males emitted predominantly short syllables during the first minute of interaction, more long syllables in the later phases, and mainly harmonic sounds during mounting. These context- and time-dependent changes in vocalization indicate that vocal communication during courtship in mice consists of at least three stages and imply that each vocalization type has a specific role in a phase of the courtship sequence. Our findings suggest that recording for a sufficiently long time and taking the phase of courtship into consideration could provide more insights into the role of vocalization in mouse courtship behavior in future study. PMID:26841117

Acoustic foundations of the speech-to-song illusion.

PubMed

Tierney, Adam; Patel, Aniruddh D; Breen, Mara

2018-06-01

In the "speech-to-song illusion," certain spoken phrases are heard as highly song-like when isolated from context and repeated. This phenomenon occurs to a greater degree for some stimuli than for others, suggesting that particular cues prompt listeners to perceive a spoken phrase as song. Here we investigated the nature of these cues across four experiments. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to rate how song-like spoken phrases were after each of eight repetitions. Initial ratings were correlated with the consistency of an underlying beat and within-syllable pitch slope, while rating change was linked to beat consistency, within-syllable pitch slope, and melodic structure. In Experiment 2, the within-syllable pitch slope of the stimuli was manipulated, and this manipulation changed the extent to which participants heard certain stimuli as more musical than others. In Experiment 3, the extent to which the pitch sequences of a phrase fit a computational model of melodic structure was altered, but this manipulation did not have a significant effect on musicality ratings. In Experiment 4, the consistency of intersyllable timing was manipulated, but this manipulation did not have an effect on the change in perceived musicality after repetition. Our methods provide a new way of studying the causal role of specific acoustic features in the speech-to-song illusion via subtle acoustic manipulations of speech, and show that listeners can rapidly (and implicitly) assess the degree to which nonmusical stimuli contain musical structure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Neural Correlates of Interindividual Differences in Children’s Audiovisual Speech Perception

PubMed Central

Nath, Audrey R.; Fava, Eswen E.; Beauchamp, Michael S.

2011-01-01

Children use information from both the auditory and visual modalities to aid in understanding speech. A dramatic illustration of this multisensory integration is the McGurk effect, an illusion in which an auditory syllable is perceived differently when it is paired with an incongruent mouth movement. However, there are significant interindividual differences in McGurk perception: some children never perceive the illusion, while others always do. Because converging evidence suggests that the posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS) is a critical site for multisensory integration, we hypothesized that activity within the STS would predict susceptibility to the McGurk effect. To test this idea, we used blood-oxygen level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (BOLD fMRI) in seventeen children aged 6 to 12 years to measure brain responses to three audiovisual stimulus categories: McGurk incongruent, non-McGurk incongruent and congruent syllables. Two separate analysis approaches, one using independent functional localizers and another using whole-brain voxel-based regression, showed differences in the left STS between perceivers and non-perceivers. The STS of McGurk perceivers responded significantly more than non-perceivers to McGurk syllables, but not to other stimuli, and perceivers’ hemodynamic responses in the STS were significantly prolonged. In addition to the STS, weaker differences between perceivers and non-perceivers were observed in the FFA and extrastriate visual cortex. These results suggest that the STS is an important source of interindividual variability in children’s audiovisual speech perception. PMID:21957257

Effects of social games on infant vocalizations*.

PubMed

Hsu, Hui-Chin; Iyer, Suneeti Nathani; Fogel, Alan

2014-01-01

The aim of the present study was to examine the contextual effects of social games on prelinguistic vocalizations. The two main goals were to (1) investigate the functions of vocalizations as symptoms of affective arousal and symbols of social understanding, and (2) explore form-function (de)coupling relations between vocalization types and game contexts. Seventy-one six-month-olds and sixty-four twelve-month-olds played with their mothers in normal and perturbed tickle and peek-a-boo games. The effects of infant age, game, game climax, and game perturbation on the frequency and types of infant vocalizations were examined. Results showed twelve-month-olds vocalized more mature canonical syllables during peek-a-boo and more primitive quasi-resonant nuclei during tickle than six-month-olds. Six- and twelve-month-olds increased their vocalizations from the set-up to climax during peek-a-boo, but they did not show such an increase during tickle. Findings support the symptom function of prelinguistic vocalizations reflecting affective arousal and the prevalence of form-function decoupling during the first year of life.

Hemispheric asymmetry in auditory processing of speech envelope modulations in prereading children.

PubMed

Vanvooren, Sophie; Poelmans, Hanne; Hofmann, Michael; Ghesquière, Pol; Wouters, Jan

2014-01-22

The temporal envelope of speech is an important cue contributing to speech intelligibility. Theories about the neural foundations of speech perception postulate that the left and right auditory cortices are functionally specialized in analyzing speech envelope information at different time scales: the right hemisphere is thought to be specialized in processing syllable rate modulations, whereas a bilateral or left hemispheric specialization is assumed for phoneme rate modulations. Recently, it has been found that this functional hemispheric asymmetry is different in individuals with language-related disorders such as dyslexia. Most studies were, however, performed in adults and school-aged children, and only a little is known about how neural auditory processing at these specific rates manifests and develops in very young children before reading acquisition. Yet, studying hemispheric specialization for processing syllable and phoneme rate modulations in preliterate children may reveal early neural markers for dyslexia. In the present study, human cortical evoked potentials to syllable and phoneme rate modulations were measured in 5-year-old children at high and low hereditary risk for dyslexia. The results demonstrate a right hemispheric preference for processing syllable rate modulations and a symmetric pattern for phoneme rate modulations, regardless of hereditary risk for dyslexia. These results suggest that, while hemispheric specialization for processing syllable rate modulations seems to be mature in prereading children, hemispheric specialization for phoneme rate modulation processing may still be developing. These findings could have important implications for the development of phonological and reading skills.

Consonant acquisition in the Malay language: a cross-sectional study of preschool aged Malay children.

PubMed

Phoon, Hooi San; Abdullah, Anna Christina; Lee, Lay Wah; Murugaiah, Puvaneswary

2014-05-01

To date, there has been little research done on phonological acquisition in the Malay language of typically developing Malay-speaking children. This study serves to fill this gap by providing a systematic description of Malay consonant acquisition in a large cohort of preschool-aged children between 4- and 6-years-old. In the study, 326 Malay-dominant speaking children were assessed using a picture naming task that elicited 53 single words containing all the primary consonants in Malay. Two main analyses were conducted to study their consonant acquisition: (1) age of customary and mastery production of consonants; and (2) consonant accuracy. Results revealed that Malay children acquired all the syllable-initial and syllable-final consonants before 4;06-years-old, with the exception of syllable-final /s/, /h/ and /l/ which were acquired after 5;06-years-old. The development of Malay consonants increased gradually from 4- to 6 years old, with female children performing better than male children. The accuracy of consonants based on manner of articulation showed that glides, affricates, nasals, and stops were higher than fricatives and liquids. In general, syllable-initial consonants were more accurate than syllable-final consonants while consonants in monosyllabic and disyllabic words were more accurate than polysyllabic words. These findings will provide significant information for speech-language pathologists for assessing Malay-speaking children and designing treatment objectives that reflect the course of phonological development in Malay.

The Role of Lexical Stress on the Use of Vocal Fry in Young Adult Female Speakers.

PubMed

Gibson, Todd A

2017-01-01

Vocal fry is a voice register often used by young adult women for sociolinguistic purposes. Some acoustic correlates of lexical stress, however, appear incompatible with the use of vocal fry. The objective of this study was to systematically examine the role of lexical stress in the use of vocal fry by young adult women. This is a semi-randomized controlled laboratory study. Fifty female undergraduate students were recorded repeating one-, two-, three-, and four-syllable nonwords that conformed to English phonotactics. Nonwords were presented in order from shorter to longer lengths, with stimuli randomized within syllable length. Perceptual analyses of recordings were augmented by acoustic analyses to identify each syllable in which vocal fry occurred. Eighty-six percent of participants produced at least one episode of vocal fry. Vocal fry was more likely to occur in unstressed than stressed position, and the likelihood increased as distance from the stressed syllable increased. There was considerable variability in the use of vocal fry. Frequent and infrequent users varied on the degree to which they used vocal fry in single-syllable nonwords. Vocal fry use persists among young adult women even in the absence of syntactic and pragmatic influences. Lexical stress appeared to dramatically reduce the use of vocal fry. Patterns of vocal fry use appeared to be different for frequent and infrequent users of this vocal register. Copyright © 2017 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reduced frontal theta oscillations indicate altered crossmodal prediction error processing in schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Keil, Julian; Balz, Johanna; Gallinat, Jürgen; Senkowski, Daniel

2016-01-01

Our brain generates predictions about forthcoming stimuli and compares predicted with incoming input. Failures in predicting events might contribute to hallucinations and delusions in schizophrenia (SZ). When a stimulus violates prediction, neural activity that reflects prediction error (PE) processing is found. While PE processing deficits have been reported in unisensory paradigms, it is unknown whether SZ patients (SZP) show altered crossmodal PE processing. We measured high-density electroencephalography and applied source estimation approaches to investigate crossmodal PE processing generated by audiovisual speech. In SZP and healthy control participants (HC), we used an established paradigm in which high- and low-predictive visual syllables were paired with congruent or incongruent auditory syllables. We examined crossmodal PE processing in SZP and HC by comparing differences in event-related potentials and neural oscillations between incongruent and congruent high- and low-predictive audiovisual syllables. In both groups event-related potentials between 206 and 250 ms were larger in high- compared with low-predictive syllables, suggesting intact audiovisual incongruence detection in the auditory cortex of SZP. The analysis of oscillatory responses revealed theta-band (4–7 Hz) power enhancement in high- compared with low-predictive syllables between 230 and 370 ms in the frontal cortex of HC but not SZP. Thus aberrant frontal theta-band oscillations reflect crossmodal PE processing deficits in SZ. The present study suggests a top-down multisensory processing deficit and highlights the role of dysfunctional frontal oscillations for the SZ psychopathology. PMID:27358314

White Matter Integrity and Treatment-Based Change in Speech Performance in Minimally Verbal Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

PubMed

Chenausky, Karen; Kernbach, Julius; Norton, Andrea; Schlaug, Gottfried

2017-01-01

We investigated the relationship between imaging variables for two language/speech-motor tracts and speech fluency variables in 10 minimally verbal (MV) children with autism. Specifically, we tested whether measures of white matter integrity-fractional anisotropy (FA) of the arcuate fasciculus (AF) and frontal aslant tract (FAT)-were related to change in percent syllable-initial consonants correct, percent items responded to, and percent syllable insertion errors (from best baseline to post 25 treatment sessions). Twenty-three MV children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) received Auditory-Motor Mapping Training (AMMT), an intonation-based treatment to improve fluency in spoken output, and we report on seven who received a matched control treatment. Ten of the AMMT participants were able to undergo a magnetic resonance imaging study at baseline; their performance on baseline speech production measures is compared to that of the other two groups. No baseline differences were found between groups. A canonical correlation analysis (CCA) relating FA values for left- and right-hemisphere AF and FAT to speech production measures showed that FA of the left AF and right FAT were the largest contributors to the synthetic independent imaging-related variable. Change in percent syllable-initial consonants correct and percent syllable-insertion errors were the largest contributors to the synthetic dependent fluency-related variable. Regression analyses showed that FA values in left AF significantly predicted change in percent syllable-initial consonants correct, no FA variables significantly predicted change in percent items responded to, and FA of right FAT significantly predicted change in percent syllable-insertion errors. Results are consistent with previously identified roles for the AF in mediating bidirectional mapping between articulation and acoustics, and the FAT in its relationship to speech initiation and fluency. They further suggest a division of labor between the hemispheres, implicating the left hemisphere in accuracy of speech production and the right hemisphere in fluency in this population. Changes in response rate are interpreted as stemming from factors other than the integrity of these two fiber tracts. This study is the first to document the existence of a subgroup of MV children who experience increases in syllable- insertion errors as their speech develops in response to therapy.

Prosodic domain-initial effects on the acoustic structure of vowels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fox, Robert Allen; Jacewicz, Ewa; Salmons, Joseph

2003-10-01

In the process of language change, vowels tend to shift in ``chains,'' leading to reorganizations of entire vowel systems over time. A long research tradition has described such patterns, but little is understood about what factors motivate such shifts. Drawing data from changes in progress in American English dialects, the broad hypothesis is tested that changes in vowel systems are related to prosodic organization and stress patterns. Changes in vowels under greater prosodic prominence correlate directly with, and likely underlie, historical patterns of shift. This study examines acoustic characteristics of vowels at initial edges of prosodic domains [Fougeron and Keating, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 101, 3728-3740 (1997)]. The investigation is restricted to three distinct prosodic levels: utterance (sentence-initial), phonological phrase (strong branch of a foot), and syllable (weak branch of a foot). The predicted changes in vowels /e/ and /ɛ/ in two American English dialects (from Ohio and Wisconsin) are examined along a set of acoustic parameters: duration, formant frequencies (including dynamic changes over time), and fundamental frequency (F0). In addition to traditional methodology which elicits list-like intonation, a design is adapted to examine prosodic patterns in more typical sentence intonations. [Work partially supported by NIDCD R03 DC005560-01.

Reliability of Laterality Effects in a Dichotic Listening Task with Words and Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Russell, Nancy L.; Voyer, Daniel

2004-01-01

Large and reliable laterality effects have been found using a dichotic target detection task in a recent experiment using word stimuli pronounced with an emotional component. The present study tested the hypothesis that the magnitude and reliability of the laterality effects would increase with the removal of the emotional component and variations…

Investigating the Phonological Similarity Effect: Syllable Structure and the Position of Common Phonemes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nimmo, Lisa M.; Roodenrys, Steven

2004-01-01

The aim of the present research was to determine whether the effect that phonological similarity has on immediate serial recall is influenced by the consistency and position of phonemes within words. In comparison to phonologically dissimilar lists, when the stimulus lists rhyme there is a facilitative effect on the recall of item information and…

Subjective age-of-acquisition norms for 600 Turkish words from four age groups.

PubMed

Göz, İlyas; Tekcan, Ali I; Erciyes, Aslı Aktan

2017-10-01

The main purpose of this study was to report age-based subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) norms for 600 Turkish words. A total of 115 children, 100 young adults, 115 middle-aged adults, and 127 older adults provided AoA estimates for 600 words on a 7-point scale. The intraclass correlations suggested high reliability, and the AoA estimates were highly correlated across the four age groups. Children gave earlier AoA estimates than the three adult groups; this was true for high-frequency as well as low-frequency words. In addition to the means and standard deviations of the AoA estimates, we report word frequency, concreteness, and imageability ratings, as well as word length measures (numbers of syllables and letters), for the 600 words as supplemental materials. The present ratings represent a potentially useful database for researchers working on lexical processing as well as other aspects of cognitive processing, such as autobiographical memory.

Dynamic Spectral Structure Specifies Vowels for Adults and Children

PubMed Central

Nittrouer, Susan; Lowenstein, Joanna H.

2014-01-01

The dynamic specification account of vowel recognition suggests that formant movement between vowel targets and consonant margins is used by listeners to recognize vowels. This study tested that account by measuring contributions to vowel recognition of dynamic (i.e., time-varying) spectral structure and coarticulatory effects on stationary structure. Adults and children (four-and seven-year-olds) were tested with three kinds of consonant-vowel-consonant syllables: (1) unprocessed; (2) sine waves that preserved both stationary coarticulated and dynamic spectral structure; and (3) vocoded signals that primarily preserved that stationary, but not dynamic structure. Sections of two lengths were removed from syllable middles: (1) half the vocalic portion; and (2) all but the first and last three pitch periods. Adults performed accurately with unprocessed and sine-wave signals, as long as half the syllable remained; their recognition was poorer for vocoded signals, but above chance. Seven-year-olds performed more poorly than adults with both sorts of processed signals, but disproportionately worse with vocoded than sine-wave signals. Most four-year-olds were unable to recognize vowels at all with vocoded signals. Conclusions were that both dynamic and stationary coarticulated structures support vowel recognition for adults, but children attend to dynamic spectral structure more strongly because early phonological organization favors whole words. PMID:25536845

Acquisition of English word stress patterns in early and late bilinguals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guion, Susan G.

