Displaying 1 - 74 of 74
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Bavin, E. L., & Kidd, E. (2000). Learning new verbs: Beyond the input. In C. Davis, T. J. Van Gelder, & R. Wales (
Eds. ), Cognitive Science in Australia, 2000: Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Cognitive Science Society. -
Bögels, S., Barr, D., Garrod, S., & Kessler, K. (2013). "Are we still talking about the same thing?" MEG reveals perspective-taking in response to pragmatic violations, but not in anticipation. In M. Knauff, N. Pauen, I. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 215-220). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0066/index.html.Abstract
The current study investigates whether mentalizing, or taking the perspective of your interlocutor, plays an essential role throughout a conversation or whether it is mostly used in reaction to misunderstandings. This study is the first to use a brain-imaging method, MEG, to answer this question. In a first phase of the experiment, MEG participants interacted "live" with a confederate who set naming precedents for certain pictures. In a later phase, these precedents were sometimes broken by a speaker who named the same picture in a different way. This could be done by the same speaker, who set the precedent, or by a different speaker. Source analysis of MEG data showed that in the 800 ms before the naming, when the picture was already on the screen, episodic memory and language areas were activated, but no mentalizing areas, suggesting that the speaker's naming intentions were not anticipated by the listener on the basis of shared experiences. Mentalizing areas only became activated after the same speaker had broken a precedent, which we interpret as a reaction to the violation of conversational pragmatics. -
Bone, D., Ramanarayanan, V., Narayanan, S., Hoedemaker, R. S., & Gordon, P. C. (2013). Analyzing eye-voice coordination in rapid automatized naming. In F. Bimbot, C. Cerisara, G. Fougeron, L. Gravier, L. Lamel, F. Pelligrino, & P. Perrier (
Eds. ), INTERSPEECH-2013: 14thAnnual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 2425-2429). ISCA Archive. Retrieved from http://www.isca-speech.org/archive/interspeech_2013/i13_2425.html.Abstract
Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) is a powerful tool for pre- dicting future reading skill. A person’s ability to quickly name symbols as they scan a table is related to higher-level reading proficiency in adults and is predictive of future literacy gains in children. However, noticeable differences are present in the strategies or patterns within groups having similar task comple- tion times. Thus, a further stratification of RAN dynamics may lead to better characterization and later intervention to support reading skill acquisition. In this work, we analyze the dynamics of the eyes, voice, and the coordination between the two during performance. It is shown that fast performers are more similar to each other than to slow performers in their patterns, but not vice versa. Further insights are provided about the patterns of more proficient subjects. For instance, fast performers tended to exhibit smoother behavior contours, suggesting a more sta- ble perception-production process. -
Butterfield, S., & Cutler, A. (1988). Segmentation errors by human listeners: Evidence for a prosodic segmentation strategy. In W. Ainsworth, & J. Holmes (
Eds. ), Proceedings of SPEECH ’88: Seventh Symposium of the Federation of Acoustic Societies of Europe: Vol. 3 (pp. 827-833). Edinburgh: Institute of Acoustics. -
Casillas, M., & Frank, M. C. (2013). The development of predictive processes in children’s discourse understanding. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. (pp. 299-304). Austin,TX: Cognitive Society.Abstract
We investigate children’s online predictive processing as it occurs naturally, in conversation. We showed 1–7 year-olds short videos of improvised conversation between puppets, controlling for available linguistic information through phonetic manipulation. Even one- and two-year-old children made accurate and spontaneous predictions about when a turn-switch would occur: they gazed at the upcoming speaker before they heard a response begin. This predictive skill relies on both lexical and prosodic information together, and is not tied to either type of information alone. We suggest that children integrate prosodic, lexical, and visual information to effectively predict upcoming linguistic material in conversation.Additional information
http://langcog.stanford.edu/materials/anticip.html -
Cutler, A., & Butterfield, S. (1989). Natural speech cues to word segmentation under difficult listening conditions. In J. Tubach, & J. Mariani (
Eds. ), Proceedings of Eurospeech 89: European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology: Vol. 2 (pp. 372-375). Edinburgh: CEP Consultants.Abstract
One of a listener's major tasks in understanding continuous speech is segmenting the speech signal into separate words. When listening conditions are difficult, speakers can help listeners by deliberately speaking more clearly. In three experiments, we examined how word boundaries are produced in deliberately clear speech. We found that speakers do indeed attempt to mark word boundaries; moreover, they differentiate between word boundaries in a way which suggests they are sensitive to listener needs. Application of heuristic segmentation strategies makes word boundaries before strong syllables easiest for listeners to perceive; but under difficult listening conditions speakers pay more attention to marking word boundaries before weak syllables, i.e. they mark those boundaries which are otherwise particularly hard to perceive. -
Cutler, A., & Koster, M. (2000). Stress and lexical activation in Dutch. In B. Yuan, T. Huang, & X. Tang (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 593-596). Beijing: China Military Friendship Publish.Abstract
Dutch listeners were slower to make judgements about the semantic relatedness between a spoken target word (e.g. atLEET, 'athlete') and a previously presented visual prime word (e.g. SPORT 'sport') when the spoken word was mis-stressed. The adverse effect of mis-stressing confirms the role of stress information in lexical recognition in Dutch. However, although the erroneous stress pattern was always initially compatible with a competing word (e.g. ATlas, 'atlas'), mis-stressed words did not produced high false alarm rates in unrelated pairs (e.g. SPORT - atLAS). This suggests that stress information did not completely rule out segmentally matching but suprasegmentally mismatching words, a finding consistent with spoken-word recognition models involving multiple activation and inter-word competition.Additional information
https://www.mpi.nl/world/persons/private/anne/ICSLP00.html -
Cutler, A., Norris, D., & McQueen, J. M. (2000). Tracking TRACE’s troubles. In A. Cutler, J. M. McQueen, & R. Zondervan (
Eds. ), Proceedings of SWAP (Workshop on Spoken Word Access Processes) (pp. 63-66). Nijmegen: Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics.Abstract
Simulations explored the inability of the TRACE model of spoken-word recognition to model the effects on human listening of acoustic-phonetic mismatches in word forms. The source of TRACE's failure lay not in its interactive connectivity, not in the presence of interword competition, and not in the use of phonemic representations, but in the need for continuously optimised interpretation of the input. When an analogue of TRACE was allowed to cycle to asymptote on every slice of input, an acceptable simulation of the subcategorical mismatch data was achieved. Even then, however, the simulation was not as close as that produced by the Merge model. -
Cutler, A., & Bruggeman, L. (2013). Vocabulary structure and spoken-word recognition: Evidence from French reveals the source of embedding asymmetry. In Proceedings of INTERSPEECH: 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 2812-2816).
