Publications

Displaying 201 - 252 of 252
  • 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.
  • Smith, A. C., & Monaghan, P. (2011). What are the functional units in reading? Evidence for statistical variation influencing word processing. In Connectionist Models of Neurocognition and Emergent Behavior: From Theory to Applications (pp. 159-172). Singapore: World Scientific.

    Abstract

    Computational models of reading have differed in terms of whether they propose a single route forming the mapping between orthography and phonology or whether there is a lexical/sublexical route distinction. A critical test of the architecture of the reading system is how it deals with multi-letter graphemes. Rastle and Coltheart (1998) found that the presence of digraphs in nonwords but not in words led to an increase in naming times, suggesting that nonwords were processed via a distinct sequential route to words. In contrast Pagliuca, Monaghan, and McIntosh (2008) implemented a single route model of reading and showed that under conditions of visual noise the presence of digraphs in words did have an effect on naming accuracy. In this study, we investigated whether such digraph effects could be found in both words and nonwords under conditions of visual noise. If so it would suggest that effects on words and nonwords are comparable. A single route connectionist model of reading showed greater accuracy for both words and nonwords containing digraphs. Experimental results showed participants were more accurate in recognising words if they contained digraphs. However contrary to model predictions they were less accurate in recognising nonwords containing digraphs compared to controls. We discuss the challenges faced by both theoretical perspectives in interpreting these findings and in light of a psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading.
  • Sprenger, S. A. (2003). Fixed expressions and the production of idioms. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen. doi:10.17617/2.57562.
  • Staum Casasanto, L., Gijssels, T., & Casasanto, D. (2011). The Reverse-Chameleon Effect: Negative social consequences of anatomical mimicry.[Abstract]. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. F. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1103). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Mirror mimicry has well-known consequences for the person being mimicked: it increases how positively they feel about the mimicker (the Chameleon Effect). Here we show that anatomical mimicry has the opposite social consequences: a Reverse-Chameleon Effect. To equate mirror and anatomical mimicry, we asked participants to have a face-to-face conversation with a digital human (VIRTUO), in a fully-immersive virtual environment. Participants’ spontaneous head movements were tracked, and VIRTUO mimicked them at a 2-second delay, either mirror-wise, anatomically, or not at all (instead enacting another participant’s movements). Participants who were mimicked mirror-wise rated their social interaction with VIRTUO to be significantly more positive than those who were mimicked anatomically. Participants who were not mimicked gave intermediate ratings. Beyond its practical implications, the Reverse-Chameleon Effect constrains theoretical accounts of how mimicry affects social perception
  • Stehouwer, H., & van Zaanen, M. (2009). Language models for contextual error detection and correction. In Proceedings of the EACL 2009 Workshop on Computational Linguistic Aspects of Grammatical Inference (pp. 41-48). Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    The problem of identifying and correcting confusibles, i.e. context-sensitive spelling errors, in text is typically tackled using specifically trained machine learning classifiers. For each different set of confusibles, a specific classifier is trained and tuned. In this research, we investigate a more generic approach to context-sensitive confusible correction. Instead of using specific classifiers, we use one generic classifier based on a language model. This measures the likelihood of sentences with different possible solutions of a confusible in place. The advantage of this approach is that all confusible sets are handled by a single model. Preliminary results show that the performance of the generic classifier approach is only slightly worse that that of the specific classifier approach
  • Stehouwer, H. (2011). Statistical langauge models for alternative sequence selection. PhD Thesis, Tilburg University.
  • Stehouwer, H., & Van Zaanen, M. (2009). Token merging in language model-based confusible disambiguation. In T. Calders, K. Tuyls, & M. Pechenizkiy (Eds.), Proceedings of the 21st Benelux Conference on Artificial Intelligence (pp. 241-248).

    Abstract

    In the context of confusible disambiguation (spelling correction that requires context), the synchronous back-off strategy combined with traditional n-gram language models performs well. However, when alternatives consist of a different number of tokens, this classification technique cannot be applied directly, because the computation of the probabilities is skewed. Previous work already showed that probabilities based on different order n-grams should not be compared directly. In this article, we propose new probability metrics in which the size of the n is varied according to the number of tokens of the confusible alternative. This requires access to n-grams of variable length. Results show that the synchronous back-off method is extremely robust. We discuss the use of suffix trees as a technique to store variable length n-gram information efficiently.
  • Stehouwer, H., & Auer, E. (2011). Unlocking language archives using search. In C. Vertan, M. Slavcheva, P. Osenova, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technologies for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Hissar, Bulgaria, 16 September 2011 (pp. 19-26). Shoumen, Bulgaria: Incoma Ltd.