2004-05-01

Given early acquisition of prosodic knowledge as demonstrated by infants' sensitivity to native language accentual patterns, the question of whether learners can acquire new prosodic patterns across the life span arises. Acquisition of English stress by early and late Spanish-English and Korean-English bilinguals was investigated. In a production task, two-syllable nonwords were produced in noun and verb sentence frames. In a perception task, preference for first or last syllable stress on the nonwords was indicated. Also, real words that were phonologically similar to the nonwords were collected. Logistic regression analyses and ANOVAs were conducted to determine the effect of three factors (syllable structure, lexical class, and stress patterns of phonologically similar words) on the production and perception responses. In all three groups, stress patterns of phonologically similar real words predicted stress on nonwords. For the two other factors, early bilinguals patterned similarly to the native-English participants. Late Spanish-English bilinguals demonstrated less learning of stress patterns based on syllabic structure, and late Korean-English bilinguals demonstrated less learning of stress patterns based on lexical class than native-English speakers. Thus, compared to native speakers, late bilinguals' ability to abstract stress patterns is reduced and affected by the first language. [Work supported by NIH.

Audio-vocal responses of vocal fundamental frequency and formant during sustained vowel vocalizations in different noises.

PubMed

Lee, Shao-Hsuan; Hsiao, Tzu-Yu; Lee, Guo-She

2015-06-01

Sustained vocalizations of vowels [a], [i], and syllable [mə] were collected in twenty normal-hearing individuals. On vocalizations, five conditions of different audio-vocal feedback were introduced separately to the speakers including no masking, wearing supra-aural headphones only, speech-noise masking, high-pass noise masking, and broad-band-noise masking. Power spectral analysis of vocal fundamental frequency (F0) was used to evaluate the modulations of F0 and linear-predictive-coding was used to acquire first two formants. The results showed that while the formant frequencies were not significantly shifted, low-frequency modulations (<3 Hz) of F0 significantly increased with reduced audio-vocal feedback across speech sounds and were significantly correlated with auditory awareness of speakers' own voices. For sustained speech production, the motor speech controls on F0 may depend on a feedback mechanism while articulation should rely more on a feedforward mechanism. Power spectral analysis of F0 might be applied to evaluate audio-vocal control for various hearing and neurological disorders in the future. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Differential Memory of Picture and Word Stimuli in a Paired-Associate Learning Task.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bartels, Laura Grand; Feinbloom, Jessica

Ten concrete nouns represented in either a pictorial or a linguistic mode and accompanied by ten nonsense syllables were shown to 77 college students in a study of how pictorial stimuli varied in recall and recognition tasks. The group receiving pictorial stimuli recalled and recognized significantly more nonsense syllables than did the group…

Production of Syllable Stress in Speakers with Autism Spectrum Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Paul, Rhea; Bianchi, Nancy; Augustyn, Amy; Klin, Ami; Volkmar, Fred R.

2008-01-01

This paper reports a study of the ability to reproduce stress in a nonsense syllable imitation task by adolescent speakers with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), as compared to typically developing (TD) age-mates. Results are reported for both raters' judgments of the subjects' stress production, as well as acoustic measures of pitch range and…

Syllable Onset Intervals as an Indicator of Discourse and Syntactic Boundaries in Taiwan Mandarin

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fon, Janice; Johnson, Keith

2004-01-01

This study looks at the syllable onset interval (SOI) patterning in Taiwan Mandarin spontaneous speech and its relationship to discourse and syntactic units. Monologs were elicited by asking readers to tell stories depicted in comic strips and were transcribed and segmented into Discourse Segment Units (Grosz & Sidner, 1986), clauses, and…

Relations among Detection of Syllable Stress, Speech Abnormalities, and Communicative Ability in Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kargas, Niko; López, Beatriz; Morris, Paul; Reddy, Vasudevi

2016-01-01

Purpose: To date, the literature on perception of affective, pragmatic, and grammatical prosody abilities in autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has been sparse and contradictory. It is interesting to note that the primary perception of syllable stress within the word structure, which is crucial for all prosody functions, remains relatively unexplored…

A Componential Approach to Training Reading Skills.

DTIC Science & Technology

1983-03-17

1 syllable, mixed vowels A2 16 one-syll., 4 two-syll., mixed vowels A3 14 one-syll., 6 two-syll., mixed vowels A4 All two-syllable, mixed vowels* B1 ...06520 I ERIC Facility-Acquisitions I Dr. John S. Brown 4833 Rugby Avenue XEROX Palo Alto Research Center Bethesda, MD 20014 3333 Coyote Road Palo Alto, CA

Verbal Positional Memory in 7-Month-Olds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Benavides-Varela, Silvia; Mehler, Jacques

2015-01-01

Verbal memory is a fundamental prerequisite for language learning. This study investigated 7-month-olds' (N = 62) ability to remember the identity and order of elements in a multisyllabic word. The results indicate that infants detect changes in the order of edge syllables, or the identity of the middle syllables, but fail to encode the order…

Boosting Reading Fluency: An Intervention Case Study at Subword Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kairaluoma, Leila; Ahonen, Timo; Aro, Mikko; Holopainen, Leena

2007-01-01

This study is an intervention case study of fluency in Finnish-speaking children with dyslexia. Two 7-year-old children, a girl and a boy, were selected from the Jyvaskyla Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia. The intervention emphasised syllables as reading units, and proceeded from reading syllables to reading words and text. Letter knowledge, reading…

Perceptual Processing of Mandarin Nasals by L1 and L2 Mandarin Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lai, Yi-hsiu

2012-01-01

Nasals are cross-linguistically susceptible to change, especially in the syllable final position. Acoustic reports on Mandarin nasal production have recently shown that the syllable-final distinction is frequently dropped. Few studies, however, have addressed the issue of perceptual processing in Mandarin nasals for L1 and L2 speakers of Mandarin…

On the Edge of Language Acquisition: Inherent Constraints on Encoding Multisyllabic Sequences in the Neonate Brain

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ferry, Alissa L.; Fló, Ana; Brusini, Perrine; Cattarossi, Luigi; Macagno, Francesco; Nespor, Marina; Mehler, Jacques

2016-01-01

To understand language, humans must encode information from rapid, sequential streams of syllables--tracking their order and organizing them into words, phrases, and sentences. We used Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) to determine whether human neonates are born with the capacity to track the positions of syllables in multisyllabic sequences.…

The Different Time Course of Phonotactic Constraint Learning in Children and Adults: Evidence from Speech Errors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Smalle, Eleonore H. M.; Muylle, Merel; Szmalec, Arnaud; Duyck, Wouter

2017-01-01

Speech errors typically respect the speaker's implicit knowledge of language-wide phonotactics (e.g., /t/ cannot be a syllable onset in the English language). Previous work demonstrated that adults can learn novel experimentally induced phonotactic constraints by producing syllable strings in which the allowable position of a phoneme depends on…

A Forced-Attention Dichotic Listening fMRI Study on 113 Subjects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kompus, Kristiina; Specht, Karsten; Ersland, Lars; Juvodden, Hilde T.; van Wageningen, Heidi; Hugdahl, Kenneth; Westerhausen, Rene

2012-01-01

We report fMRI and behavioral data from 113 subjects on attention and cognitive control using a variant of the classic dichotic listening paradigm with pairwise presentations of consonant-vowel syllables. The syllable stimuli were presented in a block-design while subjects were in the MR scanner. The subjects were instructed to pay attention to…

An Advantage for Perceptual Edges in Young Infants' Memory for Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hochmann, Jean-Rémy; Langus, Alan; Mehler, Jacques

2016-01-01

Models of language acquisition are constrained by the information that learners can extract from their input. Experiment 1 investigated whether 3-month-old infants are able to encode a repeated, unsegmented sequence of five syllables. Event-related-potentials showed that infants reacted to a change of the initial or the final syllable, but not to…

Vowels, Syllables, and Letter Names: Differences between Young Children's Spelling in English and Portuguese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pollo, Tatiana Cury; Kessler, Brett; Treiman, Rebecca

2005-01-01

Young Portuguese-speaking children have been reported to produce more vowel- and syllable-oriented spellings than have English speakers. To investigate the extent and source of such differences, we analyzed children's vocabulary and found that Portuguese words have more vowel letter names and a higher vowel-consonant ratio than do English words.…

A Retrospective Video Analysis of Canonical Babbling and Volubility in Infants with Fragile X Syndrome at 9 – 12 Months of Age

PubMed Central

Belardi, Katie; Watson, Linda R.; Faldowski, Richard A.; Hazlett, Heather; Crais, Elizabeth; Baranek, Grace T.; McComish, Cara; Patten, Elena; Oller, D. Kimbrough

2017-01-01

An infant’s vocal capacity develops significantly during the first year of life. Research suggests early measures of pre-speech development, such as canonical babbling and volubility, can differentiate typical versus disordered development. This study offers a new contribution by comparing early vocal development in 10 infants with Fragile X syndrome and 14 with typical development. Results suggest infants with Fragile X syndrome produce fewer syllables and have significantly lower canonical babbling ratios (i.e., canonical syllables/total syllables) compared to infants who are typically developing. Furthermore, the particular measures of babbling were strong predictors of group membership, adding evidence regarding the possible utility of these markers in early identification. PMID:28247019

Cultural variation in savannah sparrow, Passerculus sandwichensis, songs: an analysis using the meme concept.

PubMed

Burnell

1998-10-01

I used the meme concept to investigate patterns of cultural variation among the songs of eight, geographically distinct populations of savannah sparrows. Memes composed of only one syllable were geographically widespread and randomly distributed among populations, but memes of two-, three- and four-syllables became progressively more restricted in their geographical distribution. Thus, the populations were memetically more similar with respect to one-syllable memes and more divergent with respect to larger memes. These results suggest that differences in memetic mutation rates and susceptibility to loss by memetic drift could be sufficient to create the observed pattern of greater divergence among populations for large memes. Copyright 1998 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.

The Effect of Anatomic Factors on Tongue Position Variability during Consonants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rudy, Krista; Yunusova, Yana

2013-01-01

Purpose: This study sought to investigate the effect of palate morphology and anthropometric measures of the head on positional variability of the tongue during consonants. Method: An electromagnetic tracking system was used to record tongue movements of 21 adults. Each talker produced a series of symmetrical VCV syllables containing one of the…

Gradient Sensitivity to Within-Category Variation in Words and Syllables

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McMurray, Bob; Aslin, Richard N.; Tanenhaus, Michael K.; Spivey, Michael J.; Subik, Dana

2008-01-01

Five experiments monitored eye movements in phoneme and lexical identification tasks to examine the effect of within-category subphonetic variation on the perception of stop consonants. Experiment 1 demonstrated gradient effects along voice-onset time (VOT) continua made from natural speech, replicating results with synthetic speech (B. McMurray,…

Effects of Length, Complexity, and Grammatical Correctness on Stuttering in Spanish-Speaking Preschool Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Watson, Jennifer B.; Byrd, Courtney T.; Carlo, Edna J.

2011-01-01

Purpose: To explore the effects of utterance length, syntactic complexity, and grammatical correctness on stuttering in the spontaneous speech of young, monolingual Spanish-speaking children. Method: Spontaneous speech samples of 11 monolingual Spanish-speaking children who stuttered, ages 35 to 70 months, were examined. Mean number of syllables,…

High-frequency neural activity predicts word parsing in ambiguous speech streams.

PubMed

Kösem, Anne; Basirat, Anahita; Azizi, Leila; van Wassenhove, Virginie

2016-12-01

During speech listening, the brain parses a continuous acoustic stream of information into computational units (e.g., syllables or words) necessary for speech comprehension. Recent neuroscientific hypotheses have proposed that neural oscillations contribute to speech parsing, but whether they do so on the basis of acoustic cues (bottom-up acoustic parsing) or as a function of available linguistic representations (top-down linguistic parsing) is unknown. In this magnetoencephalography study, we contrasted acoustic and linguistic parsing using bistable speech sequences. While listening to the speech sequences, participants were asked to maintain one of the two possible speech percepts through volitional control. We predicted that the tracking of speech dynamics by neural oscillations would not only follow the acoustic properties but also shift in time according to the participant's conscious speech percept. Our results show that the latency of high-frequency activity (specifically, beta and gamma bands) varied as a function of the perceptual report. In contrast, the phase of low-frequency oscillations was not strongly affected by top-down control. Whereas changes in low-frequency neural oscillations were compatible with the encoding of prelexical segmentation cues, high-frequency activity specifically informed on an individual's conscious speech percept. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

High-frequency neural activity predicts word parsing in ambiguous speech streams

PubMed Central

Basirat, Anahita; Azizi, Leila; van Wassenhove, Virginie

2016-01-01

During speech listening, the brain parses a continuous acoustic stream of information into computational units (e.g., syllables or words) necessary for speech comprehension. Recent neuroscientific hypotheses have proposed that neural oscillations contribute to speech parsing, but whether they do so on the basis of acoustic cues (bottom-up acoustic parsing) or as a function of available linguistic representations (top-down linguistic parsing) is unknown. In this magnetoencephalography study, we contrasted acoustic and linguistic parsing using bistable speech sequences. While listening to the speech sequences, participants were asked to maintain one of the two possible speech percepts through volitional control. We predicted that the tracking of speech dynamics by neural oscillations would not only follow the acoustic properties but also shift in time according to the participant's conscious speech percept. Our results show that the latency of high-frequency activity (specifically, beta and gamma bands) varied as a function of the perceptual report. In contrast, the phase of low-frequency oscillations was not strongly affected by top-down control. Whereas changes in low-frequency neural oscillations were compatible with the encoding of prelexical segmentation cues, high-frequency activity specifically informed on an individual's conscious speech percept. PMID:27605528

Revision of the genus Amytta (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae, Meconematinae) and new species from East Africa.

PubMed

Hemp, Claudia; Heller, Klaus-Gerhard

2017-05-09

New species of Amytta are described from East Africa. Beside tegminal length, they differ mainly in the structure of the complicated male genitalic organs, notably the last abdominal tergite and cerci. Data on habitat and the acoustics of some species and a key to the species are provided. The songs of all seven Amytta species studied are very similar, consisting of long trills with a syllable repetition rate of about 60 Hz (at 20ºC) and a broad frequency peak in the ultrasound at around 40 kHz. The biogeographic pattern and phylogenetic relationships are discussed for the group.

An Exploration of Rhythmic Grouping of Speech Sequences by French- and German-Learning Infants

PubMed Central

Abboub, Nawal; Boll-Avetisyan, Natalie; Bhatara, Anjali; Höhle, Barbara; Nazzi, Thierry

2016-01-01

Rhythm in music and speech can be characterized by a constellation of several acoustic cues. Individually, these cues have different effects on rhythmic perception: sequences of sounds alternating in duration are perceived as short-long pairs (weak-strong/iambic pattern), whereas sequences of sounds alternating in intensity or pitch are perceived as loud-soft, or high-low pairs (strong-weak/trochaic pattern). This perceptual bias—called the Iambic-Trochaic Law (ITL)–has been claimed to be an universal property of the auditory system applying in both the music and the language domains. Recent studies have shown that language experience can modulate the effects of the ITL on rhythmic perception of both speech and non-speech sequences in adults, and of non-speech sequences in 7.5-month-old infants. The goal of the present study was to explore whether language experience also modulates infants’ grouping of speech. To do so, we presented sequences of syllables to monolingual French- and German-learning 7.5-month-olds. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure (HPP), we examined whether they were able to perceive a rhythmic structure in sequences of syllables that alternated in duration, pitch, or intensity. Our findings show that both French- and German-learning infants perceived a rhythmic structure when it was cued by duration or pitch but not intensity. Our findings also show differences in how these infants use duration and pitch cues to group syllable sequences, suggesting that pitch cues were the easier ones to use. Moreover, performance did not differ across languages, failing to reveal early language effects on rhythmic perception. These results contribute to our understanding of the origin of rhythmic perception and perceptual mechanisms shared across music and speech, which may bootstrap language acquisition. PMID:27378887

The Effect of Lexical Content on Dichotic Speech Recognition in Older Adults.