Abstract
Vocabularies contain hundreds of thousands of words built from only a handful of phonemes, so that inevitably longer words tend to contain shorter ones. In many languages (but not all) such embedded words occur more often word-initially than word-finally, and this asymmetry, if present, has farreaching consequences for spoken-word recognition. Prior research had ascribed the asymmetry to suffixing or to effects of stress (in particular, final syllables containing the vowel schwa). Analyses of the standard French vocabulary here reveal an effect of suffixing, as predicted by this account, and further analyses of an artificial variety of French reveal that extensive final schwa has an independent and additive effect in promoting the embedding asymmetry. -
Dolscheid, S., Graver, C., & Casasanto, D. (2013). Spatial congruity effects reveal metaphors, not markedness. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 2213-2218). Austin,TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0405/index.html.Abstract
Spatial congruity effects have often been interpreted as evidence for metaphorical thinking, but an alternative markedness-based account challenges this view. In two experiments, we directly compared metaphor and markedness explanations for spatial congruity effects, using musical pitch as a testbed. English speakers who talk about pitch in terms of spatial height were tested in speeded space-pitch compatibility tasks. To determine whether space-pitch congruency effects could be elicited by any marked spatial continuum, participants were asked to classify high- and low-frequency pitches as 'high' and 'low' or as 'front' and 'back' (both pairs of terms constitute cases of marked continuums). We found congruency effects in high/low conditions but not in front/back conditions, indicating that markedness is not sufficient to account for congruity effects (Experiment 1). A second experiment showed that congruency effects were specific to spatial words that cued a vertical schema (tall/short), and that congruity effects were not an artifact of polysemy (e.g., 'high' referring both to space and pitch). Together, these results suggest that congruency effects reveal metaphorical uses of spatial schemas, not markedness effects. -
Durco, M., & Windhouwer, M. (2013). Semantic Mapping in CLARIN Component Metadata. In Proceedings of MTSR 2013, the 7th Metadata and Semantics Research Conference (pp. 163-168). New York: Springer.
Abstract
In recent years, large scale initiatives like CLARIN set out to overcome the notorious heterogeneity of metadata formats in the domain of language resource. The CLARIN Component Metadata Infrastructure established means for flexible resouce descriptions for the domain of language resources. The Data Category Registry ISOcat and the accompanying Relation Registry foster semantic interoperability within the growing heterogeneous collection of metadata records. This paper describes the CMD Infrastructure focusing on the facilities for semantic mapping, and gives also an overview of the current status in the joint component metadata domain. -
Enfield, N. J., & Evans, G. (2000). Transcription as standardisation: The problem of Tai languages. In S. Burusphat (
Ed. ), Proceedings: the International Conference on Tai Studies, July 29-31, 1998, (pp. 201-212). Bangkok, Thailand: Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development, Mahidol University. -
Flecken, M., & Gerwien, J. (2013). Grammatical aspect modulates event duration estimations: findings from Dutch. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 2309-2314). Austin,TX: Cognitive Science Society. -
Gebre, B. G., Wittenburg, P., & Heskes, T. (2013). Automatic sign language identification. In Proceeding of the 20th IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP) (pp. 2626-2630).
Abstract
We propose a Random-Forest based sign language identification system. The system uses low-level visual features and is based on the hypothesis that sign languages have varying distributions of phonemes (hand-shapes, locations and movements). We evaluated the system on two sign languages -- British SL and Greek SL, both taken from a publicly available corpus, called Dicta Sign Corpus. Achieved average F1 scores are about 95% - indicating that sign languages can be identified with high accuracy using only low-level visual features. -
Gebre, B. G., Wittenburg, P., & Heskes, T. (2013). Automatic signer diarization - the mover is the signer approach. In Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops (CVPRW), 2013 IEEE Conference on (pp. 283-287). doi:10.1109/CVPRW.2013.49.
Abstract
We present a vision-based method for signer diarization -- the task of automatically determining "who signed when?" in a video. This task has similar motivations and applications as speaker diarization but has received little attention in the literature. In this paper, we motivate the problem and propose a method for solving it. The method is based on the hypothesis that signers make more movements than their interlocutors. Experiments on four videos (a total of 1.4 hours and each consisting of two signers) show the applicability of the method. The best diarization error rate (DER) obtained is 0.16. -
Gebre, B. G., Zampieri, M., Wittenburg, P., & Heskes, T. (2013). Improving Native Language Identification with TF-IDF weighting. In Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Innovative Use of NLP for Building Educational Applications (pp. 216-223).
Abstract
This paper presents a Native Language Identification (NLI) system based on TF-IDF weighting schemes and using linear classifiers - support vector machines, logistic regressions and perceptrons. The system was one of the participants of the 2013 NLI Shared Task in the closed-training track, achieving 0.814 overall accuracy for a set of 11 native languages. This accuracy was only 2.2 percentage points lower than the winner's performance. Furthermore, with subsequent evaluations using 10-fold cross-validation (as given by the organizers) on the combined training and development data, the best average accuracy obtained is 0.8455 and the features that contributed to this accuracy are the TF-IDF of the combined unigrams and bigrams of words. -
Gebre, B. G., Wittenburg, P., & Heskes, T. (2013). The gesturer is the speaker. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2013) (pp. 3751-3755).