    Abstract

    The Language Archive manages one of the largest and most varied sets of natural language data. This data consists of video and audio enriched with annotations. It is available for more than 250 languages, many of which are endangered. Researchers have a need to access this data conveniently and efficiently. We provide several browse and search methods to cover this need, which have been developed and expanded over the years. Metadata and content-oriented search methods can be connected for a more focused search. This article aims to provide a complete overview of the available search mechanisms, with a focus on annotation content search, including a benchmark.
  • Sulpizio, S., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). When two newly-acquired words are one: New words differing in stress alone are not automatically represented differently. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 1385-1388).

    Abstract

    Do listeners use lexical stress at an early stage in word learning? Artificial-lexicon studies have shown that listeners can learn new spoken words easily. These studies used non-words differing in consonants and/or vowels, but not differing only in stress. If listeners use stress information in word learning, they should be able to learn new words that differ only in stress (e.g., BInulo-biNUlo). We investigated this issue here. When learning new words, Italian listeners relied on segmental information; they did not take stress information into account. Newly-acquired words differing in stress alone are not automatically represented as different words.
  • 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., Hämäläinen, A., & Ernestus, M. (2011). Assessing acoustic reduction: Exploiting local structure in speech. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 2665-2668).

    Abstract

    This paper presents a method to quantify the spectral characteristics of reduction in speech. Hämäläinen et al. (2009) proposes a measure of spectral reduction which is able to predict a substantial amount of the variation in duration that linguistically motivated variables do not account for. In this paper, we continue studying acoustic reduction in speech by developing a new acoustic measure of reduction, based on local manifold structure in speech. We show that this measure yields significantly improved statistical models for predicting variation in duration.
  • 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.
  • Tice, M., & Henetz, T. (2011). Turn-boundary projection: Looking ahead. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 838-843). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Coordinating with others is hard; and yet we accomplish this every day when we take turns in a conversation. How do we do this? The present study introduces a new method of measuring turn-boundary projection that enables researchers to achieve more valid, flexible, and temporally informative data on online turn projection: tracking an observer’s gaze from the current speaker to the next speaker. In this preliminary investigation, participants consistently looked at the current speaker during their turn. Additionally, they looked to the next speaker before her turn began, and sometimes even before the current speaker finished speaking. This suggests that observer gaze is closely aligned with perceptual processes of turn-boundary projection, and thus may equip the field with the tools to explore how we manage to take turns.
  • 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.
  • Torreira, F. (2011). Speech reduction in spontaneous French and Spanish. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    Spraakklanken, lettergrepen en woorden worden vaak minder duidelijk uitgesproken in spontane conversaties dan in formelere spreekstijlen. Dit proefschrift presenteert onderzoek naar spraakreductie in spontaan Frans en Spaans. Naar deze talen is tot nu toe weinig spraakreductieonderzoek gedaan. Er worden twee nieuwe grote corpora met spontaan Frans en Spaans beschreven. Op basis van deze corpora heb ik enkele onderzoeken gedaan waarin ik de volgende belangrijke conclusies heb getrokken. Allereerst vond ik dat akoestische data van spontane spraak waardevolle informatie kan geven over de vraag of specifieke reductiefenomenen categoriaal of continu zijn. Verder vond ik, in tegenstelling tot onderzoek naar Germaanse talen, slechts gedeeltelijk bewijs dat spraakreductie in Romaanse talen als het Frans en het Spaans beïnvloed wordt door de eigenschappen en voorspelbaarheid van het woord. Ten derde vond ik door spontaan Frans en Spaans te vergelijken dat spraakreductie tussen talen meer kan verschillen dan je zou verwachten op basis van laboratoriumonderzoek