PubMed

Findlen, Ursula M; Roup, Christina M

2016-01-01

Age-related auditory processing deficits have been shown to negatively affect speech recognition for older adult listeners. In contrast, older adults gain benefit from their ability to make use of semantic and lexical content of the speech signal (i.e., top-down processing), particularly in complex listening situations. Assessment of auditory processing abilities among aging adults should take into consideration semantic and lexical content of the speech signal. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of lexical and attentional factors on dichotic speech recognition performance characteristics for older adult listeners. A repeated measures design was used to examine differences in dichotic word recognition as a function of lexical and attentional factors. Thirty-five older adults (61-85 yr) with sensorineural hearing loss participated in this study. Dichotic speech recognition was evaluated using consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) word and nonsense CVC syllable stimuli administered in the free recall, directed recall right, and directed recall left response conditions. Dichotic speech recognition performance for nonsense CVC syllables was significantly poorer than performance for CVC words. Dichotic recognition performance varied across response condition for both stimulus types, which is consistent with previous studies on dichotic speech recognition. Inspection of individual results revealed that five listeners demonstrated an auditory-based left ear deficit for one or both stimulus types. Lexical content of stimulus materials affects performance characteristics for dichotic speech recognition tasks in the older adult population. The use of nonsense CVC syllable material may provide a way to assess dichotic speech recognition performance while potentially lessening the effects of lexical content on performance (i.e., measuring bottom-up auditory function both with and without top-down processing). American Academy of Audiology.

Effects of Online Augmented Kinematic and Perceptual Feedback on Treatment of Speech Movements in Apraxia of Speech

PubMed Central

McNeil, M.R.; Katz, W.F.; Fossett, T.R.D.; Garst, D.M.; Szuminsky, N.J.; Carter, G.; Lim, K.Y.

2010-01-01

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder characterized by disturbed spatial and temporal parameters of movement. Research on motor learning suggests that augmented feedback may provide a beneficial effect for training movement. This study examined the effects of the presence and frequency of online augmented visual kinematic feedback (AVKF) and clinician-provided perceptual feedback on speech accuracy in 2 adults with acquired AOS. Within a single-subject multiple-baseline design, AVKF was provided using electromagnetic midsagittal articulography (EMA) in 2 feedback conditions (50 or 100%). Articulator placement was specified for speech motor targets (SMTs). Treated and baselined SMTs were in the initial or final position of single-syllable words, in varying consonant-vowel or vowel-consonant contexts. SMTs were selected based on each participant's pre-assessed erred productions. Productions were digitally recorded and online perceptual judgments of accuracy (including segment and intersegment distortions) were made. Inter- and intra-judge reliability for perceptual accuracy was high. Results measured by visual inspection and effect size revealed positive acquisition and generalization effects for both participants. Generalization occurred across vowel contexts and to untreated probes. Results of the frequency manipulation were confounded by presentation order. Maintenance of learned and generalized effects were demonstrated for 1 participant. These data provide support for the role of augmented feedback in treating speech movements that result in perceptually accurate speech production. Future investigations will explore the independent contributions of each feedback type (i.e. kinematic and perceptual) in producing efficient and effective training of SMTs in persons with AOS. PMID:20424468

Developmental Role of Static, Dynamic, and Contextual Cues in Speech Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hicks, Candace Bourland; Ohde, Ralph N.

2005-01-01

The purpose of the current study was to examine the role of syllable duration context as well as static and dynamic acoustic properties in child and adult speech perception. Ten adults and eleven 4?5-year-old children identified a syllable as [ba] or [wa] (stop-glide contrast) in 3 conditions differing in synthetic continua. The 1st condition…

Preterm and Term Infants' Perception of Temporally Coordinated Syllable-Object Pairings: Implications for Lexical Development

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gogate, Lakshmi; Maganti, Madhavilatha; Perenyi, Agnes

2014-01-01

Purpose: This experimental study examined term infants (n = 34) and low-risk near-term preterm infants (gestational age 32-36 weeks) at 2 months chronological age (n = 34) and corrected age (n = 16). The study investigated whether the preterm infants presented with a delay in their sensitivity to synchronous syllable-object pairings when compared…

Evidence and control of bifurcations in a respiratory system.

PubMed

Goldin, Matías A; Mindlin, Gabriel B

2013-12-01

We studied the pressure patterns used by domestic canaries in the production of birdsong. Acoustically different sound elements ("syllables") were generated by qualitatively different pressure gestures. We found that some ubiquitous transitions between syllables can be interpreted as bifurcations of a low dimensional dynamical system. We interpreted these results as evidence supporting a model in which different timescales interact nonlinearly.

Tracking the Speech Signal--Time-Locked MEG Signals during Perception of Ultra-Fast and Moderately Fast Speech in Blind and in Sighted Listeners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hertrich, Ingo; Dietrich, Susanne; Ackermann, Hermann

2013-01-01

Blind people can learn to understand speech at ultra-high syllable rates (ca. 20 syllables/s), a capability associated with hemodynamic activation of the central-visual system. To further elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying this skill, magnetoencephalographic (MEG) measurements during listening to sentence utterances were cross-correlated…

A Randomized Controlled Trial for Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech Comparing Rapid Syllable Transition Treatment and the Nuffield Dyspraxia Programme-Third Edition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murray, Elizabeth; McCabe, Patricia; Ballard, Kirrie J.

2015-01-01

Purpose: This randomized controlled trial compared the experimental Rapid Syllable Transition (ReST) treatment to the Nuffield Dyspraxia Programme-Third Edition (NDP3; Williams & Stephens, 2004), used widely in clinical practice in Australia and the United Kingdom. Both programs aim to improve speech motor planning/programming for children…

The Locus Equation as an Index of Coarticulation in Syllables Produced by Speakers with Profound Hearing Loss

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCaffrey Morrison, Helen

2008-01-01

Locus equations (LEs) were derived from consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) syllables produced by four speakers with profound hearing loss. Group data indicated that LE functions obtained for the separate CVC productions initiated by /b/, /d/, and /g/ were less well-separated in acoustic space than those obtained from speakers with normal hearing. A…

Rhyming Words and Onset-Rime Constituents: An Inquiry into Structural Breaking Points and Emergent Boundaries in the Syllable

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Geudens, Astrid; Sandra, Dominiek; Martensen, Heike

2005-01-01

Geudens and Sandra, in their 2003 study, investigated the special role of onsets and rimes in Dutch-speaking children's explicit phonological awareness. In the current study, we tapped implicit phonological knowledge using forced-choice similarity judgment (Experiment 1) and recall of syllable lists (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, Dutch-speaking…

Evidence for a Preserved Sensitivity to Orthographic Redundancy and an Impaired Access to Phonological Syllables in French Developmental Dyslexics

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doignon-Camus, Nadège; Seigneuric, Alix; Perrier, Emeline; Sisti, Aurélie; Zagar, Daniel

2013-01-01

To evaluate the orthographic and phonological processing skills of developmental dyslexics, we (a) examined their abilities to exploit properties of orthographic redundancy and (b) tested whether their phonological deficit extends to spelling-to-sound connections for large-grain size units such as syllables. To assess the processing skills in…

Still Not Adult-Like: Lexical Stress Contrastivity in Word Productions of Eight- to Eleven-Year-Olds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Arciuli, Joanne; Ballard, Kirrie J.

2017-01-01

Lexical stress is the contrast between strong and weak syllables within words. Ballard et al. (2012) examined the amount of stress contrastivity across adjacent syllables in word productions of typically developing three- to seven-year-olds and adults. Here, eight- to eleven-year-olds are compared with the adults from Ballard et al. using acoustic…

The perception of syllable affiliation of singleton stops in repetitive speech.

PubMed

de Jong, Kenneth J; Lim, Byung-Jin; Nagao, Kyoko

2004-01-01

Stetson (1951) noted that repeating singleton coda consonants at fast speech rates makes them be perceived as onset consonants affiliated with a following vowel. The current study documents the perception of rate-induced resyllabification, as well as what temporal properties give rise to the perception of syllable affiliation. Stimuli were extracted from a previous study of repeated stop + vowel and vowel + stop syllables (de Jong, 2001a, 2001b). Forced-choice identification tasks show that slow repetitions are clearly distinguished. As speakers increase rate, they reach a point after which listeners disagree as to the affiliation of the stop. This pattern is found for voiced and voiceless consonants using different stimulus extraction techniques. Acoustic models of the identifications indicate that the sudden shift in syllabification occurs with the loss of an acoustic hiatus between successive syllables. Acoustic models of the fast rate identifications indicate various other qualities, such as consonant voicing, affect the probability that the consonants will be perceived as onsets. These results indicate a model of syllabic affiliation where specific juncture-marking aspects of the signal dominate parsing, and in their absence other differences provide additional, weaker cues to syllabic affiliation.

Rhythmic syllable-related activity in a songbird motor thalamic nucleus necessary for learned vocalizations

PubMed Central

Danish, Husain H.; Aronov, Dmitriy; Fee, Michale S.

2017-01-01

Birdsong is a complex behavior that exhibits hierarchical organization. While the representation of singing behavior and its hierarchical organization has been studied in some detail in avian cortical premotor circuits, our understanding of the role of the thalamus in adult birdsong is incomplete. Using a combination of behavioral and electrophysiological studies, we seek to expand on earlier work showing that the thalamic nucleus Uvaeformis (Uva) is necessary for the production of stereotyped, adult song in zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). We confirm that complete bilateral lesions of Uva abolish singing in the ‘directed’ social context, but find that in the ‘undirected’ social context, such lesions result in highly variable vocalizations similar to early babbling song in juvenile birds. Recordings of neural activity in Uva reveal strong syllable-related modulation, maximally active prior to syllable onsets and minimally active prior to syllable offsets. Furthermore, both song and Uva activity exhibit a pronounced coherent modulation at 10Hz—a pattern observed in downstream premotor areas in adult and, even more prominently, in juvenile birds. These findings are broadly consistent with the idea that Uva is critical in the sequential activation of behavioral modules in HVC. PMID:28617829

Positive modulation of a neutral declarative memory by a threatening social event.

PubMed

Fernández, Rodrigo S; Bavassi, Luz; Campos, Jorge; Allegri, Ricardo F; Molina, Victor A; Forcato, Cecilia; Pedreira, María E

2015-12-01

Memories can be altered by negative or arousing experiences due to the activation of the stress-responsive sympatho-adrenal-medullary axis (SYM). Here, we used a neutral declarative memory that was acquired during multi-trial training to determine the effect of a threatening event on memory without emotional valence. To this end, participants received a new threatening social protocol before learning pairs of meaningless syllables and were tested either 15 min, 2 days or 8 days after acquisition. We first demonstrated that this threatening social situation activates not only the SYM axis (Experiment 1) and the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA; Experiment 2), but also, it improves the acquisition or early consolidation of the syllable pairs (Experiment 3). This improvement is not a transient effect; it can be observed after the memory is consolidated. Furthermore, this modulation increases the persistence of memory (Experiment 4). Thus, it is possible to affect memories with specific events that contain unrelated content and a different valence. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Measures of native and non-native rhythm in a quantity language.

PubMed

Stockmal, Verna; Markus, Dace; Bond, Dzintra

2005-01-01

The traditional phonetic classification of language rhythm as stress-timed or syllable-timed is attributed to Pike. Recently, two different proposals have been offered for describing the rhythmic structure of languages from acoustic-phonetic measurements. Ramus has suggested a metric based on the proportion of vocalic intervals and the variability (SD) of consonantal intervals. Grabe has proposed Pairwise Variability Indices (nPVI, rPVI) calculated from the differences in vocalic and consonantal durations between successive syllables. We have calculated both the Ramus and Grabe metrics for Latvian, traditionally considered a syllable rhythm language, and for Latvian as spoken by Russian learners. Native speakers and proficient learners were very similar whereas low-proficiency learners showed high variability on some properties. The metrics did not provide an unambiguous classification of Latvian.

Voice measures of workload in the advanced flight deck: Additional studies

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Schneider, Sid J.; Alpert, Murray

1989-01-01

These studies investigated acoustical analysis of the voice as a measure of workload in individual operators. In the first study, voice samples were recorded from a single operator during high, medium, and low workload conditions. Mean amplitude, frequency, syllable duration, and emphasis all tended to increase as workload increased. In the second study, NASA test pilots performed a laboratory task, and used a flight simulator under differing work conditions. For two of the pilots, high workload in the simulator brought about greater amplitude, peak duration, and stress. In both the laboratory and simulator tasks, high workload tended to be associated with more statistically significant drop-offs in the acoustical measures than were lower workload levels. There was a great deal of intra-subject variability in the acoustical measures. The results suggested that in individual operators, increased workload might be revealed by high initial amplitude and frequency, followed by rapid drop-offs over time.

Cues for Lexical Tone Perception in Children: Acoustic Correlates and Phonetic Context Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tong, Xiuli; McBride, Catherine; Burnham, Denis

2014-01-01

Purpose: The authors investigated the effects of acoustic cues (i.e., pitch height, pitch contour, and pitch onset and offset) and phonetic context cues (i.e., syllable onsets and rimes) on lexical tone perception in Cantonese-speaking children. Method: Eight minimum pairs of tonal contrasts were presented in either an identical phonetic context…

Reliability and Magnitude of Laterality Effects in Dichotic Listening with Exogenous Cueing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Voyer, Daniel

2004-01-01

The purpose of the present study was to replicate and extend to word recognition previous findings of reduced magnitude and reliability of laterality effects when exogenous cueing was used in a dichotic listening task with syllable pairs. Twenty right-handed undergraduate students with normal hearing (10 females, 10 males) completed a dichotic…

The Frame Constraint on Experimentally Elicited Speech Errors in Japanese

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saito, Akie; Inoue, Tomoyoshi

2017-01-01

The so-called syllable position effect in speech errors has been interpreted as reflecting constraints posed by the frame structure of a given language, which is separately operating from linguistic content during speech production. The effect refers to the phenomenon that when a speech error occurs, replaced and replacing sounds tend to be in the…

Effect of Bilateral Stimulation of the Subthalamic Nucleus on Different Speech Subsystems in Patients with Parkinson's Disease

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Putzer, Manfred; Barry, William J.; Moringlane, Jean Richard

2008-01-01

The effect of deep brain stimulation on the two speech-production subsystems, articulation and phonation, of nine Parkinsonian patients is examined. Production parameters (stop closure voicing; stop closure, VOT, vowel) in fast syllable-repetitions were defined and measured and quantitative, objective metrics of vocal fold function were obtained…

A POPULATION MEMETICS APPROACH TO CULTURAL EVOLUTION IN CHAFFINCH SONG: DIFFERENTIATION AMONG POPULATIONS.

PubMed

Lynch, Alejandro; Baker, Allan J

1994-04-01

We investigated cultural evolution in populations of common chaffinches (Fringilla coelebs) in the Atlantic islands (Azores, Madeira, and Canaries) and neighboring continental regions (Morocco and Iberia) by employing a population-memetic approach. To quantify differentiation, we used the concept of a song meme, defined as a single syllable or a series of linked syllables capable of being transmitted. The levels of cultural differentiation are higher among the Canaries populations than among the Azorean ones, even though the islands are on average closer to each other geographically. This is likely the result of reduced levels of migration, lower population sizes, and bottlenecks (possibly during the colonization of these populations) in the Canaries; all these factors produce a smaller effective population size and therefore accentuate the effects of differentiation by random drift. Significant levels of among-population differentiation in the Azores, in spite of substantial levels of migration, attest to the differentiating effects of high mutation rates of memes, which allow the accumulation of new mutants in different populations before migration can disperse them throughout the entire region. © 1994 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Influence of Initial and Final Consonants on Vowel Duration in CVC Syllables.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Naeser, Margaret A.

This study investigates the influence of initial and final consonants /p, b, s, z/ on the duration of four vowels /I, i, u, ae/ in 64 CVC syllables uttered by eight speakers of English from the same dialect area. The CVC stimuli were presented to the subjects in a frame sentence from a master tape. Subjects repeated each sentence immediately after…

The Functional Unit in Phonological Encoding: Evidence for Moraic Representation in Native Japanese Speakers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kureta, Yoichi; Fushimi, Takao; Tatsumi, Itaru F.

2006-01-01

Speech production studies have shown that the phonological form of a word is made up of phonemic segments in stress-timed languages (e.g., Dutch) and of syllables in syllable timed languages (e.g., Chinese). To clarify the functional unit of mora-timed languages, the authors asked native Japanese speakers to perform an implicit priming task (A. S.…

Proximate Units in Word Production: Phonological Encoding Begins with Syllables in Mandarin Chinese but with Segments in English

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Seaghdha, Padraig G.; Chen, Jenn-Yeu; Chen, Train-Min

2010-01-01

In Mandarin Chinese, speakers benefit from fore-knowledge of what the first syllable but not of what the first phonemic segment of a disyllabic word will be (Chen, Chen, & Dell, 2002), contrasting with findings in English, Dutch, and other Indo-European languages, and challenging the generality of current theories of word production. In this…

Conditioning of Attitudes Using a Backward Conditioning Paradigm. Language, Personality, Social and Cross-Cultural Study and Measurement of the Human A-R-D (Motivational) System.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brewer, Barbara A.; Gross, Michael C.