Abstract
We present and solve the speaker diarization problem in a novel way. We hypothesize that the gesturer is the speaker and that identifying the gesturer can be taken as identifying the active speaker. We provide evidence in support of the hypothesis from gesture literature and audio-visual synchrony studies. We also present a vision-only diarization algorithm that relies on gestures (i.e. upper body movements). Experiments carried out on 8.9 hours of a publicly available dataset (the AMI meeting data) show that diarization error rates as low as 15% can be achieved. -
Gijssels, T., Bottini, R., Rueschemeyer, S.-A., & Casasanto, D. (2013). Space and time in the parietal cortex: fMRI Evidence for a meural asymmetry. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 495-500). Austin,TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0113/index.html.Abstract
How are space and time related in the brain? This study contrasts two proposals that make different predictions about the interaction between spatial and temporal magnitudes. Whereas ATOM implies that space and time are symmetrically related, Metaphor Theory claims they are asymmetrically related. Here we investigated whether space and time activate the same neural structures in the inferior parietal cortex (IPC) and whether the activation is symmetric or asymmetric across domains. We measured participants’ neural activity while they made temporal and spatial judgments on the same visual stimuli. The behavioral results replicated earlier observations of a space-time asymmetry: Temporal judgments were more strongly influenced by irrelevant spatial information than vice versa. The BOLD fMRI data indicated that space and time activated overlapping clusters in the IPC and that, consistent with Metaphor Theory, this activation was asymmetric: The shared region of IPC was activated more strongly during temporal judgments than during spatial judgments. We consider three possible interpretations of this neural asymmetry, based on 3 possible functions of IPC. -
Gussenhoven, C., & Zhou, W. (2013). Revisiting pitch slope and height effects on perceived duration. In Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2013: 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1365-1369).
Abstract
The shape of pitch contours has been shown to have an effect on the perceived duration of vowels. For instance, vowels with high level pitch and vowels with falling contours sound longer than vowels with low level pitch. Depending on whether the
comparison is between level pitches or between level and dynamic contours, these findings have been interpreted in two ways. For inter-level comparisons, where the duration results are the reverse of production results, a hypercorrection strategy in production has been proposed [1]. By contrast, for comparisons between level pitches and dynamic contours, the
longer production data for dynamic contours have been held responsible. We report an experiment with Dutch and Chinese listeners which aimed to show that production data and perception data are each other’s opposites for high, low, falling and rising contours. We explain the results, which are consistent with earlier findings, in terms of the compensatory listening strategy of [2], arguing that the perception effects are due to a perceptual compensation of articulatory strategies and
constraints, rather than that differences in production compensate for psycho-acoustic perception effects. -
Gussenhoven, C., & Chen, A. (2000). Universal and language-specific effects in the perception of question intonation. In B. Yuan, T. Huang, & X. Tang (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP) (pp. 91-94). Beijing: China Military Friendship Publish.Abstract
Three groups of monolingual listeners, with Standard Chinese, Dutch and Hungarian as their native language, judged pairs of trisyllabic stimuli which differed only in their itch pattern. The segmental structure of the stimuli was made up by the experimenters and presented to subjects as being taken from a little-known language spoken on a South Pacific island. Pitch patterns consisted of a single rise-fall located on or near the second syllable. By and large, listeners selected the stimulus with the higher peak, the later eak, and the higher end rise as the one that signalled a question, regardless of language group. The result is argued to reflect innate, non-linguistic knowledge of the meaning of pitch variation, notably Ohala’s Frequency Code. A significant difference between groups is explained as due to the influence of the mother tongue. -
Gussenhoven, C., & Chen, A. (2000). Universal and language-specific effects in the perception of question intonation. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP) (pp. 91-94).
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Harbusch, K., & Kempen, G. (2000). Complexity of linear order computation in Performance Grammar, TAG and HPSG. In Proceedings of Fifth International Workshop on Tree Adjoining Grammars and Related Formalisms (TAG+5) (pp. 101-106).
Abstract
This paper investigates the time and space complexity of word order computation in the psycholinguistically motivated grammar formalism of Performance Grammar (PG). In PG, the first stage of syntax assembly yields an unordered tree ('mobile') consisting of a hierarchy of lexical frames (lexically anchored elementary trees). Associated with each lexica l frame is a linearizer—a Finite-State Automaton that locally computes the left-to-right order of the branches of the frame. Linearization takes place after the promotion component may have raised certain constituents (e.g. Wh- or focused phrases) into the domain of lexical frames higher up in the syntactic mobile. We show that the worst-case time and space complexity of analyzing input strings of length n is O(n5) and O(n4), respectively. This result compares favorably with the time complexity of word-order computations in Tree Adjoining Grammar (TAG). A comparison with Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG) reveals that PG yields a more declarative linearization method, provided that the FSA is rewritten as an equivalent regular expression. -
Holler, J., Schubotz, L., Kelly, S., Schuetze, M., Hagoort, P., & Ozyurek, A. (2013). Here's not looking at you, kid! Unaddressed recipients benefit from co-speech gestures when speech processing suffers. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, I. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 2560-2565). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0463/index.html.Abstract
In human face-to-face communication, language comprehension is a multi-modal, situated activity. However, little is known about how we combine information from these different modalities, and how perceived communicative intentions, often signaled through visual signals, such as eye
gaze, may influence this processing. We address this question by simulating a triadic communication context in which a
speaker alternated her gaze between two different recipients. Participants thus viewed speech-only or speech+gesture
object-related utterances when being addressed (direct gaze) or unaddressed (averted gaze). Two object images followed
each message and participants’ task was to choose the object that matched the message. Unaddressed recipients responded significantly slower than addressees for speech-only
utterances. However, perceiving the same speech accompanied by gestures sped them up to a level identical to
that of addressees. That is, when speech processing suffers due to not being addressed, gesture processing remains intact and enhances the comprehension of a speaker’s message -
Irvine, L., Roberts, S. G., & Kirby, S. (2013). A robustness approach to theory building: A case study of language evolution. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 2614-2619). Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0472/index.html.Abstract
Models of cognitive processes often include simplifications, idealisations, and fictionalisations, so how should we learn about cognitive processes from such models? Particularly in cognitive science, when many features of the target system are unknown, it is not always clear which simplifications, idealisations, and so on, are appropriate for a research question, and which are highly misleading. Here we use a case-study from studies of language evolution, and ideas from philosophy of science, to illustrate a robustness approach to learning from models. Robust properties are those that arise across a range of models, simulations and experiments, and can be used to identify key causal structures in the models, and the phenomenon, under investigation. For example, in studies of language evolution, the emergence of compositional structure is a robust property across models, simulations and experiments of cultural transmission, but only under pressures for learnability and expressivity. This arguably illustrates the principles underlying real cases of language evolution. We provide an outline of the robustness approach, including its limitations, and suggest that this methodology can be productively used throughout cognitive science. Perhaps of most importance, it suggests that different modelling frameworks should be used as tools to identify the abstract properties of a system, rather than being definitive expressions of theories. -
Janse, E., Sennema, A., & Slis, A. (2000). Fast speech timing in Dutch: The durational correlates of lexical stress and pitch accent. In Proceedings of the VIth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Vol. III (pp. 251-254).