    Additional information

    full text via Radboud Repository
  • Torreira, F., & Ernestus, M. (2009). Probabilistic effects on French [t] duration. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 448-451). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    The present study shows that [t] consonants are affected by probabilistic factors in a syllable-timed language as French, and in spontaneous as well as in journalistic speech. Study 1 showed a word bigram frequency effect in spontaneous French, but its exact nature depended on the corpus on which the probabilistic measures were based. Study 2 investigated journalistic speech and showed an effect of the joint frequency of the test word and its following word. We discuss the possibility that these probabilistic effects are due to the speaker’s planning of upcoming words, and to the speaker’s adaptation to the listener’s needs.
  • Tschöpel, S., Schneider, D., Bardeli, R., Schreer, O., Masneri, S., Wittenburg, P., Sloetjes, H., Lenkiewicz, P., & Auer, E. (2011). AVATecH: Audio/Video technology for humanities research. In C. Vertan, M. Slavcheva, P. Osenova, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technologies for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Hissar, Bulgaria, 16 September 2011 (pp. 86-89). Shoumen, Bulgaria: Incoma Ltd.

    Abstract

    In the AVATecH project the Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) and the Fraunhofer institutes HHI and IAIS aim to significantly speed up the process of creating annotations of audio-visual data for humanities research. For this we integrate state-of-theart audio and video pattern recognition algorithms into the widely used ELAN annotation tool. To address the problem of heterogeneous annotation tasks and recordings we provide modular components extended by adaptation and feedback mechanisms to achieve competitive annotation quality within significantly less annotation time. Currently we are designing a large-scale end-user evaluation of the project.
  • Tuinman, A. (2011). Processing casual speech in native and non-native language. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Tuinman, A., Mitterer, H., & Cutler, A. (2011). The efficiency of cross-dialectal word recognition. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 153-156).

    Abstract

    Dialects of the same language can differ in the casual speech processes they allow; e.g., British English allows the insertion of [r] at word boundaries in sequences such as saw ice, while American English does not. In two speeded word recognition experiments, American listeners heard such British English sequences; in contrast to non-native listeners, they accurately perceived intended vowel-initial words even with intrusive [r]. Thus despite input mismatches, cross-dialectal word recognition benefits from the full power of native-language processing.
  • Turco, G., Gubian, M., & Schertz, J. (2011). A quantitative investigation of the prosody of Verum Focus in Italian. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 961-964).

    Abstract

    prosodic marking of Verum focus (VF) in Italian, which is said to be realized with a pitch accent on the finite verb (e.g. A: Paul has not eaten the banana - B: (No), Paul HAS eaten the banana!). We tried to discover whether and how Italian speakers prosodically mark VF when producing full-fledged sentences using a semi-spontaneous production experiment on 27 speakers. Speech rate and f0 contours were extracted using automatic data processing tools and were subsequently analysed using Functional Data Analysis (FDA), which allowed for automatic visualization of patterns in the contour shapes. Our results show that the postfocal region of VF sentences exhibit faster speech rate and lower f0 compared to non-VF cases. However, an expected consistent difference of f0 effect on the focal region of the VF sentence was not found in this analysis.
  • Uddén, J., Araújo, S., Forkstam, C., Ingvar, M., Hagoort, P., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). A matter of time: Implicit acquisition of recursive sequence structures. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2444-2449).

    Abstract

    A dominant hypothesis in empirical research on the evolution of language is the following: the fundamental difference between animal and human communication systems is captured by the distinction between regular and more complex non-regular grammars. Studies reporting successful artificial grammar learning of nested recursive structures and imaging studies of the same have methodological shortcomings since they typically allow explicit problem solving strategies and this has been shown to account for the learning effect in subsequent behavioral studies. The present study overcomes these shortcomings by using subtle violations of agreement structure in a preference classification task. In contrast to the studies conducted so far, we use an implicit learning paradigm, allowing the time needed for both abstraction processes and consolidation to take place. Our results demonstrate robust implicit learning of recursively embedded structures (context-free grammar) and recursive structures with cross-dependencies (context-sensitive grammar) in an artificial grammar learning task spanning 9 days. Keywords: Implicit artificial grammar learning; centre embedded; cross-dependency; implicit learning; context-sensitive grammar; context-free grammar; regular grammar; non-regular grammar
  • 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.
  • Vainio, M., Suni, A., Raitio, T., Nurminen, J., Järvikivi, J., & Alku, P. (2009). New method for delexicalization and its application to prosodic tagging for text-to-speech synthesis. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 1703-1706).