In order to test whether meaning will transfer when a backward conditioning paradigm is utilized, Staats' language conditioning procedure, including the pairing of unconditioned stimulus (UCS) evaluative words with conditioned stimulus (CS) nonsense syllables, was modified so that the UCS words preceded the CS nonsense syllables on each trial.…

Speed-difficulty trade-off in speech: Chinese versus English

PubMed Central

Sun, Yao; Latash, Elizaveta M.; Mikaelian, Irina L.

2011-01-01

This study continues the investigation of the previously described speed-difficulty trade-off in picture description tasks. In particular, we tested a hypothesis that the Mandarin Chinese and American English are similar in showing logarithmic dependences between speech time and index of difficulty (ID), while they differ significantly in the amount of time needed to describe simple pictures, this difference increases for more complex pictures, and it is associated with a proportional difference in the number of syllables used. Subjects (eight Chinese speakers and eight English speakers) were tested in pairs. One subject (the Speaker) described simple pictures, while the other subject (the Performer) tried to reproduce the pictures based on the verbal description as quickly as possible with a set of objects. The Chinese speakers initiated speech production significantly faster than the English speakers. Speech time scaled linearly with ln(ID) in all subjects, but the regression coefficient was significantly higher in the English speakers as compared with the Chinese speakers. The number of errors was somewhat lower in the Chinese participants (not significantly). The Chinese pairs also showed a shorter delay between the initiation of speech and initiation of action by the Performer, shorter movement time by the Performer, and shorter overall performance time. The number of syllables scaled with ID, and the Chinese speakers used significantly smaller numbers of syllables. Speech rate was comparable between the two groups, about 3 syllables/s; it dropped for more complex pictures (higher ID). When asked to reproduce the same pictures without speaking, movement time scaled linearly with ln(ID); the Chinese performers were slower than the English performers. We conclude that natural languages show a speed-difficulty trade-off similar to Fitts’ law; the trade-offs in movement and speech production are likely to originate at a cognitive level. The time advantage of the Chinese participants originates not from similarity of the simple pictures and Chinese written characters and not from more sloppy performance. It is linked to using fewer syllables to transmit the same information. We suggest that natural languages may differ by informational density defined as the amount of information transmitted by a given number of syllables. PMID:21479658

Visualizing Syllables: Real-Time Computerized Feedback within a Speech-Language Intervention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeThorne, Laura; Aparicio Betancourt, Mariana; Karahalios, Karrie; Halle, Jim; Bogue, Ellen

2015-01-01

Computerized technologies now offer unprecedented opportunities to provide real-time visual feedback to facilitate children's speech-language development. We employed a mixed-method design to examine the effectiveness of two speech-language interventions aimed at facilitating children's multisyllabic productions: one incorporated a novel…

Start-up rhetoric in eight speeches of Barack Obama.

PubMed

O'Connell, Daniel C; Kowal, Sabine; Sabin, Edward J; Lamia, John F; Dannevik, Margaret

2010-10-01

Our purpose in the following was to investigate the start-up rhetoric employed by U.S. President Barack Obama in his speeches. The initial 5 min from eight of his speeches from May to September of 2009 were selected for their variety of setting, audience, theme, and purpose. It was generally hypothesized that Barack Obama, widely recognized for the excellence of his rhetorical performance, would pursue both constant and variable strategies in his effort to establish contact with his audience. More specifically, it was hypothesized that the make-up of the audience--primarily native or non-native speakers of English--would be a prominent independent variable. A number of temporal and verbal measures were used as dependent variables. Variations were evident in mean length in syllables and duration in seconds of utterances (articulatory phrases), articulation rate in syllables per second of ontime, mean duration of silent pauses in seconds, and frequency of fillers, hesitations, colloquial words and phrases, introductory phrases, and 1st person singular pronominals. Results indicated that formality versus informality of the setting and presence or absence of a teleprompter were more prominent than native versus non-native audiences. Our analyses confirm Obama's skillfulness in challenging and variable settings and clearly detect orderliness and scientific generalizability in language use. The concept of orality/literacy provides a theoretical background and emphasizes dialogical interaction of audience and speaker.

Online neural monitoring of statistical learning.

PubMed

Batterink, Laura J; Paller, Ken A

2017-05-01

The extraction of patterns in the environment plays a critical role in many types of human learning, from motor skills to language acquisition. This process is known as statistical learning. Here we propose that statistical learning has two dissociable components: (1) perceptual binding of individual stimulus units into integrated composites and (2) storing those integrated representations for later use. Statistical learning is typically assessed using post-learning tasks, such that the two components are conflated. Our goal was to characterize the online perceptual component of statistical learning. Participants were exposed to a structured stream of repeating trisyllabic nonsense words and a random syllable stream. Online learning was indexed by an EEG-based measure that quantified neural entrainment at the frequency of the repeating words relative to that of individual syllables. Statistical learning was subsequently assessed using conventional measures in an explicit rating task and a reaction-time task. In the structured stream, neural entrainment to trisyllabic words was higher than in the random stream, increased as a function of exposure to track the progression of learning, and predicted performance on the reaction time (RT) task. These results demonstrate that monitoring this critical component of learning via rhythmic EEG entrainment reveals a gradual acquisition of knowledge whereby novel stimulus sequences are transformed into familiar composites. This online perceptual transformation is a critical component of learning. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neural Recruitment for the Production of Native and Novel Speech Sounds

PubMed Central

Moser, Dana; Fridriksson, Julius; Bonilha, Leonardo; Healy, Eric W.; Baylis, Gordon; Baker, Julie; Rorden, Chris

2010-01-01

Two primary areas of damage have been implicated in apraxia of speech (AOS) based on the time post-stroke: (1) the left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) in acute patients, and (2) the left anterior insula (aIns) in chronic patients. While AOS is widely characterized as a disorder in motor speech planning, little is known about the specific contributions of each of these regions in speech. The purpose of this study was to investigate cortical activation during speech production with a specific focus on the aIns and the IFG in normal adults. While undergoing sparse fMRI, 30 normal adults completed a 30-minute speech-repetition task consisting of three-syllable nonwords that contained either (a) English (native) syllables or (b) Non-English (novel) syllables. When the novel syllable productions were compared to the native syllable productions, greater neural activation was observed in the aIns and IFG, particularly during the first 10 minutes of the task when novelty was the greatest. Although activation in the aIns remained high throughout the task for novel productions, greater activation was clearly demonstrated when the initial 10 minutes were compared to the final 10 minutes of the task. These results suggest increased activity within an extensive neural network, including the aIns and IFG, when the motor speech system is taxed, such as during the production of novel speech. We speculate that the amount of left aIns recruitment during speech production may be related to the internal construction of the motor speech unit such that the degree of novelty/automaticity would result in more or less demands respectively. The role of the IFG as a storehouse and integrative processor for previously acquired routines is also discussed. PMID:19385020

Feeling backwards? How temporal order in speech affects the time course of vocal emotion recognition

PubMed Central

Rigoulot, Simon; Wassiliwizky, Eugen; Pell, Marc D.

2013-01-01

Recent studies suggest that the time course for recognizing vocal expressions of basic emotion in speech varies significantly by emotion type, implying that listeners uncover acoustic evidence about emotions at different rates in speech (e.g., fear is recognized most quickly whereas happiness and disgust are recognized relatively slowly; Pell and Kotz, 2011). To investigate whether vocal emotion recognition is largely dictated by the amount of time listeners are exposed to speech or the position of critical emotional cues in the utterance, 40 English participants judged the meaning of emotionally-inflected pseudo-utterances presented in a gating paradigm, where utterances were gated as a function of their syllable structure in segments of increasing duration from the end of the utterance (i.e., gated syllable-by-syllable from the offset rather than the onset of the stimulus). Accuracy for detecting six target emotions in each gate condition and the mean identification point for each emotion in milliseconds were analyzed and compared to results from Pell and Kotz (2011). We again found significant emotion-specific differences in the time needed to accurately recognize emotions from speech prosody, and new evidence that utterance-final syllables tended to facilitate listeners' accuracy in many conditions when compared to utterance-initial syllables. The time needed to recognize fear, anger, sadness, and neutral from speech cues was not influenced by how utterances were gated, although happiness and disgust were recognized significantly faster when listeners heard the end of utterances first. Our data provide new clues about the relative time course for recognizing vocally-expressed emotions within the 400–1200 ms time window, while highlighting that emotion recognition from prosody can be shaped by the temporal properties of speech. PMID:23805115

Tuning Neural Phase Entrainment to Speech.

PubMed

Falk, Simone; Lanzilotti, Cosima; Schön, Daniele

2017-08-01

Musical rhythm positively impacts on subsequent speech processing. However, the neural mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are so far unclear. We investigated whether carryover effects from a preceding musical cue to a speech stimulus result from a continuation of neural phase entrainment to periodicities that are present in both music and speech. Participants listened and memorized French metrical sentences that contained (quasi-)periodic recurrences of accents and syllables. Speech stimuli were preceded by a rhythmically regular or irregular musical cue. Our results show that the presence of a regular cue modulates neural response as estimated by EEG power spectral density, intertrial coherence, and source analyses at critical frequencies during speech processing compared with the irregular condition. Importantly, intertrial coherences for regular cues were indicative of the participants' success in memorizing the subsequent speech stimuli. These findings underscore the highly adaptive nature of neural phase entrainment across fundamentally different auditory stimuli. They also support current models of neural phase entrainment as a tool of predictive timing and attentional selection across cognitive domains.

A comparison of the effects of filtering and sensorineural hearing loss on patients of consonant confusions.

PubMed

Wang, M D; Reed, C M; Bilger, R C

1978-03-01

It has been found that listeners with sensorineural hearing loss who show similar patterns of consonant confusions also tend to have similar audiometric profiles. The present study determined whether normal listeners, presented with filtered speech, would produce consonant confusions similar to those previously reported for the hearing-impaired listener. Consonant confusion matrices were obtained from eight normal-hearing subjects for four sets of CV and VC nonsense syllables presented under six high-pass and six-low pass filtering conditions. Patterns of consonant confusion for each condition were described using phonological features in sequential information analysis. Severe low-pass filtering produced consonant confusions comparable to those of listeners with high-frequency hearing loss. Severe high-pass filtering gave a result comparable to that of patients with flat or rising audiograms. And, mild filtering resulted in confusion patterns comparable to those of listeners with essentially normal hearing. An explanation in terms of the spectrum, the level of speech, and the configuration of this individual listener's audiogram is given.

Recombinative generalization of within-syllable units in nonreading adults with mental retardation.

PubMed

Saunders, Kathryn J; O'Donnell, Jennifer; Vaidya, Manish; Williams, Dean C

2003-01-01

Two adults with mental retardation demonstrated the recombination of within-syllable units (onsets and rimes) using a spoken-to-printed-word matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure. Further testing with 1 participant showed comprehension of the printed words. Printed-word naming was minimal before, but greater after, comprehension tests. The findings suggest that these procedures hold promise for further basic and applied analyses of word-attack skills.

The Link between Text Difficulty, Reading Speed and Exploration of Printed Text during Shared Book Reading

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Roy-Charland, Annie; Perron, Melanie; Turgeon, Krystle-Lee; Hoffman, Nichola; Chamberland, Justin A.

2016-01-01

In the current study the reading speed of the narration and the difficulty of the text was manipulated and links were explored with children's attention to the printed text in shared book reading. Thirty-nine children (24 grade 1 and 15 grade 2) were presented easy and difficult books at slow (syllable by syllable) or fast (adult reading speed)…

Apraxia of Speech: The Effectiveness of a Treatment Regimen.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dworkin, James Paul; And Others

1988-01-01

A treatment program is described which successfully improved the speech of a 57-year-old apraxic patient. The program was composed of physiologic (nonspeech) and phonetic (articulatory) tasks that began with oroneuromotor control activities and progressed to consonant-vowel syllable, word, and sentence drills, with all activities paced by a…

Automatic Syllabification in English: A Comparison of Different Algorithms

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Marchand, Yannick; Adsett, Connie R.; Damper, Robert I.

2009-01-01

Automatic syllabification of words is challenging, not least because the syllable is not easy to define precisely. Consequently, no accepted standard algorithm for automatic syllabification exists. There are two broad approaches: rule-based and data-driven. The rule-based method effectively embodies some theoretical position regarding the…

The Impact of Otitis Media with Effusion on Infant Phonetic Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Polka, Linda; Rvachew, Susan

2005-01-01

The effect of prior otitis media with effusion (OME) or current middle ear effusion (MEE) on phonetic perception was examined by testing infants' discrimination of "boo" and "goo" syllables in 2 test sessions. Middle ear function was assessed following each perception test using tympanometry. Perceptual performance was compared…

Impact of Language on Development of Auditory-Visual Speech Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sekiyama, Kaoru; Burnham, Denis

2008-01-01

The McGurk effect paradigm was used to examine the developmental onset of inter-language differences between Japanese and English in auditory-visual speech perception. Participants were asked to identify syllables in audiovisual (with congruent or discrepant auditory and visual components), audio-only, and video-only presentations at various…

Age and Function Differences in Shared Task Performance: Walking and Talking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Kathleen; Hinton, Virginia A.; Bories, Tamara; Kovacs, Christopher R.

2006-01-01

Less is known about the effects of normal aging on speech output than other motor actions, because studies of communication integrity have focused on voice production and linguistic parameters rather than speech production characteristics. Studies investigating speech production in older adults have reported increased syllable duration (Slawinski,…

Flexibility in Statistical Word Segmentation: Finding Words in Foreign Speech

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Graf Estes, Katharine; Gluck, Stephanie Chen-Wu; Bastos, Carolina

2015-01-01

The present experiments investigated the flexibility of statistical word segmentation. There is ample evidence that infants can use statistical cues (e.g., syllable transitional probabilities) to segment fluent speech. However, it is unclear how effectively infants track these patterns in unfamiliar phonological systems. We examined whether…

The validity of a simple outcome measure to assess stuttering therapy.

PubMed

Huinck, Wendy; Rietveld, Toni

2007-01-01

The validity of a simple and not time-consuming self-assessment (SA) Scale was tested to establish progress after or during stuttering therapy. The scores on the SA scale were related to (1) objective measures (percentage of stuttered syllables, and syllables per minute) and (2) (self-)evaluation tests (self-evaluation questionnaires and perceptual evaluations or judgments of disfluency, naturalness and comfort by naïve listeners). Data were collected from two groups of stutterers at four measurement times: pretherapy, posttherapy, 12 months after therapy and 24 months after therapy. The first group attended the Comprehensive Stuttering Program: an integrated program based on fluency shaping techniques, and the second group participated in a Dutch group therapy: the Doetinchem Method that focuses on emotions and cognitions related to stuttering. Results showed similar score patterns on the SA scale, the self-evaluation questionnaires, the objective measures over time, and significant correlations between the SA scale and syllables per minute, percentage of stuttered syllables, Struggle subscale of the Perceptions of Stuttering Inventory and judged fluency on the T1-T2 difference scores. We concluded that the validity of the SA measure was proved and therefore encourage the use of such an instrument when (stuttering) treatment efficacy is studied.

English Listeners Use Suprasegmental Cues to Lexical Stress Early During Spoken-Word Recognition

PubMed Central

Poellmann, Katja; Kong, Ying-Yee

2017-01-01

Purpose We used an eye-tracking technique to investigate whether English listeners use suprasegmental information about lexical stress to speed up the recognition of spoken words in English. Method In a visual world paradigm, 24 young English listeners followed spoken instructions to choose 1 of 4 printed referents on a computer screen (e.g., “Click on the word admiral”). Displays contained a critical pair of words (e.g., ˈadmiral–ˌadmiˈration) that were segmentally identical for their first 2 syllables but differed suprasegmentally in their 1st syllable: One word began with primary lexical stress, and the other began with secondary lexical stress. All words had phrase-level prominence. Listeners' relative proportion of eye fixations on these words indicated their ability to differentiate them over time. Results Before critical word pairs became segmentally distinguishable in their 3rd syllables, participants fixated target words more than their stress competitors, but only if targets had initial primary lexical stress. The degree to which stress competitors were fixated was independent of their stress pattern. Conclusions Suprasegmental information about lexical stress modulates the time course of spoken-word recognition. Specifically, suprasegmental information on the primary-stressed syllable of words with phrase-level prominence helps in distinguishing the word from phonological competitors with secondary lexical stress. PMID:28056135

Focal/Nonfocal Cue Effects in Prospective Memory: Monitoring Difficulty or Different Retrieval Processes?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scullin, Michael K.; McDaniel, Mark A.; Shelton, Jill T.; Lee, Ji Hae

2010-01-01

We investigated whether focal/nonfocal effects (e.g., Einstein et al., 2005) in prospective memory (PM) are explained by cue differences in monitoring difficulty. In Experiment 1, we show that syllable cues (used in Einstein et al., 2005) are more difficult to monitor for than are word cues; however, initial-letter cues (in words) are similar in…

Binding and unbinding the auditory and visual streams in the McGurk effect.