Abstract
n this study we investigated the durational correlates of lexical stress and pitch accent at normal and fast speech rate in Dutch. Previous literature on English shows that durations of lexically unstressed vowels are reduced more than stressed vowels when speakers increase their speech rate. We found that the same holds for Dutch, irrespective of whether the unstressed vowel is schwa or a "full" vowel. In the same line, we expected that vowels in words without a pitch accent would be shortened relatively more than vowels in words with a pitch accent. This was not the case: if anything, the accented vowels were shortened relatively more than the unaccented vowels. We conclude that duration is an important cue for lexical stress, but not for pitch accent. -
Janse, E. (2000). Intelligibility of time-compressed speech: Three ways of time-compression. In Proceedings of the VIth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, vol. III (pp. 786-789).
Abstract
Studies on fast speech have shown that word-level timing of fast speech differs from that of normal rate speech in that unstressed syllables are shortened more than stressed syllables as speech rate increases. An earlier experiment showed that the intelligibility of time-compressed speech could not be improved by making its temporal organisation closer to natural fast speech. To test the hypothesis that segmental intelligibility is more important than prosodic timing in listening to timecompressed speech, the intelligibility of bisyllabic words was tested in three time-compression conditions: either stressed and unstressed syllable were compressed to the same degree, or the stressed syllable was compressed more than the unstressed syllable, or the reverse. As was found before, imitating wordlevel timing of fast speech did not improve intelligibility over linear compression. However, the results did not confirm the hypothesis either: there was no difference in intelligibility between the three compression conditions. We conclude that segmental intelligibility plays an important role, but further research is necessary to decide between the contributions of prosody and segmental intelligibility to the word-level intelligibility of time-compressed speech. -
Johnson, E. K., Jusczyk, P. W., Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (2000). The development of word recognition: The use of the possible-word constraint by 12-month-olds. In L. Gleitman, & A. Joshi (
Eds. ), Proceedings of CogSci 2000 (pp. 1034). London: Erlbaum. -
De Jong, N. H., & Bosker, H. R. (2013). Choosing a threshold for silent pauses to measure second language fluency. In R. Eklund (
Ed. ), Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS) (pp. 17-20).Abstract
Second language (L2) research often involves analyses of acoustic measures of fluency. The studies investigating fluency, however, have been difficult to compare because the measures of fluency that were used differed widely. One of the differences between studies concerns the lower cut-off point for silent pauses, which has been set anywhere between 100 ms and 1000 ms. The goal of this paper is to find an optimal cut-off point. We calculate acoustic measures of fluency using different pause thresholds and then relate these measures to a measure of L2 proficiency and to ratings on fluency. -
Kempen, G. (1988). De netwerker: Spin in het web of rat in een doolhof? In SURF in theorie en praktijk: Van personal tot supercomputer (pp. 59-61). Amsterdam: Elsevier Science Publishers.
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Kempen, G., & Hoenkamp, E. (1982). Incremental sentence generation: Implications for the structure of a syntactic processor. In J. Horecký (
Ed. ), COLING 82. Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Prague, July 5-10, 1982 (pp. 151-156). Amsterdam: North-Holland.Abstract
Human speakers often produce sentences incrementally. They can start speaking having in mind only a fragmentary idea of what they want to say, and while saying this they refine the contents underlying subsequent parts of the utterance. This capability imposes a number of constraints on the design of a syntactic processor. This paper explores these constraints and evaluates some recent computational sentence generators from the perspective of incremental production. -
Khetarpal, N., Neveu, G., Majid, A., Michael, L., & Regier, T. (2013). Spatial terms across languages support near-optimal communication: Evidence from Peruvian Amazonia, and computational analyses. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 764-769). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0158/index.html.Abstract
Why do languages have the categories they do? It has been argued that spatial terms in the world’s languages reflect categories that support highly informative communication, and that this accounts for the spatial categories found across languages. However, this proposal has been tested against only nine languages, and in a limited fashion. Here, we consider two new languages: Maijɨki, an under-documented language of Peruvian Amazonia, and English. We analyze spatial data from these two new languages and the original nine, using thorough and theoretically targeted computational tests. The results support the hypothesis that spatial terms across dissimilar languages enable near-optimally informative communication, over an influential competing hypothesis -
Klein, W. (2000). Changing concepts of the nature-nurture debate. In R. Hide, J. Mittelstrass, & W. Singer (
Eds. ), Changing concepts of nature at the turn of the millenium: Proceedings plenary session of the Pontifical academy of sciences, 26-29 October 1998 (pp. 289-299). Vatican City: Pontificia Academia Scientiarum. -
Klein, W. (
Ed. ). (1989). Kindersprache [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (73). -
Klein, W. (2013). L'effettivo declino e la crescita potenziale della lessicografia tedesca. In N. Maraschio, D. De Martiono, & G. Stanchina (
Eds. ), L'italiano dei vocabolari: Atti di La piazza delle lingue 2012 (pp. 11-20). Firenze: Accademia della Crusca. -
Klein, W. (
Ed. ). (2000). Sprache des Rechts [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (118). -
Klein, W. (
Ed. ). (1988). Sprache Kranker [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (69). -
Klein, W. (
Ed. ). (1985). Schriftlichkeit [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (59). -
Klein, W. (
Ed. ). (1982). Zweitspracherwerb [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (45). -
Lansner, A., Sandberg, A., Petersson, K. M., & Ingvar, M. (2000). On forgetful attractor network memories. In H. Malmgren, M. Borga, & L. Niklasson (
Eds. ), Artificial neural networks in medicine and biology: Proceedings of the ANNIMAB-1 Conference, Göteborg, Sweden, 13-16 May 2000 (pp. 54-62). Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.Abstract
A recurrently connected attractor neural network with a Hebbian learning rule is currently our best ANN analogy for a piece cortex. Functionally biological memory operates on a spectrum of time scales with regard to induction and retention, and it is modulated in complex ways by sub-cortical neuromodulatory systems. Moreover, biological memory networks are commonly believed to be highly distributed and engage many co-operating cortical areas. Here we focus on the temporal aspects of induction and retention of memory in a connectionist type attractor memory model of a piece of cortex. A continuous time, forgetful Bayesian-Hebbian learning rule is described and compared to the characteristics of LTP and LTD seen experimentally. More generally, an attractor network implementing this learning rule can operate as a long-term, intermediate-term, or short-term memory. Modulation of the print-now signal of the learning rule replicates some experimental memory phenomena, like e.g. the von Restorff effect. -
Lenkiewicz, A., & Drude, S. (2013). Automatic annotation of linguistic 2D and Kinect recordings with the Media Query Language for Elan. In Proceedings of Digital Humanities 2013 (pp. 276-278).