    Abstract

    This paper describes a new flexible delexicalization method based on glottal excited parametric speech synthesis scheme. The system utilizes inverse filtered glottal flow and all-pole modelling of the vocal tract. The method provides a possibility to retain and manipulate all relevant prosodic features of any kind of speech. Most importantly, the features include voice quality, which has not been properly modeled in earlier delexicalization methods. The functionality of the new method was tested in a prosodic tagging experiment aimed at providing word prominence data for a text-to-speech synthesis system. The experiment confirmed the usefulness of the method and further corroborated earlier evidence that linguistic factors influence the perception of prosodic prominence.
  • Van de Ven, M. A. M. (2011). The role of acoustic detail and context in the comprehension of reduced pronunciation variants. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van Hout, A., Veenstra, A., & Berends, S. (2011). All pronouns are not acquired equally in Dutch: Elicitation of object and quantitative pronouns. In M. Pirvulescu, M. C. Cuervo, A. T. Pérez-Leroux, J. Steele, & N. Strik (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010) (pp. 106-121). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    This research reports the results of eliciting pronouns in two syntactic environments: Object pronouns and quantitative er (Q-er). Thus another type of language is added to the literature on subject and object clitic acquisition in the Romance languages (Jakubowicz et al., 1998; Hamann et al., 1996). Quantitative er is a unique pronoun in the Germanic languages; it has the same distribution as partitive clitics in Romance. Q-er is an N'-anaphor and occurs obligatorily with headless noun phrases with a numeral or weak quantifier. Q-er is licensed only when the context offers an antecedent; it binds an empty position in the NP. Data from typically-developing children aged 5;0-6;0 show that object and Q-er pronouns are not acquired equally; it is proposed that this is due to their different syntax. The use of Q-er involves more sophisticated syntactic knowledge: Q-er occurs at the left edge of the VP and binds an empty position in the NP, whereas object pronouns are simply stand-ins for full NPs and occur in the same position. These Dutch data reveal that pronouns are not used as exclusively as object clitics are in the Romance languages (Varlakosta, in prep.).
  • Van Berkum, J. J. A. (2009). Does the N400 directly reflect compositional sense-making? Psychophysiology, Special Issue: Society for Psychophysiological Research Abstracts for the Forty-Ninth Annual Meeting, 46(Suppl. 1), s2.

    Abstract

    A not uncommon assumption in psycholinguistics is that the N400 directly indexes high-level semantic integration, the compositional, word-driven construction of sentence- and discourse-level meaning in some language-relevant unification space. The various discourse- and speaker-dependent modulations of the N400 uncovered by us and others are often taken to support this 'compositional integration' position. In my talk, I will argue that these N400 modulations are probably better interpreted as only indirectly reflecting compositional sense-making. The account that I will advance for these N400 effects is a variant of the classic Kutas and Federmeier (2002, TICS) memory retrieval account in which context effects on the word-elicited N400 are taken to reflect contextual priming of LTM access. It differs from the latter in making more explicit that the contextual cues that prime access to a word's meaning in LTM can range from very simple (e.g., a single concept) to very complex ones (e.g., a structured representation of the current discourse). Furthermore, it incorporates the possibility, suggested by recent N400 findings, that semantic retrieval can also be intensified in response to certain ‘relevance signals’, such as strong value-relevance, or a marked delivery (linguistic focus, uncommon choice of words, etc). In all, the perspective I'll draw is that in the context of discourse-level language processing, N400 effects reflect an 'overlay of technologies', with the construction of discourse-level representations riding on top of more ancient sense-making technology.
  • Van der Zande, P. (2013). Hearing and seeing speech: Perceptual adjustments in auditory-visual speech processing. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Van Leeuwen, T. (2011). How one can see what is not there: Neural mechanisms of grapheme-colour synasthesia. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    People with grapheme-colour synaesthesia experience colour for letters of the alphabet or digits; A can be red and B can be green. How can it be, that people automatically see a colour where only black letters are printed on the paper? With brain scans (fMRI) I showed that (black) letters activate the colour area of the brain (V4) and also a brain area that is important for combining different types of information (SPL). We found that the location where synaesthetes subjectively experience their colours is related to the order in which these brain areas become active. Some synaesthetes see their colour ‘projected onto the letter’, similar to real colour experiences, and in this case colour area V4 becomes active first. If the colours appear like a strong association without a fixed location in space, SPL becomes active first, similar to what happens for normal memories. In a last experiment we showed that in synaesthetes, attention is captured by real colour very strongly, stronger than for control participants. Perhaps this attention effect of colour can explain how letters and colours become coupled in synaesthetes.
  • Van der Linden, M. (2011). Experience-based cortical plasticity in object category representation. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.