PubMed

Nahorna, Olha; Berthommier, Frédéric; Schwartz, Jean-Luc

2012-08-01

Subjects presented with coherent auditory and visual streams generally fuse them into a single percept. This results in enhanced intelligibility in noise, or in visual modification of the auditory percept in the McGurk effect. It is classically considered that processing is done independently in the auditory and visual systems before interaction occurs at a certain representational stage, resulting in an integrated percept. However, some behavioral and neurophysiological data suggest the existence of a two-stage process. A first stage would involve binding together the appropriate pieces of audio and video information before fusion per se in a second stage. Then it should be possible to design experiments leading to unbinding. It is shown here that if a given McGurk stimulus is preceded by an incoherent audiovisual context, the amount of McGurk effect is largely reduced. Various kinds of incoherent contexts (acoustic syllables dubbed on video sentences or phonetic or temporal modifications of the acoustic content of a regular sequence of audiovisual syllables) can significantly reduce the McGurk effect even when they are short (less than 4 s). The data are interpreted in the framework of a two-stage "binding and fusion" model for audiovisual speech perception.

Basal ganglia function, stuttering, sequencing, and repair in adult songbirds.

PubMed

Kubikova, Lubica; Bosikova, Eva; Cvikova, Martina; Lukacova, Kristina; Scharff, Constance; Jarvis, Erich D

2014-10-13

A pallial-basal-ganglia-thalamic-pallial loop in songbirds is involved in vocal motor learning. Damage to its basal ganglia part, Area X, in adult zebra finches has been noted to have no strong effects on song and its function is unclear. Here we report that neurotoxic damage to adult Area X induced changes in singing tempo and global syllable sequencing in all animals, and considerably increased syllable repetition in birds whose song motifs ended with minor repetitions before lesioning. This stuttering-like behavior started at one month, and improved over six months. Unexpectedly, the lesioned region showed considerable recovery, including immigration of newly generated or repaired neurons that became active during singing. The timing of the recovery and stuttering suggest that immature recovering activity of the circuit might be associated with stuttering. These findings indicate that even after juvenile learning is complete, the adult striatum plays a role in higher level organization of learned vocalizations.

Vietnamese Document Representation and Classification

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nguyen, Giang-Son; Gao, Xiaoying; Andreae, Peter

Vietnamese is very different from English and little research has been done on Vietnamese document classification, or indeed, on any kind of Vietnamese language processing, and only a few small corpora are available for research. We created a large Vietnamese text corpus with about 18000 documents, and manually classified them based on different criteria such as topics and styles, giving several classification tasks of different difficulty levels. This paper introduces a new syllable-based document representation at the morphological level of the language for efficient classification. We tested the representation on our corpus with different classification tasks using six classification algorithms and two feature selection techniques. Our experiments show that the new representation is effective for Vietnamese categorization, and suggest that best performance can be achieved using syllable-pair document representation, an SVM with a polynomial kernel as the learning algorithm, and using Information gain and an external dictionary for feature selection.

Effects of Instantaneous Multiband Dynamic Compression on Speech Intelligibility

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Herzke, Tobias; Hohmann, Volker

2005-12-01

The recruitment phenomenon, that is, the reduced dynamic range between threshold and uncomfortable level, is attributed to the loss of instantaneous dynamic compression on the basilar membrane. Despite this, hearing aids commonly use slow-acting dynamic compression for its compensation, because this was found to be the most successful strategy in terms of speech quality and intelligibility rehabilitation. Former attempts to use fast-acting compression gave ambiguous results, raising the question as to whether auditory-based recruitment compensation by instantaneous compression is in principle applicable in hearing aids. This study thus investigates instantaneous multiband dynamic compression based on an auditory filterbank. Instantaneous envelope compression is performed in each frequency band of a gammatone filterbank, which provides a combination of time and frequency resolution comparable to the normal healthy cochlea. The gain characteristics used for dynamic compression are deduced from categorical loudness scaling. In speech intelligibility tests, the instantaneous dynamic compression scheme was compared against a linear amplification scheme, which used the same filterbank for frequency analysis, but employed constant gain factors that restored the sound level for medium perceived loudness in each frequency band. In subjective comparisons, five of nine subjects preferred the linear amplification scheme and would not accept the instantaneous dynamic compression in hearing aids. Four of nine subjects did not perceive any quality differences. A sentence intelligibility test in noise (Oldenburg sentence test) showed little to no negative effects of the instantaneous dynamic compression, compared to linear amplification. A word intelligibility test in quiet (one-syllable rhyme test) showed that the subjects benefit from the larger amplification at low levels provided by instantaneous dynamic compression. Further analysis showed that the increase in intelligibility resulting from a gain provided by instantaneous compression is as high as from a gain provided by linear amplification. No negative effects of the distortions introduced by the instantaneous compression scheme in terms of speech recognition are observed.

Patterns of acoustic variation in Cicada barbara Stål (Hemiptera, Cicadoidea) from the Iberian Peninsula and Morocco.

PubMed

Pinto-Juma, G A; Seabra, S G; Quartau, J A

2008-02-01

Field recordings of the calling song and of an amplitude modulated signal produced by males of Cicada barbara from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula were analysed in order to assess the geographical acoustic variation and the potential usefulness of acoustic data in the discrimination of subspecies and populations. Sound recordings were digitized and the frequency and temporal properties of the calls of each cicada were analysed. In all regions studied, peak frequency, quartiles 25, 50 and 75% and syllable rate showed low coefficients of variation suggesting inherent static properties. All frequency variables were correlated with the latitude, decreasing from south to north. In addition, most acoustic variables of the calling song showed significant differences between regions, and PCA and DFA analyses supported a partitioning within this species between Iberian Peninsula+Ceuta and Morocco, corroborating mtDNA data on the same species. Therefore, the subspecific division of C. barbara into C. barbara barbara from Morocco and C. barbara lusitanica from Portugal, Spain and Ceuta finds support from the present acoustic analyses, a result which is also reinforced by molecular markers.

Twelve months of active musical training in 8- to 10-year-old children enhances the preattentive processing of syllabic duration and voice onset time.

PubMed

Chobert, Julie; François, Clément; Velay, Jean-Luc; Besson, Mireille

2014-04-01

Musical training has been shown to positively influence linguistic abilities. To follow the developmental dynamics of this transfer effect at the preattentive level, we conducted a longitudinal study over 2 school years with nonmusician children randomly assigned to music or to painting training. We recorded the mismatch negativity (MMN), a cortical correlate of preattentive mismatch detection, to syllables that differed in vowel frequency, vowel duration, and voice onset time (VOT), using a test-training-retest procedure and 3 times of testing: before training, after 6 months and after 12 months of training. While no between-group differences were found before training, enhanced preattentive processing of syllabic duration and VOT, as reflected by greater MMN amplitude, but not of frequency, was found after 12 months of training in the music group only. These results demonstrate neuroplasticity in the child brain and suggest that active musical training rather than innate predispositions for music yielded the improvements in musically trained children. These results also highlight the influence of musical training for duration perception in speech and for the development of phonological representations in normally developing children. They support the importance of music-based training programs for children's education and open new remediation strategies for children with language-based learning impairments.

Perception and the Temporal Properties of Speech.

DTIC Science & Technology

1993-01-11

conditions. In the embedded condition, phoneme sequences equivalent to these words formed the second syllable of a two-syllable word. In the unembedded ... unembedded in the sequence "warm lips". These priming sequences were based on the sequences used in Experiment 2. Each combinable priming sequence in...unrelated, to the embedded or unembedded prime word. The probes used in this experiment were identical to the ones used in Experiment 2. Subjects were tested

The Whole Is More than the Sum of Its Parts--Audiovisual Processing of Phonemes Investigated with ERPs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hessler, Dorte; Jonkers, Roel; Stowe, Laurie; Bastiaanse, Roelien

2013-01-01

In the current ERP study, an active oddball task was carried out, testing pure tones and auditory, visual and audiovisual syllables. For pure tones, an MMN, an N2b, and a P3 were found, confirming traditional findings. Auditory syllables evoked an N2 and a P3. We found that the amplitude of the P3 depended on the distance between standard and…

Sight-Singing Scores of High School Choristers with Extensive Training in Movable Solfege Syllables and Curwen Hand Signs

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McClung, Alan C.

2008-01-01

Randomly chosen high school choristers with extensive training in solfege syllables and Curwen hand signs (N = 38) are asked to sight-sing two melodies, one while using Curwen hand signs and the other without. Out of a perfect score of 16, the mean score with hand signs was 10.37 (SD = 4.23), and without hand signs, 10.84 (SD = 3.96). A…

A new, morphologically cryptic bush-cricket discovered on the basis of its song in the Carpathian Mountains (Insecta, Orthoptera, Tettigoniidae).

PubMed

Iorgu, Ionuţ Ştefan; Iorgu, Elena Iulia; Szövényi, Gergely; Orci, Kirill Márk

2017-01-01

A new, morphologically cryptic species of phaneropterine bush-crickets is described from the grasslands of the Romanian Eastern Carpathians. Despite the morphological and acoustic similarities with the recently described Isophya nagyi Szövényi, Puskás & Orci, I. bucovinensis sp. n. is characterized by a peculiar male calling song, with faster syllable repetition rate (160-220 syllables per minute, at 22-27°C) and less complex syllable structure (composed of only two elements instead of three observable in I. nagyi ). The morphological description of the new species is supplemented with an oscillographic and spectrographic analysis of the male calling song and male-female pair-forming acoustic duet. An acoustic signal-based identification key is provided for all the presently known species of the Isophya camptoxypha species group, including the new species.

A new, morphologically cryptic bush-cricket discovered on the basis of its song in the Carpathian Mountains (Insecta, Orthoptera, Tettigoniidae)

PubMed Central

Iorgu, Ionuţ Ştefan; Iorgu, Elena Iulia; Szövényi, Gergely; Orci, Kirill Márk

2017-01-01

Abstract A new, morphologically cryptic species of phaneropterine bush-crickets is described from the grasslands of the Romanian Eastern Carpathians. Despite the morphological and acoustic similarities with the recently described Isophya nagyi Szövényi, Puskás & Orci, I. bucovinensis sp. n. is characterized by a peculiar male calling song, with faster syllable repetition rate (160–220 syllables per minute, at 22–27°C) and less complex syllable structure (composed of only two elements instead of three observable in I. nagyi). The morphological description of the new species is supplemented with an oscillographic and spectrographic analysis of the male calling song and male–female pair-forming acoustic duet. An acoustic signal-based identification key is provided for all the presently known species of the Isophya camptoxypha species group, including the new species. PMID:28769716

Surprise! Infants consider possible bases of generalization for a single input example.

PubMed

Gerken, LouAnn; Dawson, Colin; Chatila, Razanne; Tenenbaum, Josh

2015-01-01

Infants have been shown to generalize from a small number of input examples. However, existing studies allow two possible means of generalization. One is via a process of noting similarities shared by several examples. Alternatively, generalization may reflect an implicit desire to explain the input. The latter view suggests that generalization might occur when even a single input example is surprising, given the learner's current model of the domain. To test the possibility that infants are able to generalize based on a single example, we familiarized 9-month-olds with a single three-syllable input example that contained either one surprising feature (syllable repetition, Experiment 1) or two features (repetition and a rare syllable, Experiment 2). In both experiments, infants generalized only to new strings that maintained all of the surprising features from familiarization. This research suggests that surprise can promote very rapid generalization. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Phonological awareness of English by Chinese and Korean bilinguals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chung, Hyunjoo; Schmidt, Anna; Cheng, Tse-Hsuan

2002-05-01

This study examined non-native speakers phonological awareness of spoken English. Chinese speaking adults, Korean speaking adults, and English speaking adults were tested. The L2 speakers had been in the US for less than 6 months. Chinese and Korean allow no consonant clusters and have limited numbers of consonants allowable in syllable final position, whereas English allows a variety of clusters and various consonants in syllable final position. Subjects participated in eight phonological awareness tasks (4 replacement tasks and 4 deletion tasks) based on English phonology. In addition, digit span was measured. Preliminary analysis indicates that Chinese and Korean speaker errors appear to reflect L1 influences (such as orthography, phonotactic constraints, and phonology). All three groups of speakers showed more difficulty with manipulation of rime than onset, especially with postvocalic nasals. Results will be discussed in terms of syllable structure, L1 influence, and association with short term memory.

The stop voicing contrast in French: From citation speech to sentencial speech

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Abdelli-Beruh, Nassima; Demaio, Eileen; Hisagi, Miwako

2004-05-01

This study explores the influence of speaking style on the salience of the acoustic correlates to the stop voicing distinction in French. Monolingual French speakers produced twenty-one C_vC_ syllables in citation speech, in minimal pairs and in sentence-length utterances (/pa/-/a/ context: /il a di pa C_vC_ a lui/; /pas/-/s/ context: /il a di pas C_vC_ sa~ lui/). Prominent stress was on the C_vC_. Voicing-related differences in percentages of closure voicing, durations of aspiration, closure, and vowel were analyzed as a function of these three speaking styles. Results show that the salience of the acoustic-phonetic segments present when the syllables are uttered in isolation or in minimal pairs is different than when the syllables are spoken in a sentence. These results are in agreement with findings in English.

The effect of intensive speech rate and intonation therapy on intelligibility in Parkinson's disease.

PubMed

Martens, Heidi; Van Nuffelen, Gwen; Dekens, Tomas; Hernández-Díaz Huici, Maria; Kairuz Hernández-Díaz, Hector Arturo; De Letter, Miet; De Bodt, Marc

2015-01-01

Most studies on treatment of prosody in individuals with dysarthria due to Parkinson's disease are based on intensive treatment of loudness. The present study investigates the effect of intensive treatment of speech rate and intonation on the intelligibility of individuals with dysarthria due to Parkinson's disease. A one group pretest-posttest design was used to compare intelligibility, speech rate, and intonation before and after treatment. Participants included eleven Dutch-speaking individuals with predominantly moderate dysarthria due to Parkinson's disease, who received five one-hour treatment sessions per week during three weeks. Treatment focused on lowering speech rate and magnifying the phrase final intonation contrast between statements and questions. Intelligibility was perceptually assessed using a standardized sentence intelligibility test. Speech rate was automatically assessed during the sentence intelligibility test as well as during a passage reading task and a storytelling task. Intonation was perceptually assessed using a sentence reading task and a sentence repetition task, and also acoustically analyzed in terms of maximum fundamental frequency. After treatment, there was a significant improvement of sentence intelligibility (effect size .83), a significant increase of pause frequency during the passage reading task, a significant improvement of correct listener identification of statements and questions, and a significant increase of the maximum fundamental frequency in the final syllable of questions during both intonation tasks. The findings suggest that participants were more intelligible and more able to manipulate pause frequency and statement-question intonation after treatment. However, the relationship between the change in intelligibility on the one hand and the changes in speech rate and intonation on the other hand is not yet fully understood. Results are nuanced in the light of the operated research design. The reader will be able to: (1) describe the effect of intensive speech rate and intonation treatment on intelligibility of speakers with dysarthria due to PD, (2) describe the effect of intensive speech rate treatment on rate manipulation by speakers with dysarthria due to PD, and (3) describe the effect of intensive intonation treatment on manipulation of the phrase final intonation contrast between statements and questions by speakers with dysarthria due to PD. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Word length, set size, and lexical factors: Re-examining what causes the word length effect.