Abstract
Research in body language with use of gesture recognition and speech analysis has gained much attention in the recent times, influencing disciplines related to image and speech processing.
This study aims to design the Media Query Language (MQL) (Lenkiewicz, et al. 2012) combined with the Linguistic Media Query Interface (LMQI) for Elan (Wittenburg, et al. 2006). The system integrated with the new achievements in audio-video recognition will allow querying media files with predefined gesture phases (or motion primitives) and speech characteristics as well as combinations of both. For the purpose of this work the predefined motions and speech characteristics are called patterns for atomic elements and actions for a sequence of patterns. The main assumption is that a user-customized library of patterns and actions and automated media annotation with LMQI will reduce annotation time, hence decreasing costs of creation of annotated corpora. Increase of the number of annotated data should influence the speed and number of possible research in disciplines in which human multimodal interaction is a subject of interest and where annotated corpora are required. -
Levinson, S. C. (2000). Language as nature and language as art. In J. Mittelstrass, & W. Singer (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the Symposium on ‘Changing concepts of nature and the turn of the Millennium (pp. 257-287). Vatican City: Pontificae Academiae Scientiarium Scripta Varia. -
Levinson, S. C. (2000). H.P. Grice on location on Rossel Island. In S. S. Chang, L. Liaw, & J. Ruppenhofer (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society (pp. 210-224). Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistic Society. -
Majid, A. (2013). Olfactory language and cognition. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 68). Austin,TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0025/index.html.Abstract
Since the cognitive revolution, a widely held assumption has been that—whereas content may vary across cultures—cognitive processes would be universal, especially those on the more basic levels. Even if scholars do not fully subscribe to this assumption, they often conceptualize, or tend to investigate, cognition as if it were universal (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010). The insight that universality must not be presupposed but scrutinized is now gaining ground, and cognitive diversity has become one of the hot (and controversial) topics in the field (Norenzayan & Heine, 2005). We argue that, for scrutinizing the cultural dimension of cognition, taking an anthropological perspective is invaluable, not only for the task itself, but for attenuating the home-field disadvantages that are inescapably linked to cross-cultural research (Medin, Bennis, & Chandler, 2010). -
McQueen, J. M., Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (2000). Positive and negative influences of the lexicon on phonemic decision-making. In B. Yuan, T. Huang, & X. Tang (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 3 (pp. 778-781). Beijing: China Military Friendship Publish.Abstract
Lexical knowledge influences how human listeners make decisions about speech sounds. Positive lexical effects (faster responses to target sounds in words than in nonwords) are robust across several laboratory tasks, while negative effects (slower responses to targets in more word-like nonwords than in less word-like nonwords) have been found in phonetic decision tasks but not phoneme monitoring tasks. The present experiments tested whether negative lexical effects are therefore a task-specific consequence of the forced choice required in phonetic decision. We compared phoneme monitoring and phonetic decision performance using the same Dutch materials in each task. In both experiments there were positive lexical effects, but no negative lexical effects. We observe that in all studies showing negative lexical effects, the materials were made by cross-splicing, which meant that they contained perceptual evidence supporting the lexically-consistent phonemes. Lexical knowledge seems to influence phonemic decision-making only when there is evidence for the lexically-consistent phoneme in the speech signal. -
McQueen, J. M., Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (2000). Why Merge really is autonomous and parsimonious. In A. Cutler, J. M. McQueen, & R. Zondervan (
Eds. ), Proceedings of SWAP (Workshop on Spoken Word Access Processes) (pp. 47-50). Nijmegen: Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics.Abstract
We briefly describe the Merge model of phonemic decision-making, and, in the light of general arguments about the possible role of feedback in spoken-word recognition, defend Merge's feedforward structure. Merge not only accounts adequately for the data, without invoking feedback connections, but does so in a parsimonious manner. -
Norris, D., Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., Butterfield, S., & Kearns, R. K. (2000). Language-universal constraints on the segmentation of English. In A. Cutler, J. M. McQueen, & R. Zondervan (
Eds. ), Proceedings of SWAP (Workshop on Spoken Word Access Processes) (pp. 43-46). Nijmegen: Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics.Abstract
Two word-spotting experiments are reported that examine whether the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC) [1] is a language-specific or language-universal strategy for the segmentation of continuous speech. The PWC disfavours parses which leave an impossible residue between the end of a candidate word and a known boundary. The experiments examined cases where the residue was either a CV syllable with a lax vowel, or a CVC syllable with a schwa. Although neither syllable context is a possible word in English, word-spotting in both contexts was easier than with a context consisting of a single consonant. The PWC appears to be language-universal rather than language-specific. -
Norris, D., Cutler, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2000). The optimal architecture for simulating spoken-word recognition. In C. Davis, T. Van Gelder, & R. Wales (
Eds. ), Cognitive Science in Australia, 2000: Proceedings of the Fifth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Cognitive Science Society. Adelaide: Causal Productions.Abstract
Simulations explored the inability of the TRACE model of spoken-word recognition to model the effects on human listening of subcategorical mismatch in word forms. The source of TRACE's failure lay not in interactive connectivity, not in the presence of inter-word competition, and not in the use of phonemic representations, but in the need for continuously optimised interpretation of the input. When an analogue of TRACE was allowed to cycle to asymptote on every slice of input, an acceptable simulation of the subcategorical mismatch data was achieved. Even then, however, the simulation was not as close as that produced by the Merge model, which has inter-word competition, phonemic representations and continuous optimisation (but no interactive connectivity). -
Ortega, G., & Ozyurek, A. (2013). Gesture-sign interface in hearing non-signers' first exposure to sign. In Proceedings of the Tilburg Gesture Research Meeting [TiGeR 2013].
Abstract
Natural sign languages and gestures are complex communicative systems that allow the incorporation of features of a referent into their structure. They differ, however, in that signs are more conventionalised because they consist of meaningless phonological parameters. There is some evidence that despite non-signers finding iconic signs more memorable they can have more difficulty at articulating their exact phonological components. In the present study, hearing non-signers took part in a sign repetition task in which they had to imitate as accurately as possible a set of iconic and arbitrary signs. Their renditions showed that iconic signs were articulated significantly less accurately than arbitrary signs. Participants were recalled six months later to take part in a sign generation task. In this task, participants were shown the English translation of the iconic signs they imitated six months prior. For each word, participants were asked to generate a sign (i.e., an iconic gesture). The handshapes produced in the sign repetition and sign generation tasks were compared to detect instances in which both renditions presented the same configuration. There was a significant correlation between articulation accuracy in the sign repetition task and handshape overlap. These results suggest some form of gestural interference in the production of iconic signs by hearing non-signers. We also suggest that in some instances non-signers may deploy their own conventionalised gesture when producing some iconic signs. These findings are interpreted as evidence that non-signers process iconic signs as gestures and that in production, only when sign and gesture have overlapping features will they be capable of producing the phonological components of signs accurately. -
Otake, T., & Cutler, A. (2000). A set of Japanese word cohorts rated for relative familiarity. In B. Yuan, T. Huang, & X. Tang (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 3 (pp. 766-769). Beijing: China Military Friendship Publish.Abstract
A database is presented of relative familiarity ratings for 24 sets of Japanese words, each set comprising words overlapping in the initial portions. These ratings are useful for the generation of material sets for research in the recognition of spoken words. -
Ozyurek, A., & Ozcaliskan, S. (2000). How do children learn to conflate manner and path in their speech and gestures? Differences in English and Turkish. In E. V. Clark (
Ed. ), The proceedings of the Thirtieth Child Language Research Forum (pp. 77-85). Stanford: CSLI Publications. -
Peeters, D., Chu, M., Holler, J., Ozyurek, A., & Hagoort, P. (2013). Getting to the point: The influence of communicative intent on the kinematics of pointing gestures. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 1127-1132). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Abstract
In everyday communication, people not only use speech but
also hand gestures to convey information. One intriguing
question in gesture research has been why gestures take the
specific form they do. Previous research has identified the
speaker-gesturer’s communicative intent as one factor
shaping the form of iconic gestures. Here we investigate
whether communicative intent also shapes the form of
pointing gestures. In an experimental setting, twenty-four
participants produced pointing gestures identifying a referent
for an addressee. The communicative intent of the speakergesturer
was manipulated by varying the informativeness of
the pointing gesture. A second independent variable was the
presence or absence of concurrent speech. As a function of their communicative intent and irrespective of the presence of speech, participants varied the durations of the stroke and the post-stroke hold-phase of their gesture. These findings add to our understanding of how the communicative context influences the form that a gesture takes.Additional information
http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0219/index.html -
Piai, V., Roelofs, A., Jensen, O., Schoffelen, J.-M., & Bonnefond, M. (2013). Distinct patterns of brain activity characterize lexical activation and competition in speech production [Abstract]. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25 Suppl., 106.
Abstract
A fundamental ability of speakers is to
quickly retrieve words from long-term memory. According to a prominent theory, concepts activate multiple associated words, which enter into competition for selection. Previous electrophysiological studies have provided evidence for the activation of multiple alternative words, but did not identify brain responses refl ecting competition. We report a magnetoencephalography study examining the timing and neural substrates of lexical activation and competition. The degree of activation of competing words was
manipulated by presenting pictures (e.g., dog) simultaneously with distractor
words. The distractors were semantically related to the picture name (cat), unrelated (pin), or identical (dog). Semantic distractors are stronger competitors to the picture name, because they receive additional activation from the picture, whereas unrelated distractors do not. Picture naming times were longer with semantic than with unrelated and identical distractors. The patterns of phase-locked and non-phase-locked activity were distinct
but temporally overlapping. Phase-locked activity in left middle temporal
gyrus, peaking at 400 ms, was larger on unrelated than semantic and identical trials, suggesting differential effort in processing the alternative words activated by the picture-word stimuli. Non-phase-locked activity in the 4-10 Hz range between 400-650 ms in left superior frontal gyrus was larger on semantic than unrelated and identical trials, suggesting different
degrees of effort in resolving the competition among the alternatives
words, as refl ected in the naming times. These findings characterize distinct
patterns of brain activity associated with lexical activation and competition
respectively, and their temporal relation, supporting the theory that words are selected by competition. -
Ravignani, A., Gingras, B., Asano, R., Sonnweber, R., Matellan, V., & Fitch, W. T. (2013). The evolution of rhythmic cognition: New perspectives and technologies in comparative research. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, I. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1199-1204). Austin,TX: Cognitive Science Society.Abstract
Music is a pervasive phenomenon in human culture, and musical
rhythm is virtually present in all musical traditions. Research
on the evolution and cognitive underpinnings of rhythm
can benefit from a number of approaches. We outline key concepts
and definitions, allowing fine-grained analysis of rhythmic
cognition in experimental studies. We advocate comparative
animal research as a useful approach to answer questions
about human music cognition and review experimental evidence
from different species. Finally, we suggest future directions
for research on the cognitive basis of rhythm. Apart from
research in semi-natural setups, possibly allowed by “drum set
for chimpanzees” prototypes presented here for the first time,
mathematical modeling and systematic use of circular statistics
may allow promising advances. -
Roberts, S. G. (2013). A Bottom-up approach to the cultural evolution of bilingualism. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 1229-1234). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0236/index.html.Abstract
The relationship between individual cognition and cultural phenomena at the society level can be transformed by cultural transmission (Kirby, Dowman, & Griffiths, 2007). Top-down models of this process have typically assumed that individuals only adopt a single linguistic trait. Recent extensions include ‘bilingual’ agents, able to adopt multiple linguistic traits (Burkett & Griffiths, 2010). However, bilingualism is more than variation within an individual: it involves the conditional use of variation with different interlocutors. That is, bilingualism is a property of a population that emerges from use. A bottom-up simulation is presented where learners are sensitive to the identity of other speakers. The simulation reveals that dynamic social structures are a key factor for the evolution of bilingualism in a population, a feature that was abstracted away in the top-down models. Top-down and bottom-up approaches may lead to different answers, but can work together to reveal and explore important features of the cultural transmission process. -
Sauppe, S., Norcliffe, E., Konopka, A. E., Van Valin Jr., R. D., & Levinson, S. C. (2013). Dependencies first: Eye tracking evidence from sentence production in Tagalog. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 1265-1270). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Abstract
We investigated the time course of sentence formulation in Tagalog, a verb-initial language in which the verb obligatorily agrees with one of its arguments. Eye-tracked participants described pictures of transitive events. Fixations to the two characters in the events were compared across sentences differing in agreement marking and post-verbal word order. Fixation patterns show evidence for two temporally dissociated phases in Tagalog sentence production. The first, driven by verb agreement, involves early linking of concepts to syntactic functions; the second, driven by word order, involves incremental lexical encoding of these concepts. These results suggest that even the earliest stages of sentence formulation may be guided by a language's grammatical structure. -
Scharenborg, O., & Janse, E. (2013). Changes in the role of intensity as a cue for fricative categorisation. In Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2013: 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 3147-3151).
Abstract
Older listeners with high-frequency hearing loss rely more on intensity for categorisation of /s/ than normal-hearing older listeners. This study addresses the question whether this increased reliance comes about immediately when the need
arises, i.e., in the face of a spectrally-degraded signal. A phonetic categorisation task was carried out using intensitymodulated fricatives in a clean and a low-pass filtered condition with two younger and two older listener groups.
When high-frequency information was removed from the speech signal, younger listeners started using intensity as a cue. The older adults on the other hand, when presented with the low-pass filtered speech, did not rely on intensity differences for fricative identification. These results suggest that the reliance on intensity shown by the older hearingimpaired adults may have been acquired only gradually with
longer exposure to a degraded speech signal. -
Scharenborg, O., Bouwman, G., & Boves, L. (2000). Connected digit recognition with class specific word models. In Proceedings of the COST249 Workshop on Voice Operated Telecom Services workshop (pp. 71-74).
Abstract
This work focuses on efficient use of the training material by selecting the optimal set of model topologies. We do this by training multiple word models of each word class, based on a subclassification according to a priori knowledge of the training material. We will examine classification criteria with respect to duration of the word, gender of the speaker, position of the word in the utterance, pauses in the vicinity of the word, and combinations of these. Comparative experiments were carried out on a corpus consisting of Dutch spoken connected digit strings and isolated digits, which are recorded in a wide variety of acoustic conditions. The results show, that classification based on gender of the speaker, position of the digit in the string, pauses in the vicinity of the training tokens, and models based on a combination of these criteria perform significantly better than the set with single models per digit. -
Scott, K., Sakkalou, E., Ellis-Davies, K., Hilbrink, E., Hahn, U., & Gattis, M. (2013). Infant contributions to joint attention predict vocabulary development. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, I. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 3384-3389). Austin,TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from http://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2013/papers/0602/index.html.Abstract
Joint attention has long been accepted as constituting a privileged circumstance in which word learning prospers. Consequently research has investigated the role that maternal responsiveness to infant attention plays in predicting language outcomes. However there has been a recent expansion in research implicating similar predictive effects from individual differences in infant behaviours. Emerging from the foundations of such work comes an interesting question: do the relative contributions of the mother and infant to joint attention episodes impact upon language learning? In an attempt to address this, two joint attention behaviours were assessed as predictors of vocabulary attainment (as measured by OCDI Production Scores). These predictors were: mothers encouraging attention to an object given their infant was already attending to an object (maternal follow-in); and infants looking to an object given their mothers encouragement of attention to an object (infant follow-in). In a sample of 14-month old children (N=36) we compared the predictive power of these maternal and infant follow-in variables on concurrent and later language performance. Results using Growth Curve Analysis provided evidence that while both maternal follow-in and infant follow-in variables contributed to production scores, infant follow-in was a stronger predictor. Consequently it does appear to matter whose final contribution establishes joint attention episodes. Infants who more often follow-in into their mothers’ encouragement of attention have larger, and faster growing vocabularies between 14 and 18-months of age. -
Scott, D. R., & Cutler, A. (1982). Segmental cues to syntactic structure. In Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics 'Spectral Analysis and its Use in Underwater Acoustics' (pp. E3.1-E3.4). London: Institute of Acoustics.
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Senft, G. (2000). COME and GO in Kilivila. In B. Palmer, & P. Geraghty (
Eds. ), SICOL. Proceedings of the second international conference on Oceanic linguistics: Volume 2, Historical and descriptive studies (pp. 105-136). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). Riorientamenti metodologici nello studio della variabilità linguistica. In D. Gambarara, & A. D'Atri (
Eds. ), Ideologia, filosofia e linguistica: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Rende (CS) 15-17 Settembre 1978 ( (pp. 499-515). Roma: Bulzoni. -
Seuren, P. A. M. (1985). Predicate raising and semantic transparency in Mauritian Creole. In N. Boretzky, W. Enninger, & T. Stolz (
Eds. ), Akten des 2. Essener Kolloquiums über "Kreolsprachen und Sprachkontakte", 29-30 Nov. 1985 (pp. 203-229). Bochum: Brockmeyer. -
Shayan, S., Moreira, A., Windhouwer, M., Koenig, A., & Drude, S. (2013). LEXUS 3 - a collaborative environment for multimedia lexica. In Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Conference 2013 (pp. 392-395).
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Smith, A. C., Monaghan, P., & Huettig, F. (2013). Modelling the effects of formal literacy training on language mediated visual attention. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 3420-3425). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.Abstract
Recent empirical evidence suggests that language-mediated eye gaze is partly determined by level of formal literacy training. Huettig, Singh and Mishra (2011) showed that high-literate individuals' eye gaze was closely time locked to phonological overlap between a spoken target word and items presented in a visual display. In contrast, low-literate individuals' eye gaze was not related to phonological overlap, but was instead strongly influenced by semantic relationships between items. Our present study tests the hypothesis that this behavior is an emergent property of an increased ability to extract phonological structure from the speech signal, as in the case of high-literates, with low-literates more reliant on more coarse grained structure. This hypothesis was tested using a neural network model, that integrates linguistic information extracted from the speech signal with visual and semantic information within a central resource. We demonstrate that contrasts in fixation behavior similar to those observed between high and low literates emerge when models are trained on speech signals of contrasting granularity. -
Sumner, M., Kurumada, C., Gafter, R., & Casillas, M. (2013). Phonetic variation and the recognition of words with pronunciation variants. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2013) (pp. 3486-3492). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. -
Ten Bosch, L., Boves, L., & Ernestus, M. (2013). Towards an end-to-end computational model of speech comprehension: simulating a lexical decision task. In Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2013: 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 2822-2826).
Abstract
This paper describes a computational model of speech comprehension that takes the acoustic signal as input and predicts reaction times as observed in an auditory lexical decision task. By doing so, we explore a new generation of end-to-end computational models that are able to simulate the behaviour of human subjects participating in a psycholinguistic experiment. So far, nearly all computational models of speech comprehension do not start from the speech signal itself, but from abstract representations of the speech signal, while the few existing models that do start from the acoustic signal cannot directly model reaction times as obtained in comprehension experiments. The main functional components in our model are the perception stage, which is compatible with the psycholinguistic model Shortlist B and is implemented with techniques from automatic speech recognition, and the decision stage, which is based on the linear ballistic accumulation decision model. We successfully tested our model against data from 20 participants performing a largescale auditory lexical decision experiment. Analyses show that the model is a good predictor for the average judgment and reaction time for each word. -
Timmer, K., Ganushchak, L. Y., Mitlina, Y., & Schiller, N. O. (2013). Choosing first or second language phonology in 125 ms [Abstract]. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25 Suppl., 164.
Abstract
We are often in a bilingual situation (e.g., overhearing a conversation in the train). We investigated whether first (L1) and second language (L2) phonologies are automatically activated. A masked priming paradigm was used, with Russian words as targets and either Russian or English words as primes. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while Russian (L1) – English (L2) bilinguals read aloud L1 target words (e.g. РЕЙС /reis/ ‘fl ight’) primed with either L1 (e.g. РАНА /rana/ ‘wound’) or L2 words (e.g. PACK). Target words were read faster when they were preceded by phonologically related L1 primes but not by orthographically related L2 primes. ERPs showed orthographic priming in the 125-200 ms time window. Thus, both L1 and L2 phonologies are simultaneously activated during L1 reading. The results provide support for non-selective models of bilingual reading, which assume automatic activation of the non-target language phonology even when it is not required by the task. -
Ünal, E., & Papafragou, A. (2013). Linguistic and conceptual representations of inference as a knowledge source. In S. Baiz, N. Goldman, & R. Hawkes (
Eds. ), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BUCLD 37) (pp. 433-443). Boston: Cascadilla Press. -
Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2000). Focus structure or abstract syntax? A role and reference grammar account of some ‘abstract’ syntactic phenomena. In Z. Estrada Fernández, & I. Barreras Aguilar (
Eds. ), Memorias del V Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística en el Noroeste: (2 v.) Estudios morfosintácticos (pp. 39-62). Hermosillo: Editorial Unison. -
Van Putten, S. (2013). The meaning of the Avatime additive particle tsye. In M. Balbach, L. Benz, S. Genzel, M. Grubic, A. Renans, S. Schalowski, M. Stegenwallner, & A. Zeldes (
Eds. ), Information structure: Empirical perspectives on theory (pp. 55-74). Potsdam: Universitätsverlag Potsdam. Retrieved from http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn=urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus-64804. -
von Stutterheim, C., & Flecken, M. (
Eds. ). (2013). Principles of information organization in L2 discourse [Special Issue]. International Review of Applied linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL), 51(2). -
Weber, A. (2000). Phonotactic and acoustic cues for word segmentation in English. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 2000) (pp. 782-785).
Abstract
This study investigates the influence of both phonotactic and acoustic cues on the segmentation of spoken English. Listeners detected embedded English words in nonsense sequences (word spotting). Words aligned with phonotactic boundaries were easier to detect than words without such alignment. Acoustic cues to boundaries could also have signaled word boundaries, especially when word onsets lacked phonotactic alignment. However, only one of several durational boundary cues showed a marginally significant correlation with response times (RTs). The results suggest that word segmentation in English is influenced primarily by phonotactic constraints and only secondarily by acoustic aspects of the speech signal. -
Weber, A. (2000). The role of phonotactics in the segmentation of native and non-native continuous speech. In A. Cutler, J. M. McQueen, & R. Zondervan (
Eds. ), Proceedings of SWAP, Workshop on Spoken Word Access Processes. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.Abstract
Previous research has shown that listeners make use of their knowledge of phonotactic constraints to segment speech into individual words. The present study investigates the influence of phonotactics when segmenting a non-native language. German and English listeners detected embedded English words in nonsense sequences. German listeners also had knowledge of English, but English listeners had no knowledge of German. Word onsets were either aligned with a syllable boundary or not, according to the phonotactics of the two languages. Words aligned with either German or English phonotactic boundaries were easier for German listeners to detect than words without such alignment. Responses of English listeners were influenced primarily by English phonotactic alignment. The results suggest that both native and non-native phonotactic constraints influence lexical segmentation of a non-native, but familiar, language. -
De Zubicaray, G. I., Acheson, D. J., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (
Eds. ). (2013). Mind what you say - general and specific mechanisms for monitoring in speech production [Research topic] [Special Issue]. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Retrieved from http://www.frontiersin.org/human_neuroscience/researchtopics/mind_what_you_say_-_general_an/1197.Abstract
Psycholinguistic research has typically portrayed speech production as a relatively automatic process. This is because when errors are made, they occur as seldom as one in every thousand words we utter. However, it has long been recognised that we need some form of control over what we are currently saying and what we plan to say. This capacity to both monitor our inner speech and self-correct our speech output has often been assumed to be a property of the language comprehension system. More recently, it has been demonstrated that speech production benefits from interfacing with more general cognitive processes such as selective attention, short-term memory (STM) and online response monitoring to resolve potential conflict and successfully produce the output of a verbal plan. The conditions and levels of representation according to which these more general planning, monitoring and control processes are engaged during speech production remain poorly understood. Moreover, there remains a paucity of information about their neural substrates, despite some of the first evidence of more general monitoring having come from electrophysiological studies of error related negativities (ERNs). While aphasic speech errors continue to be a rich source of information, there has been comparatively little research focus on instances of speech repair. The purpose of this Frontiers Research Topic is to provide a forum for researchers to contribute investigations employing behavioural, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, neuroimaging and virtual lesioning techniques. In addition, while the focus of the research topic is on novel findings, we welcome submission of computational simulations, review articles and methods papers.
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