    Abstract

    Marieke van der Linden investigated the neural mechanisms underlying category formation in the human brain. The research in her thesis provides novel insights in how the brain learns, stores, and uses category knowledge, enabling humans to become skilled in categorization. The studies reveal the neural mechanisms through which perceptual as well as conceptual category knowledge is created and shaped by experience. The results clearly show that neuronal sensitivity to object features is affected by categorization training. These findings fill in a missing link between electrophysiological recordings from monkey cortex demonstrating learning-induced sharpening of neuronal selectivity and brain imaging data showing category-specific representations in the human brain. Moreover, she showed that it is specifically the features of an object that are relevant for its categorization that induce selectivity in neuronal populations. Category-learning requires collaboration between many different brain areas. Together these can be seen as the neural correlates of the key points of categorization: discrimination and generalization. The occipitotemporal cortex represents those characteristic features of objects that define its category. The narrowly shape-tuned properties of this area enable fine-grained discrimination of perceptually similar objects. In addition, the superior temporal sulcus forms associations between members or properties (i.e. sound and shape) of a category. This allows the generalization of perceptually different but conceptually similar objects. Last but not least is the prefrontal cortex which is involved in coding behaviourally-relevant category information and thus enables the explicit retrieval of category membership.
  • Van Putten, S. (2009). Talking about motion in Avatime. Master Thesis, Leiden University.
  • Van de Ven, M., Tucker, B. V., & Ernestus, M. (2009). Semantic context effects in the recognition of acoustically unreduced and reduced words. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1867-1870). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    Listeners require context to understand the casual pronunciation variants of words that are typical of spontaneous speech (Ernestus et al., 2002). The present study reports two auditory lexical decision experiments, investigating listeners' use of semantic contextual information in the comprehension of unreduced and reduced words. We found a strong semantic priming effect for low frequency unreduced words, whereas there was no such effect for reduced words. Word frequency was facilitatory for all words. These results show that semantic context is relevant especially for the comprehension of unreduced words, which is unexpected given the listener driven explanation of reduction in spontaneous speech.
  • 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.
  • Vapnarsky, V., & Le Guen, O. (2011). The guardians of space: Understanding ecological and historical relations of the contemporary Yucatec Mayas to their landscape. In C. Isendahl, & B. Liljefors Persson (Eds.), Ecology, Power, and Religion in Maya Landscapes: Proceedings of the 11th European Maya Conference. Acta Mesoamericano. vol. 23. Markt Schwaben: Saurwein.
  • Verdonschot, R. G. (2011). Word processing in languages using non-alphabetic scripts: The cases of Japanese and Chinese. PhD Thesis, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands.

    Abstract

    This thesis investigates the processing of words written in Japanese kanji and Chinese hànzì, i.e. logographic scripts. Special attention is given to the fact that the majority of Japanese kanji have multiple pronunciations (generally depending on the combination a kanji forms with other characters). First, using masked priming, it is established that upon presentation of a Japanese kanji multiple pronunciations are activated. In subsequent experiments using word naming with context pictures it is concluded that both Chinese hànzì and Japanese kanji are read out loud via a direct route from orthography to phonology. However, only Japanese kanji become susceptible to semantic or phonological context effects as a result of a cost due to the processing of multiple pronunciations. Finally, zooming in on the size of the articulatory planning unit in Japanese it is concluded that the mora as a phonological unit best complies with the observed data pattern and not the phoneme or the syllable
  • Verhagen, J. (2009). Finiteness in Dutch as a second language. PhD Thesis, VU University, Amsterdam.
  • Versteegh, M., Ten Bosch, L., & Boves, L. (2011). Modelling novelty preference in word learning. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 761-764).

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the effects of novel words on a cognitively plausible computational model of word learning. The model is first familiarized with a set of words, achieving high recognition scores and subsequently offered novel words for training. We show that the model is able to recognize the novel words as different from the previously seen words, based on a measure of novelty that we introduce. We then propose a procedure analogous to novelty preference in infants. Results from simulations of word learning show that adding this procedure to our model speeds up training and helps the model attain higher recognition rates.
  • Verweij, H., Windhouwer, M., & Wittenburg, P. (2011). Knowledge management for small languages. In V. Luzar-Stiffler, I. Jarec, & Z. Bekic (Eds.), Proceedings of the ITI 2011 33rd Int. Conf. on Information Technology Interfaces, June 27-30, 2011, Cavtat, Croatia (pp. 213-218). Zagreb, Croatia: University Computing Centre, University of Zagreb.

    Abstract

    In this paper an overview of the knowledge components needed for extensive documentation of small languages is given. The Language Archive is striving to offer all these tools to the linguistic community. The major tools in relation to the knowledge components are described. Followed by a discussion on what is currently lacking and possible strategies to move forward.
  • 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).
  • Vuong, L., Meyer, A. S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2011). Simultaneous online tracking of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies in statistical learning. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 964-969). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Wagner, A., & Braun, A. (2003). Is voice quality language-dependent? Acoustic analyses based on speakers of three different languages. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2003) (pp. 651-654). Adelaide: Causal Productions.
  • Wagner, M., Tran, D., Togneri, R., Rose, P., Powers, D., Onslow, M., Loakes, D., Lewis, T., Kuratate, T., Kinoshita, Y., Kemp, N., Ishihara, S., Ingram, J., Hajek, J., Grayden, D., Göcke, R., Fletcher, J., Estival, D., Epps, J., Dale, R. and 11 moreWagner, M., Tran, D., Togneri, R., Rose, P., Powers, D., Onslow, M., Loakes, D., Lewis, T., Kuratate, T., Kinoshita, Y., Kemp, N., Ishihara, S., Ingram, J., Hajek, J., Grayden, D., Göcke, R., Fletcher, J., Estival, D., Epps, J., Dale, R., Cutler, A., Cox, F., Chetty, G., Cassidy, S., Butcher, A., Burnham, D., Bird, S., Best, C., Bennamoun, M., Arciuli, J., & Ambikairajah, E. (2011). The Big Australian Speech Corpus (The Big ASC). In M. Tabain, J. Fletcher, D. Grayden, J. Hajek, & A. Butcher (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 166-170). Melbourne: ASSTA.
  • Wang, L. (2011). The influence of information structure on language comprehension: A neurocognitive perspective. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Weber, A., & Smits, R. (2003). Consonant and vowel confusion patterns by American English listeners. In M. J. Solé, D. Recasens, & J. Romero (Eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the perception of American English phonemes by native listeners. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (0 dB, 8 dB, and 16 dB). Effects of syllable position, signal-to-noise ratio, and articulatory features on vowel and consonant identification are discussed. The results constitute the largest source of data that is currently available on phoneme confusion patterns of American English phonemes by native listeners.
  • Weber, A., & Smits, R. (2003). Consonant and vowel confusion patterns by American English listeners. In Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2003) (pp. 1437-1440). Adelaide: Causal Productions.

    Abstract

    This study investigated the perception of American English phonemes by native listeners. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in all possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signalto-noise ratios (0 dB, 8 dB, and 16 dB). Effects of syllable position, signal-to-noise ratio, and articulatory features on vowel and consonant identification are discussed. The results constitute the largest source of data that is currently available on phoneme confusion patterns of American English phonemes by native listeners.
  • Weber, A. (2009). The role of linguistic experience in lexical recognition [Abstract]. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 2759.

    Abstract

    Lexical recognition is typically slower in L2 than in L1. Part of the difficulty comes from a not precise enough processing of L2 phonemes. Consequently, L2 listeners fail to eliminate candidate words that L1 listeners can exclude from competing for recognition. For instance, the inability to distinguish /r/ from /l/ in rocket and locker makes for Japanese listeners both words possible candidates when hearing their onset (e.g., Cutler, Weber, and Otake, 2006). The L2 disadvantage can, however, be dispelled: For L2 listeners, but not L1 listeners, L2 speech from a non-native talker with the same language background is known to be as intelligible as L2 speech from a native talker (e.g., Bent and Bradlow, 2003). A reason for this may be that L2 listeners have ample experience with segmental deviations that are characteristic for their own accent. On this account, only phonemic deviations that are typical for the listeners’ own accent will cause spurious lexical activation in L2 listening (e.g., English magic pronounced as megic for Dutch listeners). In this talk, I will present evidence from cross-modal priming studies with a variety of L2 listener groups, showing how the processing of phonemic deviations is accent-specific but withstands fine phonetic differences.
  • Willems, R. M. (2009). Neural reflections of meaning in gesture, language, and action. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Witteman, M. J., Bardhan, N. P., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). Adapting to foreign-accented speech: The role of delay in testing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Program abstracts of the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(4), 2443.

    Abstract

    Understanding speech usually seems easy, but it can become noticeably harder when the speaker has a foreign accent. This is because foreign accents add considerable variation to speech. Research on foreign-accented speech shows that participants are able to adapt quickly to this type of variation. Less is known, however, about longer-term maintenance of adaptation. The current study focused on long-term adaptation by exposing native listeners to foreign-accented speech on Day 1, and testing them on comprehension of the accent one day later. Comprehension was thus not tested immediately, but only after a 24 hour period. On Day 1, native Dutch listeners listened to the speech of a Hebrew learner of Dutch while performing a phoneme monitoring task that did not depend on the talker’s accent. In particular, shortening of the long vowel /i/ into /ɪ/ (e.g., lief [li:f], ‘sweet’, pronounced as [lɪf]) was examined. These mispronunciations did not create lexical ambiguities in Dutch. On Day 2, listeners participated in a cross-modal priming task to test their comprehension of the accent. The results will be contrasted with results from an experiment without delayed testing and related to accounts of how listeners maintain adaptation to foreign-accented speech.
  • Witteman, M. J. (2013). Lexical processing of foreign-accented speech: Rapid and flexible adaptation. PhD Thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen.
  • Witteman, M. J., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). On the relationship between perceived accentedness, acoustic similarity, and processing difficulty in foreign-accented speech. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 2229-2232).

    Abstract

    Foreign-accented speech is often perceived as more difficult to understand than native speech. What causes this potential difficulty, however, remains unknown. In the present study, we compared acoustic similarity and accent ratings of American-accented Dutch with a cross-modal priming task designed to measure online speech processing. We focused on two Dutch diphthongs: ui and ij. Though both diphthongs deviated from standard Dutch to varying degrees and perceptually varied in accent strength, native Dutch listeners recognized words containing the diphthongs easily. Thus, not all foreign-accented speech hinders comprehension, and acoustic similarity and perceived accentedness are not always predictive of processing difficulties.
  • Xiao, M., Kong, X., Liu, J., & Ning, J. (2009). TMBF: Bloom filter algorithms of time-dependent multi bit-strings for incremental set. In Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Ultra Modern Telecommunications & Workshops.

    Abstract

    Set is widely used as a kind of basic data structure. However, when it is used for large scale data set the cost of storage, search and transport is overhead. The bloom filter uses a fixed size bit string to represent elements in a static set, which can reduce storage space and search cost that is a fixed constant. The time-space efficiency is achieved at the cost of a small probability of false positive in membership query. However, for many applications the space savings and locating time constantly outweigh this drawback. Dynamic bloom filter (DBF) can support concisely representation and approximate membership queries of dynamic set instead of static set. It has been proved that DBF not only possess the advantage of standard bloom filter, but also has better features when dealing with dynamic set. This paper proposes a time-dependent multiple bit-strings bloom filter (TMBF) which roots in the DBF and targets on dynamic incremental set. TMBF uses multiple bit-strings in time order to present a dynamic increasing set and uses backward searching to test whether an element is in a set. Based on the system logs from a real P2P file sharing system, the evaluation shows a 20% reduction in searching cost compared to DBF.
  • 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.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2003). Classifying hand configurations in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (Sign Language of the Netherlands). PhD Thesis, LOT, Utrecht. Retrieved from http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl/dissertations/2003-0717-122837/UUindex.html.

    Abstract

    This study investigates the morphological and morphosyntactic characteristics of hand configurations in signs, particularly in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (NGT). The literature on sign languages in general acknowledges that hand configurations can function as morphemes, more specifically as classifiers , in a subset of signs: verbs expressing the motion, location, and existence of referents (VELMs). These verbs are considered the output of productive sign formation processes. In contrast, other signs in which similar hand configurations appear ( iconic or motivated signs) have been considered to be lexicalized signs, not involving productive processes. This research report shows that meaningful hand configurations have (at least) two very different functions in the grammar of NGT (and presumably in other sign languages, too). First, they are agreement markers on VELMs, and hence are functional elements. Second, they are roots in motivated signs, and thus lexical elements. The latter signs are analysed as root compounds and are formed from various roots by productive processes. The similarities in surface form and differences in morphosyntactic characteristics observed in comparison of VELMs and root compounds are attributed to their different structures and to the sign language interface between grammar and phonetic form

Share this page