PubMed

Guitard, Dominic; Gabel, Andrew J; Saint-Aubin, Jean; Surprenant, Aimée M; Neath, Ian

2018-04-19

The word length effect, better recall of lists of short (fewer syllables) than long (more syllables) words has been termed a benchmark effect of working memory. Despite this, experiments on the word length effect can yield quite different results depending on set size and stimulus properties. Seven experiments are reported that address these 2 issues. Experiment 1 replicated the finding of a preserved word length effect under concurrent articulation for large stimulus sets, which contrasts with the abolition of the word length effect by concurrent articulation for small stimulus sets. Experiment 2, however, demonstrated that when the short and long words are equated on more dimensions, concurrent articulation abolishes the word length effect for large stimulus sets. Experiment 3 shows a standard word length effect when output time is equated, but Experiments 4-6 show no word length effect when short and long words are equated on increasingly more dimensions that previous demonstrations have overlooked. Finally, Experiment 7 compared recall of a small and large neighborhood words that were equated on all the dimensions used in Experiment 6 (except for those directly related to neighborhood size) and a neighborhood size effect was still observed. We conclude that lexical factors, rather than word length per se, are better predictors of when the word length effect will occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatio-temporal distribution of brain activity associated with audio-visually congruent and incongruent speech and the McGurk Effect.

PubMed

Pratt, Hillel; Bleich, Naomi; Mittelman, Nomi

2015-11-01

Spatio-temporal distributions of cortical activity to audio-visual presentations of meaningless vowel-consonant-vowels and the effects of audio-visual congruence/incongruence, with emphasis on the McGurk effect, were studied. The McGurk effect occurs when a clearly audible syllable with one consonant, is presented simultaneously with a visual presentation of a face articulating a syllable with a different consonant and the resulting percept is a syllable with a consonant other than the auditorily presented one. Twenty subjects listened to pairs of audio-visually congruent or incongruent utterances and indicated whether pair members were the same or not. Source current densities of event-related potentials to the first utterance in the pair were estimated and effects of stimulus-response combinations, brain area, hemisphere, and clarity of visual articulation were assessed. Auditory cortex, superior parietal cortex, and middle temporal cortex were the most consistently involved areas across experimental conditions. Early (<200 msec) processing of the consonant was overall prominent in the left hemisphere, except right hemisphere prominence in superior parietal cortex and secondary visual cortex. Clarity of visual articulation impacted activity in secondary visual cortex and Wernicke's area. McGurk perception was associated with decreased activity in primary and secondary auditory cortices and Wernicke's area before 100 msec, increased activity around 100 msec which decreased again around 180 msec. Activity in Broca's area was unaffected by McGurk perception and was only increased to congruent audio-visual stimuli 30-70 msec following consonant onset. The results suggest left hemisphere prominence in the effects of stimulus and response conditions on eight brain areas involved in dynamically distributed parallel processing of audio-visual integration. Initially (30-70 msec) subcortical contributions to auditory cortex, superior parietal cortex, and middle temporal cortex occur. During 100-140 msec, peristriate visual influences and Wernicke's area join in the processing. Resolution of incongruent audio-visual inputs is then attempted, and if successful, McGurk perception occurs and cortical activity in left hemisphere further increases between 170 and 260 msec.

Readability and Its Effects on Reading Rate, Subjective Judgments of Comprehensibility and Comprehension.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Coke, Esther U.

Prose passages read aloud or silently were rated for pronounceability and comprehensibility. The relationships of text-derived readability indices to reading rate, comprehensibility ratings and comprehension test scores were explored. Reading rate in syllables per minute was unrelated to readability. The high correlation between rate in words per…

A Researcher Looks Back: First Person

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Steyger, Peter S.

2004-01-01

In high school, the author was bullied constantly. The bullying centered on the fact that he could not easily articulate new multi-syllable words or participate in casual conversations with other boys. The bullying had several effects: (1) he became more isolated in society and far less confident in his abilities; (2) he became afraid to ask…

Searching for Syllabic Coding Units in Speech Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dumay, Nicolas; Content, Alain

2012-01-01

Two auditory priming experiments tested whether the effect of final phonological overlap relies on syllabic representations. Amount of shared phonemic information and syllabic status of the overlap between nonword primes and targets were varied orthogonally. In the related conditions, CV.CCVC items shared the last syllable (e.g., vi.klyd-p[image…

Detecting and Correcting Speech Rhythm Errors

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yurtbasi, Metin

2015-01-01

Every language has its own rhythm. Unlike many other languages in the world, English depends on the correct pronunciation of stressed and unstressed or weakened syllables recurring in the same phrase or sentence. Mastering the rhythm of English makes speaking more effective. Experiments have shown that we tend to hear speech as more rhythmical…

Objective and subjective assessment of tracheoesophageal prosthesis voice outcome.

PubMed

D'Alatri, Lucia; Bussu, Francesco; Scarano, Emanuele; Paludetti, Gaetano; Marchese, Maria Raffaella

2012-09-01

To investigate the relationships between objective measures and the results of subjective assessment of voice quality and speech intelligibility in patients submitted to total laryngectomy and tracheoesophageal (TE) puncture. Retrospective. Twenty patients implanted with voice prosthesis were studied. After surgery, the entire sample performed speech rehabilitation. The assessment protocol included maximum phonation time (MPT), number of syllables per deep breath, acoustic analysis of the sustained vowel /a/ and of a bisyllabic word, perceptual evaluation (pleasantness and intelligibility%), and self-assessment. The correlation between pleasantness and intelligibility% was statistically significant. Both the latter were significantly correlated with the acoustic signal type, the number of formant peaks, and the F2-F1 difference. The intelligibility% and number of formant peaks were significantly correlated with the MPT and number of syllables per deep breath. Moreover, significant correlations were found between the number of formant peaks and both intelligibility% and pleasantness. The higher the number of syllables per deep breath and the longer the MPT, significantly higher was the number of formant peaks and the intelligibility%. The study failed to show significant correlation between patient's self-assessment of voice quality and both pleasantness and communication effectiveness. The multidimensional assessment seems to be a reliable tool to evaluate the TE functional outcome. Particularly, the results showed that both pleasantness and intelligibility of TE speech are correlated to the availability of expired air and the function of the vocal tract. Copyright © 2012 The Voice Foundation. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

Infant vocalizations and the early diagnosis of severe hearing impairment.

PubMed

Eilers, R E; Oller, D K

1994-02-01

To determine whether late onset of canonical babbling could be used as a criterion to determine risk of hearing impairment, we obtained vocalization samples longitudinally from 94 infants with normal hearing and 37 infants with severe to profound hearing impairment. Parents were instructed to report the onset of canonical babbling (the production of well-formed syllables such as "da," "na," "bee," "yaya"). Verification that the infants were producing canonical syllables was collected in laboratory audio recordings. Infants with normal hearing produced canonical vocalizations before 11 months of age (range, 3 to 10 months; mode, 7 months); infants who were deaf failed to produce canonical syllables until 11 months of age or older, often well into the third year of life (range, 11 to 49 months; mode, 24 months). The correlation between age at onset of the canonical stage and age at auditory amplification was 0.68, indicating that early identification and fitting of hearing aids is of significant benefit to infants learning language. The fact that there is no overlap in the distribution of the onset of canonical babbling between infants with normal hearing and infants with hearing impairment means that the failure of otherwise healthy infants to produce canonical syllables before 11 months of age should be considered a serious risk factor for hearing impairment and, when observed, should result in immediate referral for audiologic evaluation.

Vocal exploration is locally regulated during song learning

PubMed Central

Ravbar, Primoz; Parra, Lucas C.; Lipkind, Dina; Tchernichovski, Ofer

2012-01-01

Exploratory variability is essential for sensory-motor learning, but it is not known how and at what time scales it is regulated. We manipulated song learning in zebra finches to experimentally control the requirements for vocal exploration in different parts of their song. We first trained birds to perform a one-syllable song, and once they mastered it we added a new syllable to the song model. Remarkably, when practicing the modified song, birds rapidly alternated between high and low acoustic variability to confine vocal exploration to the newly added syllable. Further, even within syllables, acoustic variability changed independently across song elements that were only milliseconds apart. Analysis of the entire vocal output during learning revealed that the variability of each song element decreased as it approached the target, correlating with momentary local distance from the target and less so with the overall distance. We conclude that vocal error is computed locally in sub-syllabic time scales and that song elements can be learned and crystalized independently. Songbirds have dedicated brain circuitry for vocal babbling in the anterior forebrain pathway (AFP), which generates exploratory song patterns that drive premotor neurons at the song nucleus RA (robust nucleus of the arcopallium). We hypothesize that either AFP adjusts the gain of vocal exploration in fine time scales, or that the sensitivity of RA premotor neurons to AFP/HVC inputs varies across song elements. PMID:22399765

The role of psychological processes in estimates of stuttering severity.

PubMed

Manning, Walter; Gayle Beck, J

2013-12-01

To examine the associations of trait anxiety (STAI), social anxiety (SIAS), depression (BDI-II), and personality features (ADP-IV) with three measures of stuttering severity: %SS, Stuttering Severity, Instrument, and the Overall Assessment of the Speaker's Experience of Stuttering. Fifty adults with a history of stuttering served as participants. Participant scores on trait, anxiety, social anxiety, depression, and personality features were entered into a regression analysis, with the criterion variables (DVs) being: %SS, SSI-3, OASES total score. In order to explore the OASES, further, each of the four OASES subscales were also examined. A separate regression was conducted for, each dependent variable. The OASES total score model was significant (p<.0001) and revealed that social anxiety and, trait anxiety were the only significant predictors, with medium effect sizes noted for both variables. In contrast, percent syllables stuttered and the SSI were not significantly associated with psychological, variables, suggesting that anxiety may not always be related to overt indicators of stuttering. Depression and personality dysfunction were not significantly associated with any measure of, stuttering severity. Anxiety in the form of social and trait anxiety are significantly associated with stuttering, severity as indicated by the OASES. Traditional procedures for assigning severity ratings to individuals, who stutter based on percent syllables stuttered and the Stuttering Severity Instrument are not, significantly related to psychological processes central to the stuttering experience. Depression and, personality characteristics do not meaningfully account for stuttering. The reader will be able to: (a) differentiate forms of anxiety that are likely to be associated with stuttering (b) understand the importance of determining features of stuttering that go beyond the obvious, surface characteristics of stuttering frequency, and (c) discuss the important clinical and theoretical implications for understanding the degree of psychological dysfunction that is likely to be characteristic of those who stutter. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Prevalence of phonological disorders and phonological processes in typical and atypical phonological development.

PubMed

Ceron, Marizete Ilha; Gubiani, Marileda Barichello; Oliveira, Camila Rosa de; Gubiani, Marieli Barichello; Keske-Soares, Márcia

2017-05-08

To determine the occurrence of phonological disorders by age, gender and school type, and analyze the phonological processes observed in typical and atypical phonological development across different age groups. The sample consisted of 866 children aged between 3:0 and 8:11 years, recruited from public and private schools in the city of Santa Maria/RS. A phonological evaluation was performed to analyze the operative phonological processes. 15.26% (n = 132) of the sample presented atypical phonological acquisition (phonological disorders). Phonological impairments were more frequent in public school students across all age groups. Phonological alterations were most frequent between ages 4 -to 6, and more prevalent in males than females in all but the youngest age group. The most common phonological processes in typical phonological acquisition were: cluster reduction; nonlateral liquid deletion in coda; nonlateral liquid substitution in onset; semivocalization of lateral liquids in coda; and unstressed syllable deletion. In children with phonological disorders, the most common phonological processes were: lateral and nonlateral liquid substitution in onset position; nonlateral liquid deletion; fronting of fricatives in onset position; unstressed syllable deletion; semivocalization of nonlateral liquid in coda; and nonlateral liquid deletion in coda position. Phonological processes were highly prevalent in the present sample, and occurred more often in boys than in girls. Information regarding the type and frequency of phonological processes in both typical phonological acquisition and phonological disorders may contribute to early diagnosis and increase the efficiency of treatment planning.

Mapping the cortical representation of speech sounds in a syllable repetition task.

PubMed

Markiewicz, Christopher J; Bohland, Jason W

2016-11-01

Speech repetition relies on a series of distributed cortical representations and functional pathways. A speaker must map auditory representations of incoming sounds onto learned speech items, maintain an accurate representation of those items in short-term memory, interface that representation with the motor output system, and fluently articulate the target sequence. A "dorsal stream" consisting of posterior temporal, inferior parietal and premotor regions is thought to mediate auditory-motor representations and transformations, but the nature and activation of these representations for different portions of speech repetition tasks remains unclear. Here we mapped the correlates of phonetic and/or phonological information related to the specific phonemes and syllables that were heard, remembered, and produced using a series of cortical searchlight multi-voxel pattern analyses trained on estimates of BOLD responses from individual trials. Based on responses linked to input events (auditory syllable presentation), predictive vowel-level information was found in the left inferior frontal sulcus, while syllable prediction revealed significant clusters in the left ventral premotor cortex and central sulcus and the left mid superior temporal sulcus. Responses linked to output events (the GO signal cueing overt production) revealed strong clusters of vowel-related information bilaterally in the mid to posterior superior temporal sulcus. For the prediction of onset and coda consonants, input-linked responses yielded distributed clusters in the superior temporal cortices, which were further informative for classifiers trained on output-linked responses. Output-linked responses in the Rolandic cortex made strong predictions for the syllables and consonants produced, but their predictive power was reduced for vowels. The results of this study provide a systematic survey of how cortical response patterns covary with the identity of speech sounds, which will help to constrain and guide theoretical models of speech perception, speech production, and phonological working memory. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Acoustic-Emergent Phonology in the Amplitude Envelope of Child-Directed Speech

PubMed Central

Leong, Victoria; Goswami, Usha

2015-01-01

When acquiring language, young children may use acoustic spectro-temporal patterns in speech to derive phonological units in spoken language (e.g., prosodic stress patterns, syllables, phonemes). Children appear to learn acoustic-phonological mappings rapidly, without direct instruction, yet the underlying developmental mechanisms remain unclear. Across different languages, a relationship between amplitude envelope sensitivity and phonological development has been found, suggesting that children may make use of amplitude modulation (AM) patterns within the envelope to develop a phonological system. Here we present the Spectral Amplitude Modulation Phase Hierarchy (S-AMPH) model, a set of algorithms for deriving the dominant AM patterns in child-directed speech (CDS). Using Principal Components Analysis, we show that rhythmic CDS contains an AM hierarchy comprising 3 core modulation timescales. These timescales correspond to key phonological units: prosodic stress (Stress AM, ~2 Hz), syllables (Syllable AM, ~5 Hz) and onset-rime units (Phoneme AM, ~20 Hz). We argue that these AM patterns could in principle be used by naïve listeners to compute acoustic-phonological mappings without lexical knowledge. We then demonstrate that the modulation statistics within this AM hierarchy indeed parse the speech signal into a primitive hierarchically-organised phonological system comprising stress feet (proto-words), syllables and onset-rime units. We apply the S-AMPH model to two other CDS corpora, one spontaneous and one deliberately-timed. The model accurately identified 72–82% (freely-read CDS) and 90–98% (rhythmically-regular CDS) stress patterns, syllables and onset-rime units. This in-principle demonstration that primitive phonology can be extracted from speech AMs is termed Acoustic-Emergent Phonology (AEP) theory. AEP theory provides a set of methods for examining how early phonological development is shaped by the temporal modulation structure of speech across languages. The S-AMPH model reveals a crucial developmental role for stress feet (AMs ~2 Hz). Stress feet underpin different linguistic rhythm typologies, and speech rhythm underpins language acquisition by infants in all languages. PMID:26641472

Acoustic-Emergent Phonology in the Amplitude Envelope of Child-Directed Speech.

PubMed

Leong, Victoria; Goswami, Usha

2015-01-01

When acquiring language, young children may use acoustic spectro-temporal patterns in speech to derive phonological units in spoken language (e.g., prosodic stress patterns, syllables, phonemes). Children appear to learn acoustic-phonological mappings rapidly, without direct instruction, yet the underlying developmental mechanisms remain unclear. Across different languages, a relationship between amplitude envelope sensitivity and phonological development has been found, suggesting that children may make use of amplitude modulation (AM) patterns within the envelope to develop a phonological system. Here we present the Spectral Amplitude Modulation Phase Hierarchy (S-AMPH) model, a set of algorithms for deriving the dominant AM patterns in child-directed speech (CDS). Using Principal Components Analysis, we show that rhythmic CDS contains an AM hierarchy comprising 3 core modulation timescales. These timescales correspond to key phonological units: prosodic stress (Stress AM, ~2 Hz), syllables (Syllable AM, ~5 Hz) and onset-rime units (Phoneme AM, ~20 Hz). We argue that these AM patterns could in principle be used by naïve listeners to compute acoustic-phonological mappings without lexical knowledge. We then demonstrate that the modulation statistics within this AM hierarchy indeed parse the speech signal into a primitive hierarchically-organised phonological system comprising stress feet (proto-words), syllables and onset-rime units. We apply the S-AMPH model to two other CDS corpora, one spontaneous and one deliberately-timed. The model accurately identified 72-82% (freely-read CDS) and 90-98% (rhythmically-regular CDS) stress patterns, syllables and onset-rime units. This in-principle demonstration that primitive phonology can be extracted from speech AMs is termed Acoustic-Emergent Phonology (AEP) theory. AEP theory provides a set of methods for examining how early phonological development is shaped by the temporal modulation structure of speech across languages. The S-AMPH model reveals a crucial developmental role for stress feet (AMs ~2 Hz). Stress feet underpin different linguistic rhythm typologies, and speech rhythm underpins language acquisition by infants in all languages.

When does length cause the word length effect?

PubMed

Jalbert, Annie; Neath, Ian; Bireta, Tamra J; Surprenant, Aimée M

2011-03-01

The word length effect, the finding that lists of short words are better recalled than lists of long words, has been termed one of the benchmark findings that any theory of immediate memory must account for. Indeed, the effect led directly to the development of working memory and the phonological loop, and it is viewed as the best remaining evidence for time-based decay. However, previous studies investigating this effect have confounded length with orthographic neighborhood size. In the present study, Experiments 1A and 1B revealed typical effects of length when short and long words were equated on all relevant dimensions previously identified in the literature except for neighborhood size. In Experiment 2, consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words with a large orthographic neighborhood were better recalled than were CVC words with a small orthographic neighborhood. In Experiments 3 and 4, using two different sets of stimuli, we showed that when short (1-syllable) and long (3-syllable) items were equated for neighborhood size, the word length effect disappeared. Experiment 5 replicated this with spoken recall. We suggest that the word length effect may be better explained by the differences in linguistic and lexical properties of short and long words rather than by length per se. These results add to the growing literature showing problems for theories of memory that include decay offset by rehearsal as a central feature. 2011 APA, all rights reserved

Implementation of Three Text to Speech Systems for Kurdish Language

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bahrampour, Anvar; Barkhoda, Wafa; Azami, Bahram Zahir

Nowadays, concatenative method is used in most modern TTS systems to produce artificial speech. The most important challenge in this method is choosing appropriate unit for creating database. This unit must warranty smoothness and high quality speech, and also, creating database for it must reasonable and inexpensive. For example, syllable, phoneme, allophone, and, diphone are appropriate units for all-purpose systems. In this paper, we implemented three synthesis systems for Kurdish language based on syllable, allophone, and diphone and compare their quality using subjective testing.

The functional unit of Japanese word naming: evidence from masked priming.

PubMed

Verdonschot, Rinus G; Kiyama, Sachiko; Tamaoka, Katsuo; Kinoshita, Sachiko; Heij, Wido La; Schiller, Niels O

2011-11-01

Theories of language production generally describe the segment as the basic unit in phonological encoding (e.g., Dell, 1988; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999). However, there is also evidence that such a unit might be language specific. Chen, Chen, and Dell (2002), for instance, found no effect of single segments when using a preparation paradigm. To shed more light on the functional unit of phonological encoding in Japanese, a language often described as being mora based, we report the results of 4 experiments using word reading tasks and masked priming. Experiment 1 demonstrated using Japanese kana script that primes, which overlapped in the whole mora with target words, sped up word reading latencies but not when just the onset overlapped. Experiments 2 and 3 investigated a possible role of script by using combinations of romaji (Romanized Japanese) and hiragana; again, facilitation effects were found only when the whole mora and not the onset segment overlapped. Experiment 4 distinguished mora priming from syllable priming and revealed that the mora priming effects obtained in the first 3 experiments are also obtained when a mora is part of a syllable. Again, no priming effect was found for single segments. Our findings suggest that the mora and not the segment (phoneme) is the basic functional phonological unit in Japanese language production planning.

Variable Input and the Acquisition of Plural Morphology

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Miller, Karen L.; Schmitt, Cristina

2012-01-01

The present article examines the effect of variable input on the acquisition of plural morphology in two varieties of Spanish: Chilean Spanish, where the plural marker is sometimes omitted due to a phonological process of syllable final /s/ lenition, and Mexican Spanish (of Mexico City), with no such lenition process. The goal of the study is to…

Picture This Character: Using Imagery To Teach a Japanese Syllabary.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, Joyce D.; Wakefield, John F.

This study examined the effectiveness of imagery to teach native English speakers to associate hiragana characters (a Japanese script) with the spoken Japanese syllables that the characters represent. Twenty-one adults in a psychology of learning class for teachers were taught to picture a hiragana character in such a way as to establish an…

Biofeedback and Performance: An Update

DTIC Science & Technology

1984-12-01

low tension level), Sabourin and Rioux (1979) measured performance on standard laboratory tasks: memorization of nonsense syllables, simple reaction... Sabourin and Rioux point out, however, most subjects undergoing laboratory experimentation are not usually (in the absence of specific treatment to...and extraneous muscle activity interferes with efficient acquisition of a psychomotor skill. Keeping in mind the effect noted by Sabourin and Rioux

Sleep underpins the plasticity of language production.

PubMed

Gaskell, M Gareth; Warker, Jill; Lindsay, Shane; Frost, Rebecca; Guest, James; Snowdon, Reza; Stackhouse, Abigail

2014-07-01

The constraints that govern acceptable phoneme combinations in speech perception and production have considerable plasticity. We addressed whether sleep influences the acquisition of new constraints and their integration into the speech-production system. Participants repeated sequences of syllables in which two phonemes were artificially restricted to syllable onset or syllable coda, depending on the vowel in that sequence. After 48 sequences, participants either had a 90-min nap or remained awake. Participants then repeated 96 sequences so implicit constraint learning could be examined, and then were tested for constraint generalization in a forced-choice task. The sleep group, but not the wake group, produced speech errors at test that were consistent with restrictions on the placement of phonemes in training. Furthermore, only the sleep group generalized their learning to new materials. Polysomnography data showed that implicit constraint learning was associated with slow-wave sleep. These results show that sleep facilitates the integration of new linguistic knowledge with existing production constraints. These data have relevance for systems-consolidation models of sleep. © The Author(s) 2014.

Discrete Circuits Support Generalized versus Context-Specific Vocal Learning in the Songbird.

PubMed

Tian, Lucas Y; Brainard, Michael S

2017-12-06

Motor skills depend on the reuse of individual gestures in multiple sequential contexts (e.g., a single phoneme in different words). Yet optimal performance requires that a given gesture be modified appropriately depending on the sequence in which it occurs. To investigate the neural architecture underlying such context-dependent modifications, we studied Bengalese finch song, which, like speech, consists of variable sequences of "syllables." We found that when birds are instructed to modify a syllable in one sequential context, learning generalizes across contexts; however, if unique instruction is provided in different contexts, learning is specific for each context. Using localized inactivation of a cortical-basal ganglia circuit specialized for song, we show that this balance between generalization and specificity reflects a hierarchical organization of neural substrates. Primary motor circuitry encodes a core syllable representation that contributes to generalization, while top-down input from cortical-basal ganglia circuitry biases this representation to enable context-specific learning. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Immediate effects of AAF devices on the characteristics of stuttering: a clinical analysis.

PubMed

Unger, Julia P; Glück, Christian W; Cholewa, Jürgen

2012-06-01

The present study investigated the immediate effects of altered auditory feedback (AAF) and one Inactive Condition (AAF parameters set to 0) on clinical attributes of stuttering during scripted and spontaneous speech. Two commercially available, portable AAF devices were used to create the combined delayed auditory feedback (DAF) and frequency altered feedback (FAF) effects. Thirty adults, who stutter, aged 18-68 years (M=36.5; SD=15.2), participated in this investigation. Each subject produced four sets of 5-min of oral reading, three sets of 5-min monologs as well as 10-min dialogs. These speech samples were analyzed to detect changes in descriptive features of stuttering (frequency, duration, speech/articulatory rate, core behaviors) across the various speech samples and within two SSI-4 (Riley, 2009) based severity ratings. A statistically significant difference was found in the frequency of stuttered syllables (%SS) during both Active Device conditions (p=.000) for all speech samples. The most sizable reductions in %SS occurred within scripted speech. In the analysis of stuttering type, it was found that blocks were reduced significantly (Device A: p=.017; Device B: p=.049). To evaluate the impact on severe and mild stuttering, participants were grouped into two SSI-4 based categories; mild and moderate-severe. During the Inactive Condition those participants within the moderate-severe group (p=.024) showed a statistically significant reduction in overall disfluencies. This result indicates, that active AAF parameters alone may not be the sole cause of a fluency-enhancement when using a technical speech aid. The reader will learn and be able to describe: (1) currently available scientific evidence on the use of altered auditory feedback (AAF) during scripted and spontaneous speech, (2) which characteristics of stuttering are impacted by an AAF device (frequency, duration, core behaviors, speech & articulatory rate, stuttering severity), (3) the effects of an Inactive Condition on people who stutter (PWS) falling into two severity groups, and (4) how the examined participants perceived the use of AAF devices. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Speech articulation performance of francophone children in the early school years: norming of the Test de Dépistage Francophone de Phonologie.

PubMed

Rvachew, Susan; Marquis, Alexandra; Brosseau-Lapré, Françoise; Paul, Marianne; Royle, Phaedra; Gonnerman, Laura M

2013-12-01

Good quality normative data are essential for clinical practice in speech-language pathology but are largely lacking for French-speaking children. We investigated speech production accuracy by French-speaking children attending kindergarten (maternelle) and first grade (première année). The study aimed to provide normative data for a new screening test - the Test de Dépistage Francophone de Phonologie. Sixty-one children named 30 pictures depicting words selected to be representative of the distribution of phonemes, syllable shapes and word lengths characteristic of Québec French. Percent consonants' correct was approximately 90% and did not change significantly with age although younger children produced significantly more syllable structure errors than older children. Given that the word set reflects the segmental and prosodic characteristics of spoken Québec French, and that ceiling effects were not observed, these results further indicate that phonological development is not complete by the age of seven years in French-speaking children.

Computational modeling of stuttering caused by impairments in a basal ganglia thalamo-cortical circuit involved in syllable selection and initiation

PubMed Central

Civier, Oren; Bullock, Daniel; Max, Ludo; Guenther, Frank H.

2013-01-01

A typical white-matter integrity and elevated dopamine levels have been reported for individuals who stutter. We investigated how such abnormalities may lead to speech dysfluencies due to their effects on a syllable-sequencing circuit that consists of basal ganglia (BG), thalamus, and left ventral premotor cortex (vPMC). “Neurally impaired” versions of the neurocomputational speech production model GODIVA were utilized to test two hypotheses: (1) that white-matter abnormalities disturb the circuit via corticostriatal projections carrying copies of executed motor commands, and (2) that dopaminergic abnormalities disturb the circuit via the striatum. Simulation results support both hypotheses: in both scenarios, the neural abnormalities delay readout of the next syllable’s motor program, leading to dysfluency. The results also account for brain imaging findings during dysfluent speech. It is concluded that each of the two abnormality types can cause stuttering moments, probably by affecting the same BG-thalamus-vPMC circuit. PMID:23872286

Speech perception in individuals with auditory dys-synchrony.

PubMed

Kumar, U A; Jayaram, M

2011-03-01

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of lengthening the transition duration of selected speech segments upon the perception of those segments in individuals with auditory dys-synchrony. Thirty individuals with auditory dys-synchrony participated in the study, along with 30 age-matched normal hearing listeners. Eight consonant-vowel syllables were used as auditory stimuli. Two experiments were conducted. Experiment one measured the 'just noticeable difference' time: the smallest prolongation of the speech sound transition duration which was noticeable by the subject. In experiment two, speech sounds were modified by lengthening the transition duration by multiples of the just noticeable difference time, and subjects' speech identification scores for the modified speech sounds were assessed. Subjects with auditory dys-synchrony demonstrated poor processing of temporal auditory information. Lengthening of speech sound transition duration improved these subjects' perception of both the placement and voicing features of the speech syllables used. These results suggest that innovative speech processing strategies which enhance temporal cues may benefit individuals with auditory dys-synchrony.

The effects of age, education, and ethnicity on verbal fluency.

PubMed

Kempler, D; Teng, E L; Dick, M; Taussig, I M; Davis, D S

1998-11-01

A group of 317 healthy participants between 54 and 99 years of age performed a verbal fluency task. The participants included Chinese, Hispanic, and Vietnamese immigrants, as well as White and African American English speakers. They were given 1 min to name as many animals as possible in their native language. The results showed that more animal names were produced by younger people and those with more education. Language background was also an important factor: The Vietnamese produced the most animal names and the Spanish speakers produced the fewest. The exaggerated difference between these two groups is attributed to the fact that Vietnamese animal names are short (predominantly 1 syllable) while the Spanish animal names are longer than any other language in this study (2 and 3 syllables per word). Finally, although the ethnic groups named different animals, and appeared to vary in the variety of animal names they used, these factors did not affect overall verbal fluency performance.

EFFECT OF DELAYED AUDITORY FEEDBACK, SPEECH RATE, AND SEX ON SPEECH PRODUCTION.

PubMed

Stuart, Andrew; Kalinowski, Joseph

2015-06-01

Perturbations in Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF) and speech rate were examined as sources of disruptions in speech between men and women. Fluent adult men (n = 16) and women (n = 16) spoke at a normal and an imposed fast rate of speech with 0, 25, 50, 100, and 200 msec. DAF. The syllable rate significantly increased when participants were instructed to speak at a fast rate, and the syllable rate decreased with increasing DAF delays. Men's speech rate was significantly faster during the fast speech rate condition with a 200 msec. DAF. Disfluencies increased with increasing DAF delay. Significantly more disfluency occurred at delays of 25 and 50 msec. at the fast rate condition, while more disfluency occurred at 100 and 200 msec. in normal rate conditions. Men and women did not display differences in the number of disfluencies. These findings demonstrate sex differences in susceptibility to perturbations in DAF and speech rate suggesting feedforward/feedback subsystems that monitor vocalizations may be different between sexes.

Effects of Bel Canto Training on Acoustic and Aerodynamic Characteristics of the Singing Voice.

PubMed

McHenry, Monica A; Evans, Joseph; Powitzky, Eric

2016-03-01

This study was designed to assess the impact of 2 years of operatic training on acoustic and aerodynamic characteristics of the singing voice. This is a longitudinal study. Participants were 21 graduate students and 16 undergraduate students. They completed a variety of tasks, including laryngeal videostroboscopy, audio recording of pitch range, and singing of syllable trains at full voice in chest, passaggio, and head registers. Inspiration, intraoral pressure, airflow, and sound pressure level (SPL) were captured during the syllable productions. Both graduate and undergraduate students significantly increased semitone range and SPL. The contributions to increased SPL were typically increased inspiration, increased airflow, and reduced laryngeal resistance, although there were individual differences. Two graduate students increased SPL without increased airflow and likely used supraglottal strategies to do so. Students demonstrated improvements in both acoustic and aerodynamic components of singing. Increasing SPL primarily through respiratory drive is a healthy strategy and results from intensive training. Copyright © 2016 The Voice Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Basal ganglia function, stuttering, sequencing, and repair in adult songbirds

PubMed Central

Kubikova, Lubica; Bosikova, Eva; Cvikova, Martina; Lukacova, Kristina; Scharff, Constance; Jarvis, Erich D.

2014-01-01

A pallial-basal-ganglia-thalamic-pallial loop in songbirds is involved in vocal motor learning. Damage to its basal ganglia part, Area X, in adult zebra finches has been noted to have no strong effects on song and its function is unclear. Here we report that neurotoxic damage to adult Area X induced changes in singing tempo and global syllable sequencing in all animals, and considerably increased syllable repetition in birds whose song motifs ended with minor repetitions before lesioning. This stuttering-like behavior started at one month, and improved over six months. Unexpectedly, the lesioned region showed considerable recovery, including immigration of newly generated or repaired neurons that became active during singing. The timing of the recovery and stuttering suggest that immature recovering activity of the circuit might be associated with stuttering. These findings indicate that even after juvenile learning is complete, the adult striatum plays a role in higher level organization of learned vocalizations. PMID:25307086

Seeking an Anchorage. Stability and Variability in Tonal Alignment of Rising Prenuclear Pitch Accents in Cypriot Greek.

PubMed

Themistocleous, Charalambos

2016-12-01

Although tonal alignment constitutes a quintessential property of pitch accents, its exact characteristics remain unclear. This study, by exploring the timing of the Cypriot Greek L*+H prenuclear pitch accent, examines the predictions of three hypotheses about tonal alignment: the invariance hypothesis, the segmental anchoring hypothesis, and the segmental anchorage hypothesis. The study reports on two experiments: the first of which manipulates the syllable patterns of the stressed syllable, and the second of which modifies the distance of the L*+H from the following pitch accent. The findings on the alignment of the low tone (L) are illustrative of the segmental anchoring hypothesis predictions: the L persistently aligns inside the onset consonant, a few milliseconds before the stressed vowel. However, the findings on the alignment of the high tone (H) are both intriguing and unexpected: the alignment of the H depends on the number of unstressed syllables that follow the prenuclear pitch accent. The 'wandering' of the H over multiple syllables is extremely rare among languages, and casts doubt on the invariance hypothesis and the segmental anchoring hypothesis, as well as indicating the need for a modified version of the segmental anchorage hypothesis. To address the alignment of the H, we suggest that it aligns within a segmental anchorage-the area that follows the prenuclear pitch accent-in such a way as to protect the paradigmatic contrast between the L*+H prenuclear pitch accent and the L+H* nuclear pitch accent.

Left and right basal ganglia and frontal activity during language generation: contributions to lexical, semantic, and phonological processes.

PubMed

Crosson, Bruce; Benefield, Hope; Cato, M Allison; Sadek, Joseph R; Moore, Anna Bacon; Wierenga, Christina E; Gopinath, Kaundinya; Soltysik, David; Bauer, Russell M; Auerbach, Edward J; Gökçay, Didem; Leonard, Christiana M; Briggs, Richard W

2003-11-01

fMRI was used to determine the frontal, basal ganglia, and thalamic structures engaged by three facets of language generation: lexical status of generated items, the use of semantic vs. phonological information during language generation, and rate of generation. During fMRI, 21 neurologically normal subjects performed four tasks: generation of nonsense syllables given beginning and ending consonant blends, generation of words given a rhyming word, generation of words given a semantic category at a fast rate (matched to the rate of nonsense syllable generation), and generation of words given a semantic category at a slow rate (matched to the rate of generating of rhyming words). Components of a left pre-SMA-dorsal caudate nucleus-ventral anterior thalamic loop were active during word generation from rhyming or category cues but not during nonsense syllable generation. Findings indicate that this loop is involved in retrieving words from pre-existing lexical stores. Relatively diffuse activity in the right basal ganglia (caudate nucleus and putamen) also was found during word-generation tasks but not during nonsense syllable generation. Given the relative absence of right frontal activity during the word generation tasks, we suggest that the right basal ganglia activity serves to suppress right frontal activity, preventing right frontal structures from interfering with language production. Current findings establish roles for the left and the right basal ganglia in word generation. Hypotheses are discussed for future research to help refine our understanding of basal ganglia functions in language generation.

Attentional modulation of informational masking on early cortical representations of speech signals.

PubMed

Zhang, Changxin; Arnott, Stephen R; Rabaglia, Cristina; Avivi-Reich, Meital; Qi, James; Wu, Xihong; Li, Liang; Schneider, Bruce A

2016-01-01

To recognize speech in a noisy auditory scene, listeners need to perceptually segregate the target talker's voice from other competing sounds (stream segregation). A number of studies have suggested that the attentional demands placed on listeners increase as the acoustic properties and informational content of the competing sounds become more similar to that of the target voice. Hence we would expect attentional demands to be considerably greater when speech is masked by speech than when it is masked by steady-state noise. To investigate the role of attentional mechanisms in the unmasking of speech sounds, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded to a syllable masked by noise or competing speech under both active (the participant was asked to respond when the syllable was presented) or passive (no response was required) listening conditions. The results showed that the long-latency auditory response to a syllable (/bi/), presented at different signal-to-masker ratios (SMRs), was similar in both passive and active listening conditions, when the masker was a steady-state noise. In contrast, a switch from the passive listening condition to the active one, when the masker was two-talker speech, significantly enhanced the ERPs to the syllable. These results support the hypothesis that the need to engage attentional mechanisms in aid of scene analysis increases as the similarity (both acoustic and informational) between the target speech and the competing background sounds increases. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Spanish norms for age of acquisition, concept familiarity, lexical frequency, manipulability, typicality, and other variables for 820 words from 14 living/nonliving concepts.

PubMed

Moreno-Martínez, F Javier; Montoro, Pedro R; Rodríguez-Rojo, Inmaculada C

2014-12-01

This article presents a new corpus of 820 words pertaining to 14 semantic categories, 7 natural (animals, body parts, insects, flowers, fruits, trees, and vegetables) and 7 man-made (buildings, clothing, furniture, kitchen utensils, musical instruments, tools, and vehicles); each word in the database was collected empirically in a previous exemplar generation study. In the present study, 152 Spanish speakers provided data for four psycholinguistic variables known to affect lexical-semantic processing in both neurologically intact and brain-damaged participants: age of acquisition, familiarity, manipulability, and typicality. Furthermore, we collected lexical frequency data derived from Internet search hits, plus three additional Spanish lexical frequency indexes. Word length, number of syllables, and the proportion of respondents citing the exemplar as a category member-which can be useful as an additional measure of typicality-are also provided. Reliability and validity indexes showed that our items display characteristics similar to those of other corpora. Overall, this new corpus of words provides a useful tool for scientists engaged in cognitive- and neuroscience-based research focused on examining language, memory, and object processing. The full set of norms can be downloaded from www.psychonomic.org/archive.

Correlated evolution of beak morphology and song in the neotropical woodcreeper radiation.

PubMed

Derryberry, Elizabeth Perrault; Seddon, Nathalie; Claramunt, Santiago; Tobias, Joseph Andrew; Baker, Adam; Aleixo, Alexandre; Brumfield, Robb Thomas

2012-09-01

Mating signals may diversify as a byproduct of morphological adaptation to different foraging niches, potentially driving speciation. Although many studies have focused on the direct influence of ecological and sexual selection on signal divergence, the role of indirect mechanisms remains poorly understood. Using phenotypic and molecular datasets, we explored the interplay between morphological and vocal evolution in an avian radiation characterized by dramatic beak variation, the Neotropical woodcreepers (Dendrocolaptinae). We found evidence of a trade-off between the rate of repetition of song syllables and frequency bandwidth: slow paced songs had either narrow or wide frequency bandwidths, and bandwidth decreased as song pace increased. This bounded phenotypic space for song structure supports the hypothesis that passerine birds face a motor constraint during song production. Diversification of acoustic characters within this bounded space was correlated with diversification of beak morphology. In particular, species with larger beaks produced slower songs with narrower frequency bandwidths, suggesting that ecological selection on beak morphology influences the diversification of woodcreeper songs. Because songs in turn mediate mate choice and species recognition in birds, these results indicate a broader role for ecology in avian diversification. © 2012 The Author(s). Evolution© 2012 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Perception of speech in noise: neural correlates.

PubMed

Song, Judy H; Skoe, Erika; Banai, Karen; Kraus, Nina

2011-09-01

The presence of irrelevant auditory information (other talkers, environmental noises) presents a major challenge to listening to speech. The fundamental frequency (F(0)) of the target speaker is thought to provide an important cue for the extraction of the speaker's voice from background noise, but little is known about the relationship between speech-in-noise (SIN) perceptual ability and neural encoding of the F(0). Motivated by recent findings that music and language experience enhance brainstem representation of sound, we examined the hypothesis that brainstem encoding of the F(0) is diminished to a greater degree by background noise in people with poorer perceptual abilities in noise. To this end, we measured speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses to /da/ in quiet and two multitalker babble conditions (two-talker and six-talker) in native English-speaking young adults who ranged in their ability to perceive and recall SIN. Listeners who were poorer performers on a standardized SIN measure demonstrated greater susceptibility to the degradative effects of noise on the neural encoding of the F(0). Particularly diminished was their phase-locked activity to the fundamental frequency in the portion of the syllable known to be most vulnerable to perceptual disruption (i.e., the formant transition period). Our findings suggest that the subcortical representation of the F(0) in noise contributes to the perception of speech in noisy conditions.

Auditory Masking Effects on Speech Fluency in Apraxia of Speech and Aphasia: Comparison to Altered Auditory Feedback

PubMed Central

Haley, Katarina L.

2015-01-01

Purpose To study the effects of masked auditory feedback (MAF) on speech fluency in adults with aphasia and/or apraxia of speech (APH/AOS). We hypothesized that adults with AOS would increase speech fluency when speaking with noise. Altered auditory feedback (AAF; i.e., delayed/frequency-shifted feedback) was included as a control condition not expected to improve speech fluency. Method Ten participants with APH/AOS and 10 neurologically healthy (NH) participants were studied under both feedback conditions. To allow examination of individual responses, we used an ABACA design. Effects were examined on syllable rate, disfluency duration, and vocal intensity. Results Seven of 10 APH/AOS participants increased fluency with masking by increasing rate, decreasing disfluency duration, or both. In contrast, none of the NH participants increased speaking rate with MAF. In the AAF condition, only 1 APH/AOS participant increased fluency. Four APH/AOS participants and 8 NH participants slowed their rate with AAF. Conclusions Speaking with MAF appears to increase fluency in a subset of individuals with APH/AOS, indicating that overreliance on auditory feedback monitoring may contribute to their disorder presentation. The distinction between responders and nonresponders was not linked to AOS diagnosis, so additional work is needed to develop hypotheses for candidacy and underlying control mechanisms. PMID:26363508

A Mis-recognized Medical Vocabulary Correction System for Speech-based Electronic Medical Record

PubMed Central

Seo, Hwa Jeong; Kim, Ju Han; Sakabe, Nagamasa

2002-01-01

Speech recognition as an input tool for electronic medical record (EMR) enables efficient data entry at the point of care. However, the recognition accuracy for medical vocabulary is much poorer than that for doctor-patient dialogue. We developed a mis-recognized medical vocabulary correction system based on syllable-by-syllable comparison of speech text against medical vocabulary database. Using specialty medical vocabulary, the algorithm detects and corrects mis-recognized medical vocabularies in narrative text. Our preliminary evaluation showed 94% of accuracy in mis-recognized medical vocabulary correction.

What Models of Verbal Working Memory Can Learn from Phonological Theory: Decomposing the Phonological Similarity Effect

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schweppe, Judith; Grice, Martine; Rummer, Ralf

2011-01-01

Despite developments in phonology over the last few decades, models of verbal working memory make reference to phoneme-sized phonological units, rather than to the features of which they are composed. This study investigates the influence on short-term retention of such features by comparing the serial recall of lists of syllables with varying…

The Effects of Age and Hearing Loss on Tasks of Perception and Production of Intonation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Most, Tova; Frank, Yael

1994-01-01

Hearing-impaired and normal hearing children in 2 age groups (5-6 years and 9-12 years) were observed for possible differences in their perception and production of intonation. Results indicated that imitation of intonation carried on nonsense syllables was not affected by age. Hearing-impaired subjects scored much lower than controls in imitating…

An Effectiveness Evaluation Between Manual and Automated Readability Counting Techniques. CNETS Report 5-75.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bunde, Gary R.

A statistical comparison was made between two automated devices which were used to count data points (words, sentences, and syllables) needed in the Flesch Reading Ease Score to determine the reading grade level of written material. Determination of grade level of all Rate Training Manuals and Non-Resident Career Courses had been requested by the…

The Processing of the Right-Sided Accent Mark in Left Neglect Dyslexia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cubelli, Roberto; Beschin, Nicoletta

2005-01-01

Italian polysyllabic words with stress falling on the last syllable are written with a diacritic sign on the last vowel. It allows discrimination between two words with the same orthographic segments (e.g., papa [pope], papa [dad]). The effect of the accent mark in left neglect dyslexia has never been investigated. In the current study, six…

ERP Index of the Morphological Family Size Effect during Word Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kwon, Youan; Nam, Kichun; Lee, Yoonhyoung

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the N400 is affected by the semantic richness of associated neighboring word members or by the density of the orthographic syllable neighborhood. Another purpose of this study was to investigate the source of the different LPC in respect to the semantic richness. To do so, the density of the…

Mood Modulates Auditory Laterality of Hemodynamic Mismatch Responses during Dichotic Listening

PubMed Central

Schock, Lisa; Dyck, Miriam; Demenescu, Liliana R.; Edgar, J. Christopher; Hertrich, Ingo; Sturm, Walter; Mathiak, Klaus

2012-01-01

Hemodynamic mismatch responses can be elicited by deviant stimuli in a sequence of standard stimuli even during cognitive demanding tasks. Emotional context is known to modulate lateralized processing. Right-hemispheric negative emotion processing may bias attention to the right and enhance processing of right-ear stimuli. The present study examined the influence of induced mood on lateralized pre-attentive auditory processing of dichotic stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Faces expressing emotions (sad/happy/neutral) were presented in a blocked design while a dichotic oddball sequence with consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in an event-related design was simultaneously administered. Twenty healthy participants were instructed to feel the emotion perceived on the images and to ignore the syllables. Deviant sounds reliably activated bilateral auditory cortices and confirmed attention effects by modulation of visual activity. Sad mood induction activated visual, limbic and right prefrontal areas. A lateralization effect of emotion-attention interaction was reflected in a stronger response to right-ear deviants in the right auditory cortex during sad mood. This imbalance of resources may be a neurophysiological correlate of laterality in sad mood and depression. Conceivably, the compensatory right-hemispheric enhancement of resources elicits increased ipsilateral processing. PMID:22384105

Selective auditory attention in adults: effects of rhythmic structure of the competing language.

PubMed

Reel, Leigh Ann; Hicks, Candace Bourland

2012-02-01

The authors assessed adult selective auditory attention to determine effects of (a) differences between the vocal/speaking characteristics of different mixed-gender pairs of masking talkers and (b) the rhythmic structure of the language of the competing speech. Reception thresholds for English sentences were measured for 50 monolingual English-speaking adults in conditions with 2-talker (male-female) competing speech spoken in a stress-based (English, German), syllable-based (Spanish, French), or mora-based (Japanese) language. Two different masking signals were created for each language (i.e., 2 different 2-talker pairs). All subjects were tested in 10 competing conditions (2 conditions for each of the 5 languages). A significant difference was noted between the 2 masking signals within each language. Across languages, significantly greater listening difficulty was observed in conditions where competing speech was spoken in English, German, or Japanese, as compared with Spanish or French. Results suggest that (a) for a particular language, masking effectiveness can vary between different male-female 2-talker maskers and (b) for stress-based vs. syllable-based languages, competing speech is more difficult to ignore when spoken in a language from the native rhythmic class as compared with a nonnative rhythmic class, regardless of whether the language is familiar or unfamiliar to the listener.

[Analysis of the speech discrimination scores of patients with congenital unilateral microtia and external auditory canal atresia in noise].

PubMed

Zhang, Y; Li, D D; Chen, X W

2017-06-20

Objective: Case-control study analysis of the speech discrimination of unilateral microtia and external auditory canal atresia patients with normal hearing subjects in quiet and noisy environment. To understand the speech recognition results of patients with unilateral external auditory canal atresia and provide scientific basis for clinical early intervention. Method: Twenty patients with unilateral congenital microtia malformation combined external auditory canal atresia, 20 age matched normal subjects as control group. All subjects used Mandarin speech audiometry material, to test the speech discrimination scores (SDS) in quiet and noisy environment in sound field. Result: There's no significant difference of speech discrimination scores under the condition of quiet between two groups. There's a statistically significant difference when the speech signal in the affected side and noise in the nomalside (single syllable, double syllable, statements; S/N=0 and S/N=-10) ( P <0.05). There's no significant difference of speech discrimination scores when the speech signal in the nomalside and noise in the affected side. There's a statistically significant difference in condition of the signal and noise in the same side when used one-syllable word recognition (S/N=0 and S/N=-5) ( P <0.05), while double syllable word and statement has no statistically significant difference ( P >0.05). Conclusion: The speech discrimination scores of unilateral congenital microtia malformation patients with external auditory canal atresia under the condition of noise is lower than the normal subjects. Copyright© by the Editorial Department of Journal of Clinical Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery.