Publications

Displaying 1 - 74 of 74
  • Alhama, R. G., Scha, R., & Zudema, W. (2015). How should we evaluate models of segmentation in artificial language learning? In N. A. Taatgen, M. K. van Vugt, J. P. Borst, & K. Mehlhorn (Eds.), Proceedings of ICCM 2015 (pp. 172-173). Groningen: University of Groningen.

    Abstract

    One of the challenges that infants have to solve when learn- ing their native language is to identify the words in a con- tinuous speech stream. Some of the experiments in Artificial Grammar Learning (Saffran, Newport, and Aslin (1996); Saf- fran, Aslin, and Newport (1996); Aslin, Saffran, and Newport (1998) and many more) investigate this ability. In these ex- periments, subjects are exposed to an artificial speech stream that contains certain regularities. Adult participants are typ- ically tested with 2-alternative Forced Choice Tests (2AFC) in which they have to choose between a word and another sequence (typically a partword, a sequence resulting from misplacing boundaries).
  • Anderson, P., Harandi, N. M., Moisik, S. R., Stavness, I., & Fels, S. (2015). A comprehensive 3D biomechanically-driven vocal tract model including inverse dynamics for speech research. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2015: The 16th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 2395-2399).

    Abstract

    We introduce a biomechanical model of oropharyngeal structures that adds the soft-palate, pharynx, and larynx to our previous models of jaw, skull, hyoid, tongue, and face in a unified model. The model includes a comprehensive description of the upper airway musculature, using point-to-point muscles that may either be embedded within the deformable structures or operate exter- nally. The airway is described by an air-tight mesh that fits and deforms with the surrounding articulators, which enables dynamic coupling to our articulatory speech synthesizer. We demonstrate that the biomechanics, in conjunction with the skinning, supports a range from physically realistic to simplified vocal tract geometries to investigate different approaches to aeroacoustic modeling of vocal tract. Furthermore, our model supports inverse modeling to support investigation of plausible muscle activation patterns to generate speech.
  • Bauer, B. L. M. (2015). Origins of the indefinite HOMO constructions. In G. Haverling (Ed.), Latin Linguistics in the Early 21st Century: Acts of the 16th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics (pp. 542-553). Uppsala: Uppsala University.
  • Bosker, H. R., Tjiong, V., Quené, H., Sanders, T., & De Jong, N. H. (2015). Both native and non-native disfluencies trigger listeners' attention. In Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech: DISS 2015: An ICPhS Satellite Meeting. Edinburgh: DISS2015.

    Abstract

    Disfluencies, such as uh and uhm, are known to help the listener in speech comprehension. For instance, disfluencies may elicit prediction of less accessible referents and may trigger listeners’ attention to the following word. However, recent work suggests differential processing of disfluencies in native and non-native speech. The current study investigated whether the beneficial effects of disfluencies on listeners’ attention are modulated by the (non-)native identity of the speaker. Using the Change Detection Paradigm, we investigated listeners’ recall accuracy for words presented in disfluent and fluent contexts, in native and non-native speech. We observed beneficial effects of both native and non-native disfluencies on listeners’ recall accuracy, suggesting that native and non-native disfluencies trigger listeners’ attention in a similar fashion.
  • Bosker, H. R., & Reinisch, E. (2015). Normalization for speechrate in native and nonnative speech. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congresses of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    Speech perception involves a number of processes that deal with variation in the speech signal. One such process is normalization for speechrate: local temporal cues are perceived relative to the rate in the surrounding context. It is as yet unclear whether and how this perceptual effect interacts with higher level impressions of rate, such as a speaker’s nonnative identity. Nonnative speakers typically speak more slowly than natives, an experience that listeners take into account when explicitly judging the rate of nonnative speech. The present study investigated whether this is also reflected in implicit rate normalization. Results indicate that nonnative speech is implicitly perceived as faster than temporally-matched native speech, suggesting that the additional cognitive load of listening to an accent speeds up rate perception. Therefore, rate perception in speech is not dependent on syllable durations alone but also on the ease of processing of the temporal signal.
  • Brand, S., & Ernestus, M. (2015). Reduction of obstruent-liquid-schwa clusters in casual French. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    This study investigated pronunciation variants of word-final obstruent-liquid-schwa (OLS) clusters in casual French and the variables predicting the absence of the phonemes in these clusters. In a dataset of 291 noun tokens extracted from a corpus of casual conversations, we observed that in 80.7% of the tokens, at least one phoneme was absent and that in no less than 15.5% the whole cluster was absent (e.g., /mis/ for ministre). Importantly, the probability of a phoneme being absent was higher if the following phoneme was absent as well. These data show that reduction can affect several phonemes at once and is not restricted to just a handful of (function) words. Moreover, our results demonstrate that the absence of each single phoneme is affected by the speaker's tendency to increase ease of articulation and to adapt a word's pronunciation variant to the time available.
  • Braun, B., Weber, A., & Crocker, M. (2005). Does narrow focus activate alternative referents? In Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp. 1709-1712).

    Abstract

    Narrow focus refers to accent placement that forces one interpretation of a sentence, which is then often perceived contrastively. Narrow focus is formalised in terms of alternative sets, i.e. contextually or situationally salient alternatives. In this paper, we investigate whether this model is valid also in human utterance processing. We present an eye-tracking experiment to study listeners’ expectations (i.e. eye-movements) with respect to upcoming referents. Some of the objects contrast in colour with objects that were previously referred to, others do not; the objects are referred to with either a narrow focus on the colour adjective or with broad focus on the noun. Results show that narrow focus on the adjective increases early fixations to contrastive referents. Narrow focus hence activates alternative referents in human utterance processing
  • Brouwer, S., & Bradlow, A. R. (2015). The effect of target-background synchronicity on speech-in-speech recognition. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    The aim of the present study was to investigate whether speech-in-speech recognition is affected by variation in the target-background timing relationship. Specifically, we examined whether within trial synchronous or asynchronous onset and offset of the target and background speech influenced speech-in-speech recognition. Native English listeners were presented with English target sentences in the presence of English or Dutch background speech. Importantly, only the short-term temporal context –in terms of onset and offset synchrony or asynchrony of the target and background speech– varied across conditions. Participants’ task was to repeat back the English target sentences. The results showed an effect of synchronicity for English-in-English but not for English-in-Dutch recognition, indicating that familiarity with the English background lead in the asynchronous English-in-English condition might have attracted attention towards the English background. Overall, this study demonstrated that speech-in-speech recognition is sensitive to the target-background timing relationship, revealing an important role for variation in the local context of the target-background relationship as it extends beyond the limits of the time-frame of the to-be-recognized target sentence.
  • Brown, A., & Gullberg, M. (2005). Convergence in emerging and established language system: Evidence from speech and gesture in L1 Japanese. In Y. Terao, & k. Sawasaki (Eds.), Handbook of the 7th International Conference of the Japanese Society for Language Sciences (pp. 172-173). Tokyo: JSLS.
  • Bruggeman, L., & Janse, E. (2015). Older listeners' decreased flexibility in adjusting to changes in speech signal reliability. In M. Wolters, J. Linvingstone, B. Beattie, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    Under noise or speech reductions, young adult listeners flexibly adjust the parameters of lexical activation and competition to allow for speech signal unreliability. Consequently, mismatches in the input are treated more leniently such that lexical candidates are not immediately deactivated. Using eyetracking, we assessed whether this modulation of recognition dynamics also occurs for older listeners. Dutch participants (aged 60+) heard Dutch sentences containing a critical word while viewing displays of four line drawings. The name of one picture shared either onset or rhyme with the critical word (i.e., was a phonological competitor). Sentences were either clear and noise-free, or had several phonemes replaced by bursts of noise. A larger preference for onset competitors than for rhyme competitors was observed in both clear and noise conditions; performance did not alter across condition. This suggests that dynamic adjustment of spoken-word recognition parameters in response to noise is less available to older listeners.
  • Casillas, M., De Vos, C., Crasborn, O., & Levinson, S. C. (2015). The perception of stroke-to-stroke turn boundaries in signed conversation. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. R. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 315-320). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Speaker transitions in conversation are often brief, with minimal vocal overlap. Signed languages appear to defy this pattern with frequent, long spans of simultaneous signing. But recent evidence suggests that turn boundaries in signed language may only include the content-bearing parts of the turn (from the first stroke to the last), and not all turn-related movement (from first preparation to final retraction). We tested whether signers were able to anticipate “stroke-to-stroke” turn boundaries with only minimal conversational context. We found that, indeed, signers anticipated turn boundaries at the ends of turn-final strokes. Signers often responded early, especially when the turn was long or contained multiple possible end points. Early responses for long turns were especially apparent for interrogatives—long interrogative turns showed much greater anticipation compared to short ones.
  • Chen, A., & De Ruiter, J. P. (2005). The role of pitch accent type in interpreting information status. Proceedings from the Annual Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, 41(1), 33-48.

    Abstract

    The present study set out to pin down the role of four pitch accents, fall (H*L), rise-fall (L*HL), rise (L*H), fall-rise (H*LH), as well as deaccentuation, in interpreting new vs. given information in British English by the eyetracking paradigm. The pitch accents in question were claimed to convey information status in theories of English intonational meaning. There is, however, no consensus on the postulated roles of these pitch accents. Results clearly show that pitch accent type can and does matter when interpreting information status. The effects can be reflected in the mean proportions of fixations to the competitor in a selected time window. These patterns are also present in proportions of fixations to the target but to a lesser extent. Interestingly, the effects of pitch accent types are also reflected in how fast the participants could adjust their decision as to which picture to move before the name of the picture was fully revealed. For example, when the competitor was a given entity, the proportion of fixations to the competitor increased initially in most accent conditions in the first as a result of subjects' bias towards a given entity, but started to decrease substantially earlier in the H*L condition than in the L*H and deaccentuation conditions.
  • Chen, A., & Den Os, E. (2005). Effects of pitch accent type on interpreting information status in synthetic speech. In Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp. 1913-1916).
  • Chen, J. (2005). Interpreting state-change: Learning the meaning of verbs and verb compounds in Mandarin. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual Boston University Conference on Language Development.

    Abstract

    This study investigates how Mandarin-speaking children interpret state-change verbs. In Mandarin, state-change is typically encoded with resultative verb compounds (RVCs), in which the first verb (V1) specifies an action and the second (V2) a result, for example, zhai-xia 'pick-descend' (= pick, pick off/down). Unlike English state-change verb such as pick, smash, mix and fill, the action verb (V1) may imply a state-change but it does not entail it; the state-change is specified by the additional result verb (V2). Previous studies have shown that children learning English and German tend to neglect the state-change meaning in monomorphemic state-change verbs like mix and fill (Gentner, 1978; Gropen et al, 1991) and verb-particle constructions like abplücken 'pick off' (Wittek, 1999, 2000) - they do not realize that this meaning is entailed. This study examines how Mandarin-speaking children interpret resultative verb compounds and the first verb of an RVC. Four groups of Mandarin-speaking children (mean ages 2;6, 3;6, 4;6, 6;1) and an adult group participated in a judgment task. The results show that Mandarin-speaking children know from a very young age that RVCs entail a state-change; ironically, however, they make a mistake that is just the opposite to that made by the learners of English and German: they often incorrectly interpret the action verb (V1) of an RVC as if it, in itself, also entails a state-change, even though it does not. This result suggests that children do not have a uniform strategy for interpreting verb meaning, but are influenced by the language-specific lexicalization patterns they encounter in their language.
  • Choi, J., Broersma, M., & Cutler, A. (2015). Enhanced processing of a lost language: Linguistic knowledge or linguistic skill? In Proceedings of Interspeech 2015: 16th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 3110-3114).

    Abstract

    Same-different discrimination judgments for pairs of Korean stop consonants, or of Japanese syllables differing in phonetic segment length, were made by adult Korean adoptees in the Netherlands, by matched Dutch controls, and Korean controls. The adoptees did not outdo either control group on either task, although the same individuals had performed significantly better than matched controls on an identification learning task. This suggests that early exposure to multiple phonetic systems does not specifically improve acoustic-phonetic skills; rather, enhanced performance suggests retained language knowledge.
  • Coridun, S., Ernestus, M., & Ten Bosch, L. (2015). Learning pronunciation variants in a second language: Orthographic effects. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    The present study investigated the effect of orthography on the learning and subsequent processing of pronunciation variants in a second language. Dutch learners of French learned reduced pronunciation variants that result from schwa-zero alternation in French (e.g., reduced /ʃnij/ from chenille 'caterpillar'). Half of the participants additionally learnt the words' spellings, which correspond more closely to the full variants with schwa. On the following day, participants performed an auditory lexical decision task, in which they heard half of the words in their reduced variants, and the other half in their full variants. Participants who had exclusively learnt the auditory forms performed significantly worse on full variants than participants who had also learnt the spellings. This shows that learners integrate phonological and orthographic information to process pronunciation variants. There was no difference between both groups in their performances on reduced variants, suggesting that the exposure to spelling does not impede learners' processing of these variants.
  • Croijmans, I., & Majid, A. (2015). Odor naming is difficult, even for wine and coffee experts. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 483-488). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2015/papers/0092/index.html.

    Abstract

    Odor naming is difficult for people, but recent cross-cultural research suggests this difficulty is culture-specific. Jahai speakers (hunter-gatherers from the Malay Peninsula) name odors as consistently as colors, and much better than English speakers (Majid & Burenhult, 2014). In Jahai the linguistic advantage for smells correlates with a cultural interest in odors. Here we ask whether sub-cultures in the West with odor expertise also show superior odor naming. We tested wine and coffee experts (who have specialized odor training) in an odor naming task. Both wine and coffee experts were no more accurate or consistent than novices when naming odors. Although there were small differences in naming strategies, experts and non-experts alike relied overwhelmingly on source-based descriptions. So the specific language experts speak continues to constrain their ability to express odors. This suggests expertise alone is not sufficient to overcome the limits of language in the domain of smell.
  • Cutler, A. (2005). The lexical statistics of word recognition problems caused by L2 phonetic confusion. In Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp. 413-416).
  • Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., & Norris, D. (2005). The lexical utility of phoneme-category plasticity. In Proceedings of the ISCA Workshop on Plasticity in Speech Perception (PSP2005) (pp. 103-107).
  • Dolscheid, S., Hunnius, S., & Majid, A. (2015). When high pitches sound low: Children's acquisition of space-pitch metaphors. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 584-598). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Retrieved from https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2015/papers/0109/index.html.

    Abstract

    Some languages describe musical pitch in terms of spatial height; others in terms of thickness. Differences in pitch metaphors also shape adults’ nonlinguistic space-pitch representations. At the same time, 4-month-old infants have both types of space-pitch mappings available. This tension between prelinguistic space-pitch associations and their subsequent linguistic mediation raises questions about the acquisition of space-pitch metaphors. To address this issue, 5-year-old Dutch children were tested on their linguistic knowledge of pitch metaphors, and nonlinguistic space-pitch associations. Our results suggest 5-year-olds understand height-pitch metaphors in a reversed fashion (high pitch = low). Children displayed good comprehension of a thickness-pitch metaphor, despite its absence in Dutch. In nonlinguistic tasks, however, children did not show consistent space-pitch associations. Overall, pitch representations do not seem to be influenced by linguistic metaphors in 5-year-olds, suggesting that effects of language on musical pitch arise rather late during development.
  • Drijvers, L., Zaadnoordijk, L., & Dingemanse, M. (2015). Sound-symbolism is disrupted in dyslexia: Implications for the role of cross-modal abstraction processes. In D. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 602-607). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Research into sound-symbolism has shown that people can
    consistently associate certain pseudo-words with certain referents;
    for instance, pseudo-words with rounded vowels and
    sonorant consonants are linked to round shapes, while pseudowords
    with unrounded vowels and obstruents (with a noncontinuous
    airflow), are associated with sharp shapes. Such
    sound-symbolic associations have been proposed to arise from
    cross-modal abstraction processes. Here we assess the link between
    sound-symbolism and cross-modal abstraction by testing
    dyslexic individuals’ ability to make sound-symbolic associations.
    Dyslexic individuals are known to have deficiencies
    in cross-modal processing. We find that dyslexic individuals
    are impaired in their ability to make sound-symbolic associations
    relative to the controls. Our results shed light on the cognitive
    underpinnings of sound-symbolism by providing novel
    evidence for the role —and disruptability— of cross-modal abstraction
    processes in sound-symbolic eects.
  • Drozdova, P., Van Hout, R., & Scharenborg, O. (2015). The effect of non-nativeness and background noise on lexical retuning. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    Previous research revealed remarkable flexibility of native and non-native listeners’ perceptual system, i.e., native and non-native phonetic category boundaries can be quickly recalibrated in the face of ambiguous input.
    The present study investigates the limitations of the flexibility of the non-native perceptual system. In two lexically-guided perceptual learning experiments, Dutch listeners were exposed to a short story in English, where either all /l/ or all /ɹ/ sounds were replaced by an ambiguous [l/ɹ] sound. In the first experiment, the story was presented in clean, while in the second experiment, intermittent noise was added to the story, although never on the critical words. Lexically-guided perceptual learning was only observed in the clean condition. It is argued that the introduction of intermittent noise reduced the reliability of the evidence of hearing a particular word, which in turn blocked retuning of the phonetic categories.
  • Esling, J. H., Benner, A., & Moisik, S. R. (2015). Laryngeal articulatory function and speech origins. In H. Little (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015) Satellite Event: The Evolution of Phonetic Capabilities: Causes constraints, consequences (pp. 2-7). Glasgow: ICPhS.

    Abstract

    The larynx is the essential articulatory mechanism that primes the vocal tract. Far from being only a glottal source of voicing, the complex laryngeal mechanism entrains the ontogenetic acquisition of speech and, through coarticulatory coupling, guides the production of oral sounds in the infant vocal tract. As such, it is not possible to speculate as to the origins of the speaking modality in humans without considering the fundamental role played by the laryngeal articulatory mechanism. The Laryngeal Articulator Model, which divides the vocal tract into a laryngeal component and an oral component, serves as a basis for describing early infant speech and for positing how speech sounds evolving in various hominids may be related phonetically. To this end, we offer some suggestions for how the evolution and development of vocal tract anatomy fit with our infant speech acquisition data and discuss the implications this has for explaining phonetic learning and for interpreting the biological evolution of the human vocal tract in relation to speech and speech acquisition.
  • Floyd, S. (2005). The poetics of evidentiality in South American storytelling. In L. Harper, & C. Jany (Eds.), Proceedings from the Eighth Workshop on American Indigenous languages (pp. 28-41). Santa Barbara, Cal: University of California, Santa Barbara. (Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics; 46).
  • Forkstam, C., & Petersson, K. M. (2005). Syntactic classification of acquired structural regularities. In G. B. Bruna, & L. Barsalou (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 696-701).

    Abstract

    In this paper we investigate the neural correlates of syntactic classification of an acquired grammatical sequence structure in an event-related FMRI study. During acquisition, participants were engaged in an implicit short-term memory task without performance feedback. We manipulated the statistical frequency-based and rule-based characteristics of the classification stimuli independently in order to investigate their role in artificial grammar acquisition. The participants performed reliably above chance on the classification task. We observed a partly overlapping corticostriatal processing network activated by both manipulations including inferior prefrontal, cingulate, inferior parietal regions, and the caudate nucleus. More specifically, the left inferior frontal BA 45 and the caudate nucleus were sensitive to syntactic violations and endorsement, respectively. In contrast, these structures were insensitive to the frequency-based manipulation.
  • Franken, M. K., McQueen, J. M., Hagoort, P., & Acheson, D. J. (2015). Assessing the link between speech perception and production through individual differences. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Glasgow: the University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    This study aims to test a prediction of recent
    theoretical frameworks in speech motor control: if speech production targets are specified in auditory
    terms, people with better auditory acuity should have more precise speech targets.
    To investigate this, we had participants perform speech perception and production tasks in a counterbalanced order. To assess speech perception acuity, we used an adaptive speech discrimination
    task. To assess variability in speech production, participants performed a pseudo-word reading task; formant values were measured for each recording.
    We predicted that speech production variability to correlate inversely with discrimination performance.
    The results suggest that people do vary in their production and perceptual abilities, and that better discriminators have more distinctive vowel production targets, confirming our prediction. This
    study highlights the importance of individual
    differences in the study of speech motor control, and sheds light on speech production-perception interaction.
  • Hammarström, H. (2015). Glottolog: A free, online, comprehensive bibliography of the world's languages. In E. Kuzmin (Ed.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Cyberspace (pp. 183-188). Moscow: UNESCO.
  • Harmon, Z., & Kapatsinski, V. (2015). Studying the dynamics of lexical access using disfluencies. In R. Lickley, & R. Eklund (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Disfluency in Spontaneous Speech (DiSS 2015) (pp. 41-44).

    Abstract

    Faced with planning problems related to lexical access, speakers take advantage of a major function of disfluencies: buying time. It is reasonable, then, to expect that the structure of disfluencies sheds light on the mechanisms underlying lexical access. Using data from the Switchboard Corpus, we investigated the effect of semantic competition during lexical access on repetition disfluencies. We hypothesized that the more time the speaker needs to access the following unit, the longer the repetition. We examined the repetitions preceding verbs and nouns and tested predictors influencing the accessibility of these items. Results suggest that speed of lexical access negatively correlates with the length of repetition and that the main determinants of lexical access speed differ for verbs and nouns. Longer disfluencies before verbs appear to be due to significant paradigmatic competition from semantically similar verbs. For nouns, they occur when the noun is relatively unpredictable given the preceding context.
  • Janse, E. (2005). Lexical inhibition effects in time-compressed speech. In Proceedings of the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology [Interspeech 2005] (pp. 1757-1760).
  • Janssen, R., Moisik, S. R., & Dediu, D. (2015). Bézier modelling and high accuracy curve fitting to capture hard palate variation. In Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow, UK: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    The human hard palate shows between-subject variation
    that is known to influence articulatory strategies.
    In order to link such variation to human speech, we
    are conducting a cross-sectional MRI study on multiple
    populations. A model based on Bezier curves
    using only three parameters was fitted to hard palate
    MRI tracings using evolutionary computation. The
    fits produced consistently yield high accuracies. For
    future research, this new method may be used to classify
    our MRI data on ethnic origins using e.g., cluster
    analyses. Furthermore, we may integrate our model
    into three-dimensional representations of the vocal
    tract in order to investigate its effect on acoustics and
    cultural transmission.
  • Jesse, A., & Massaro, D. W. (2005). Towards a lexical fuzzy logical model of perception: The time-course of audiovisual speech processing in word identification. In E. Vatikiotis-Bateson, D. Burnham, & S. Fels (Eds.), Proceedings of the Auditory-Visual Speech Processing International Conference 2005 (pp. 35-36). Adelaide, Australia: Causal Productions.

    Abstract

    This study investigates the time-course of information processing in both visual as well as in the auditory speech as used for word identification in face-to-face communication. It extends the limited previous research on this topic and provides a valuable database for future research in audiovisual speech perception. An evaluation of models of speech perception by ear and eye in their ability to account for the audiovisual gating data shows a superior role of the fuzzy logical model of perception (FLMP) [1] over additive models of perception. A new dynamic version of the FLMP seems to be a promising model to account for the complex interplay of perceptual and cognitive information in audiovisual spoken word recognition.
  • Johns, T. G., Vitali, A. A., Perera, R. M., Vernes, S. C., & Scott, A. M. (2005). Ligand-independent activation of the EGFRvIII: A naturally occurring mutation of the EGFR commonly expressed in glioma [Abstract]. Neuro-Oncology, 7, 299.

    Abstract

    Mutations of the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene are found at a relatively high frequency in glioma, with the most common being the de2-7 EGFR (or EGFRvIII). This mutation arises from an in-frame deletion of exons 2–7, which removes 267 amino acids from the extracellular domain of the receptor. Despite being unable to bind ligand, the de2-7 EGFR is constitutively active at a low level. Transfection of human glioma cells with the de2-7 EGFR has little effect in vitro, but when grown as tumor xenografts this mutated receptor imparts a dramatic growth advantage. We have now mapped the phosphorylation pattern of de2-7 EGFR, both in vivo and in vitro, using a panel of antibodies unique to the different phosphorylated tyrosine residues. Phosphorylation of de2-7 EGFR was detected constitutively at all tyrosine sites surveyed both in vitro and in vivo, including tyrosine 845, a known target in the wild-type EGFR for src kinase. There was a substantial upregulation of phosphorylation at every tyrosine residue of the de2-7 EGFR when cells were grown in vivo compared to the receptor isolated from cells cultured in vitro. Upregulation of phosphorylation could be mimicked in vitro by the addition of specifi c components of the ECM such as collagen via an integrin-dependent mechanism. Since this increase in in vivo phosphorylation enhances de2-7 EGFR signaling, this observation explains why the growth enhancement mediated by de2-7 EGFR is largely restricted to the in vivo environment. In a second set of experiments we analyzed the interaction between EGFRvIII and ErbB2. Co-expression of these proteins in NR6 cells, a mouse fi broblast line devoid of ErbB family members, dramatically enhanced in vivo tumorigenicity of these cells compared to cells expressing either protein alone. Detailed analysis of these xenografts demonstrated that EGFRvIII could heterodimerize and transphosphorylate the ErbB2. Since both EGFRvIII and ErbB2 are commonly expressed at gliomas, this data suggests that the co-expression of these two proteins may enhance glioma tumorigenicity.
  • Johnson, E. K. (2005). Grammatical gender and early word recognition in Dutch. In A. Brugos, M. R. Clark-Cotton, & S. Ha (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Boston University Conference on Language Developement (pp. 320-330). Sommervile, MA: Cascadilla Press.
  • Johnson, E. K., Westrek, E., & Nazzi, T. (2005). Language familiarity affects voice discrimination by seven-month-olds. In Proceedings of the ISCA Workshop on Plasticity in Speech Perception (PSP2005) (pp. 227-230).
  • Kempen, G., & Olsthoorn, N. (2005). Non-parallelism of grammatical encoding and decoding due to shared working memory [Abstract]. In AMLaP-2005 11th Annual Conference on Architectures and Mechanisms for Language Processing September 5-7, 2005 Ghent, Belgium (pp. 24).
  • Koch, X., & Janse, E. (2015). Effects of age and hearing loss on articulatory precision for sibilants. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    This study investigates the effects of adult age and speaker abilities on articulatory precision for sibilant productions. Normal-hearing young adults with
    better sibilant discrimination have been shown to produce greater spectral sibilant contrasts. As reduced auditory feedback may gradually impact on feedforward
    commands, we investigate whether articulatory precision as indexed by spectral mean for [s] and [S] decreases with age, and more particularly with agerelated
    hearing loss. Younger, middle-aged and older adults read aloud words starting with the sibilants [s] or [S]. Possible effects of cognitive, perceptual, linguistic and sociolinguistic background variables
    on the sibilants’ acoustics were also investigated. Sibilant contrasts were less pronounced for male than female speakers. Most importantly, for the fricative
    [s], the spectral mean was modulated by individual high-frequency hearing loss, but not age. These results underscore that even mild hearing loss already affects articulatory precision.
  • Lai, V. T. (2005). Language experience influences the conceptualization of TIME metaphor. In Proceedings of the II Conference on Metaphor in Language and Thought, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 17-20, 2005.

    Abstract

    This paper examines the language-specific aspect of the TIME PASSING IS MOTION metaphor and suggests that the temporal construal of time can be influenced by a person's second language. Ahrens and Huang (2002) have analyzed the source domain of MOTION for the TIME metaphor into two special cases. In the special case one, TIME PASSING is an object that moves towards an ego. For example, qimuokao kuai dao le "the final exam is approaching." In the special case two, TIME PASSING is a point (that a plural ego is attached to) that moves across a landscape. For example, women kuai dao qimuokao le "we are approaching the final exam." In addition, in English, the ego in the special case one faces the future while in Chinese, the ego faces the past. The current experiment hypothesizes that English influences the choice of the orientation of the ego in native Chinese speakers who speak English as the second language. 54 subjects are asked to switch the clock time one hour forward. Results show that native Chinese speakers living in the Chinese speaking country tend to move the clock one hour forward to the past (92%) while native Chinese speakers living in an English speaking country are less likely to do so (60%). This implies that the experience of English influences the conceptualization of time in Mandarin Chinese.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (2005). Habitual perspective. In Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2005).
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Plomp, R. (1962). Musical consonance and critical bandwidth. In Proceedings of the 4th International Congress Acoustics (pp. 55-55).
  • Little, H., Eryılmaz, K., & de Boer, B. (2015). A new artificial sign-space proxy for investigating the emergence of structure and categories in speech. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), The proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. (ICPhS 2015).
  • Little, H., Eryılmaz, K., & de Boer, B. (2015). Linguistic modality affects the creation of structure and iconicity in signals. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. Jennings, & P. Maglio (Eds.), The 37th annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 1392-1398). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Different linguistic modalities (speech or sign) offer different levels at which signals can iconically represent the world. One hypothesis argues that this iconicity has an effect on how linguistic structure emerges. However, exactly how and why these effects might come about is in need of empirical investigation. In this contribution, we present a signal creation experiment in which both the signalling space and the meaning space are manipulated so that different levels and types of iconicity are available between the signals and meanings. Signals are produced using an infrared sensor that detects the hand position of participants to generate auditory feedback. We find evidence that iconicity may be maladaptive for the discrimination of created signals. Further, we implemented Hidden Markov Models to characterise the structure within signals, which was also used to inform a metric for iconicity.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Mitterer, H. (2005). Lexically-driven perceptual adjustments of vowel categories. In Proceedings of the ISCA Workshop on Plasticity in Speech Perception (PSP2005) (pp. 233-236).
  • Mitterer, H. (2005). Short- and medium-term plasticity for speaker adaptation seem to be independent. In Proceedings of the ISCA Workshop on Plasticity in Speech Perception (PSP2005) (pp. 83-86).
  • Moers, C., Janse, E., & Meyer, A. S. (2015). Probabilistic reduction in reading aloud: A comparison of younger and older adults. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetics Association.

    Abstract

    Frequent and predictable words are generally pronounced with less effort and are therefore acoustically more reduced than less frequent or unpredictable words. Local predictability can be operationalised by Transitional Probability (TP), which indicates how likely a word is to occur given its immediate context. We investigated whether and how probabilistic reduction effects on word durations change with adult age when reading aloud content words embedded in sentences. The results showed equally large frequency effects on verb and noun durations for both younger (Mage = 20 years) and older (Mage = 68 years) adults. Backward TP also affected word duration for younger and older adults alike. ForwardTP, however, had no significant effect on word duration in either age group. Our results resemble earlier findings of more robust BackwardTP effects compared to ForwardTP effects. Furthermore, unlike often reported decline in predictive processing with aging, probabilistic reduction effects remain stable across adulthood.
  • Moisik, S. R., & Dediu, D. (2015). Anatomical biasing and clicks: Preliminary biomechanical modelling. In H. Little (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015) Satellite Event: The Evolution of Phonetic Capabilities: Causes constraints, consequences (pp. 8-13). Glasgow: ICPhS.

    Abstract

    It has been observed by several researchers that the Khoisan palate tends to lack a prominent alveolar ridge. A preliminary biomechanical model of click production was created to examine if these sounds might be subject to an anatomical bias associated with alveolar ridge size. Results suggest the bias is plausible, taking the form of decreased articulatory effort and improved volume change characteristics, however, further modelling and experimental research is required to solidify the claim.
  • Morano, L., Ernestus, M., & Ten Bosch, L. (2015). Schwa reduction in low-proficiency L2 speakers: Learning and generalization. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    This paper investigated the learnability and generalizability of French schwa alternation by Dutch low-proficiency second language learners. We trained 40 participants on 24 new schwa words by exposing them equally often to the reduced and full forms of these words. We then assessed participants' accuracy and reaction times to these newly learnt words as well as 24 previously encountered schwa words with an auditory lexical decision task. Our results show learning of the new words in both forms. This suggests that lack of exposure is probably the main cause of learners' difficulties with reduced forms. Nevertheless, the full forms were slightly better recognized than the reduced ones, possibly due to phonetic and phonological properties of the reduced forms. We also observed no generalization to previously encountered words, suggesting that our participants stored both of the learnt word forms and did not create a rule that applies to all schwa words.
  • Mulder, K., Brekelmans, G., & Ernestus, M. (2015). The processing of schwa reduced cognates and noncognates in non-native listeners of English. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    In speech, words are often reduced rather than fully pronounced (e.g., (/ˈsʌmri/ for /ˈsʌməri/, summary). Non-native listeners may have problems in processing these reduced forms, because they have encountered them less often. This paper addresses the question whether this also holds for highly proficient non-natives and for words with similar forms and meanings in the non-natives' mother tongue (i.e., cognates). In an English auditory lexical decision task, natives and highly proficient Dutch non-natives of English listened to cognates and non-cognates that were presented in full or without their post-stress schwa. The data show that highly proficient learners are affected by reduction as much as native speakers. Nevertheless, the two listener groups appear to process reduced forms differently, because non-natives produce more errors on reduced cognates than on non-cognates. While listening to reduced forms, non-natives appear to be hindered by the co-activated lexical representations of cognate forms in their native language.
  • Neger, T. M., Rietveld, T., & Janse, E. (2015). Adult age effects in auditory statistical learning. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    Statistical learning plays a key role in language processing, e.g., for speech segmentation. Older adults have been reported to show less statistical learning on the basis of visual input than younger adults. Given age-related changes in perception and cognition, we investigated whether statistical learning is also impaired in the auditory modality in older compared to younger adults and whether individual learning ability is associated with measures of perceptual (i.e., hearing sensitivity) and cognitive functioning in both age groups. Thirty younger and thirty older adults performed an auditory artificial-grammar-learning task to assess their statistical learning ability. In younger adults, perceptual effort came at the cost of processing resources required for learning. Inhibitory control (as indexed by Stroop colornaming performance) did not predict auditory learning. Overall, younger and older adults showed the same amount of auditory learning, indicating that statistical learning ability is preserved over the adult life span.
  • Nijveld, A., Ten Bosch, L., & Ernestus, M. (2015). Exemplar effects arise in a lexical decision task, but only under adverse listening conditions. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    This paper studies the influence of adverse listening conditions on exemplar effects in priming experiments that do not instruct participants to use their episodic memories. We conducted two lexical decision experiments, in which a prime and a target represented the same word type and could be spoken by the same or a different speaker. In Experiment 1, participants listened to clear speech, and showed no exemplar effects: they recognised repetitions by the same speaker as quickly as different speaker repetitions. In Experiment 2, the stimuli contained noise, and exemplar effects did arise. Importantly, Experiment 1 elicited longer average RTs than Experiment 2, a result that contradicts the time-course hypothesis, according to which exemplars only play a role when processing is slow. Instead, our findings support the hypothesis that exemplar effects arise under adverse listening conditions, when participants are stimulated to use their episodic memories in addition to their mental lexicons.
  • Peeters, D., Snijders, T. M., Hagoort, P., & Ozyurek, A. (2015). The role of left inferior frontal Gyrus in the integration of point- ing gestures and speech. In G. Ferré, & M. Tutton (Eds.), Proceedings of the4th GESPIN - Gesture & Speech in Interaction Conference. Nantes: Université de Nantes.

    Abstract

    Comprehension of pointing gestures is fundamental to human communication. However, the neural mechanisms
    that subserve the integration of pointing gestures and speech in visual contexts in comprehension
    are unclear. Here we present the results of an fMRI study in which participants watched images of an
    actor pointing at an object while they listened to her referential speech. The use of a mismatch paradigm
    revealed that the semantic unication of pointing gesture and speech in a triadic context recruits left
    inferior frontal gyrus. Complementing previous ndings, this suggests that left inferior frontal gyrus
    semantically integrates information across modalities and semiotic domains.
  • Perlman, M., Paul, J., & Lupyan, G. (2015). Congenitally deaf children generate iconic vocalizations to communicate magnitude. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. R. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Cognitive Science Society Meeting (CogSci 2015) (pp. 315-320). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    From an early age, people exhibit strong links between certain visual (e.g. size) and acoustic (e.g. duration) dimensions. Do people instinctively extend these crossmodal correspondences to vocalization? We examine the ability of congenitally deaf Chinese children and young adults (age M = 12.4 years, SD = 3.7 years) to generate iconic vocalizations to distinguish items with contrasting magnitude (e.g., big vs. small ball). Both deaf and hearing (M = 10.1 years, SD = 0.83 years) participants produced longer, louder vocalizations for greater magnitude items. However, only hearing participants used pitch—higher pitch for greater magnitude – which counters the hypothesized, innate size “frequency code”, but fits with Mandarin language and culture. Thus our results show that the translation of visible magnitude into the duration and intensity of vocalization transcends auditory experience, whereas the use of pitch appears more malleable to linguistic and cultural influence.
  • Perry, L., Perlman, M., & Lupyan, G. (2015). Iconicity in English vocabulary and its relation to toddlers’ word learning. In D. C. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. R. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Cognitive Science Society Meeting (CogSci 2015) (pp. 315-320). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Scholars have documented substantial classes of iconic vocabulary in many non-Indo-European languages. In comparison, Indo-European languages like English are assumed to be arbitrary outside of a small number of onomatopoeic words. In three experiments, we asked English speakers to rate the iconicity of words from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory. We found English—contrary to common belief—exhibits iconicity that correlates with age of acquisition and differs across lexical classes. Words judged as most iconic are learned earlier, in accord with findings that iconic words are easier to learn. We also find that adjectives and verbs are more iconic than nouns, supporting the idea that iconicity provides an extra cue in learning more difficult abstract meanings. Our results provide new evidence for a relationship between iconicity and word learning and suggest iconicity may be a more pervasive property of spoken languages than previously thought.
  • Petersson, K. M., Grenholm, P., & Forkstam, C. (2005). Artificial grammar learning and neural networks. In G. B. Bruna, L. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1726-1731).

    Abstract

    Recent FMRI studies indicate that language related brain regions are engaged in artificial grammar (AG) processing. In the present study we investigate the Reber grammar by means of formal analysis and network simulations. We outline a new method for describing the network dynamics and propose an approach to grammar extraction based on the state-space dynamics of the network. We conclude that statistical frequency-based and rule-based acquisition procedures can be viewed as complementary perspectives on grammar learning, and more generally, that classical cognitive models can be viewed as a special case of a dynamical systems perspective on information processing
  • Roberts, S. G., Everett, C., & Blasi, D. (2015). Exploring potential climate effects on the evolution of human sound systems. In H. Little (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences [ICPhS 2015] Satellite Event: The Evolution of Phonetic Capabilities: Causes constraints, consequences (pp. 14-19). Glasgow: ICPHS.

    Abstract

    We suggest that it is now possible to conduct research on a topic which might be called evolutionary geophonetics. The main question is how the climate influences the evolution of language. This involves biological adaptations to the climate that may affect biases in production and perception; cultural evolutionary adaptations of the sounds of a language to climatic conditions; and influences of the climate on language diversity and contact. We discuss these ideas with special reference to a recent hypothesis that lexical tone is not adaptive in dry climates (Everett, Blasi & Roberts, 2015).
  • Sauter, D., Wiland, J., Warren, J., Eisner, F., Calder, A., & Scott, S. K. (2005). Sounds of joy: An investigation of vocal expressions of positive emotions [Abstract]. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 61(Supplement), B99.

    Abstract

    A series of experiment tested Ekman’s (1992) hypothesis that there are a set of positive basic emotions that are expressed using vocal para-linguistic sounds, e.g. laughter and cheers. The proposed categories investigated were amusement, contentment, pleasure, relief and triumph. Behavioural testing using a forced-choice task indicated that participants were able to reliably recognize vocal expressions of the proposed emotions. A cross-cultural study in the preliterate Himba culture in Namibia confirmed that these categories are also recognized across cultures. A recognition test of acoustically manipulated emotional vocalizations established that the recognition of different emotions utilizes different vocal cues, and that these in turn differ from the cues used when comprehending speech. In a study using fMRI we found that relative to a signal correlated noise baseline, the paralinguistic expressions of emotion activated bilateral superior temporal gyri and sulci, lateral and anterior to primary auditory cortex, which is consistent with the processing of non linguistic vocal cues in the auditory ‘what’ pathway. Notably amusement was associated with greater activation extending into both temporal poles and amygdale and insular cortex. Overall, these results support the claim that ‘happiness’ can be fractionated into amusement, pleasure, relief and triumph.
  • Scharenborg, O., & Seneff, S. (2005). A two-pass strategy for handling OOVs in a large vocabulary recognition task. In Interspeech'2005 - Eurospeech, 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology, (pp. 1669-1672). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    This paper addresses the issue of large-vocabulary recognition in a specific word class. We propose a two-pass strategy in which only major cities are explicitly represented in the first stage lexicon. An unknown word model encoded as a phone loop is used to detect OOV city names (referred to as rare city names). After which SpeM, a tool that can extract words and word-initial cohorts from phone graphs on the basis of a large fallback lexicon, provides an N-best list of promising city names on the basis of the phone sequences generated in the first stage. This N-best list is then inserted into the second stage lexicon for a subsequent recognition pass. Experiments were conducted on a set of spontaneous telephone-quality utterances each containing one rare city name. We tested the size of the N-best list and three types of language models (LMs). The experiments showed that SpeM was able to include nearly 85% of the correct city names into an N-best list of 3000 city names when a unigram LM, which also boosted the unigram scores of a city name in a given state, was used.
  • Scharenborg, O. (2005). Parallels between HSR and ASR: How ASR can contribute to HSR. In Interspeech'2005 - Eurospeech, 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp. 1237-1240). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we illustrate the close parallels between the research fields of human speech recognition (HSR) and automatic speech recognition (ASR) using a computational model of human word recognition, SpeM, which was built using techniques from ASR. We show that ASR has proven to be useful for improving models of HSR by relieving them of some of their shortcomings. However, in order to build an integrated computational model of all aspects of HSR, a lot of issues remain to be resolved. In this process, ASR algorithms and techniques definitely can play an important role.
  • Schmidt, J., Scharenborg, O., & Janse, E. (2015). Semantic processing of spoken words under cognitive load in older listeners. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    Processing of semantic information in language comprehension has been suggested to be modulated by attentional resources. Consequently, cognitive load would be expected to reduce semantic priming, but studies have yielded inconsistent results. This study investigated whether cognitive load affects semantic activation in speech processing in older adults, and whether this is modulated by individual differences in cognitive and hearing abilities. Older adults participated in an auditory continuous lexical decision task in a low-load and high-load condition. The group analysis showed only a marginally significant reduction of semantic priming in the high-load condition compared to the low-load condition. The individual differences analysis showed that semantic priming was significantly reduced under increased load in participants with poorer attention-switching control. Hence, a resource-demanding secondary task may affect the integration of spoken words into a coherent semantic representation for listeners with poorer attentional skills.
  • Schubotz, L., Holler, J., & Ozyurek, A. (2015). Age-related differences in multi-modal audience design: Young, but not old speakers, adapt speech and gestures to their addressee's knowledge. In G. Ferré, & M. Tutton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th GESPIN - Gesture & Speech in Interaction Conference (pp. 211-216). Nantes: Université of Nantes.

    Abstract

    Speakers can adapt their speech and co-speech gestures for
    addressees. Here, we investigate whether this ability is
    modulated by age. Younger and older adults participated in a
    comic narration task in which one participant (the speaker)
    narrated six short comic stories to another participant (the
    addressee). One half of each story was known to both participants, the other half only to the speaker. Younger but
    not older speakers used more words and gestures when narrating novel story content as opposed to known content.
    We discuss cognitive and pragmatic explanations of these findings and relate them to theories of gesture production.
  • Schuerman, W. L., Nagarajan, S., & Houde, J. (2015). Changes in consonant perception driven by adaptation of vowel production to altered auditory feedback. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congresses of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). London: International Phonetic Association.

    Abstract

    Adaptation to altered auditory feedback has been shown to induce subsequent shifts in perception. However, it is uncertain whether these perceptual changes may generalize to other speech sounds. In this experiment, we tested whether exposing the production of a vowel to altered auditory feedback affects perceptual categorization of a consonant distinction. In two sessions, participants produced CVC words containing the vowel /i/, while intermittently categorizing stimuli drawn from a continuum between "see" and "she." In the first session feedback was unaltered, while in the second session the formants of the vowel were shifted 20% towards /u/. Adaptation to the altered vowel was found to reduce the proportion of perceived /S/ stimuli. We suggest that this reflects an alteration to the sensorimotor mapping that is shared between vowels and consonants.
  • 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.
  • Slonimska, A., Ozyurek, A., & Campisi, E. (2015). Ostensive signals: markers of communicative relevance of gesture during demonstration to adults and children. In G. Ferré, & M. Tutton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th GESPIN - Gesture & Speech in Interaction Conference (pp. 217-222). Nantes: Universite of Nantes.

    Abstract

    Speakers adapt their speech and gestures in various ways for their audience. We investigated further whether they use
    ostensive signals (eye gaze, ostensive speech (e.g. like this, this) or a combination of both) in relation to their gestures
    when talking to different addressees, i.e., to another adult or a child in a multimodal demonstration task. While adults used
    more eye gaze towards their gestures with other adults than with children, they were more likely to use combined
    ostensive signals for children than for adults. Thus speakers mark the communicative relevance of their gestures with different types of ostensive signals and by taking different types of addressees into account.
  • Smorenburg, L., Rodd, J., & Chen, A. (2015). The effect of explicit training on the prosodic production of L2 sarcasm by Dutch learners of English. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow, UK: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    Previous research [9] suggests that Dutch learners of (British) English are not able to express sarcasm prosodically in their L2. The present study investigates whether explicit training on the prosodic markers of sarcasm in English can improve learners’ realisation of sarcasm. Sarcastic speech was elicited in short simulated telephone conversations between Dutch advanced learners of English and a native British English-speaking ‘friend’ in two sessions, fourteen days apart. Between the two sessions, participants were trained by means of (1) a presentation, (2) directed independent practice, and (3) evaluation of participants’ production and individual feedback in small groups. L1 British English-speaking raters subsequently evaluated the degree of sarcastic sounding in the participants’ responses on a five-point scale. It was found that significantly higher sarcasm ratings were given to L2 learners’ production obtained after the training than that obtained before the training; explicit training on prosody has a positive effect on learners’ production of sarcasm.
  • Sprenger, S. A., & Van Rijn, H. (2005). Clock time naming: Complexities of a simple task. In B. G. Bara, L. Barsalou, & M. Bucciarelli (Eds.), Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2062-2067).
  • Ten Bosch, L., Boves, L., & Ernestus, M. (2015). DIANA, an end-to-end computational model of human word comprehension. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    This paper presents DIANA, a new computational model of human speech processing. It is the first model that simulates the complete processing chain from the on-line processing of an acoustic signal to the execution of a response, including reaction times. Moreover it assumes minimal modularity. DIANA consists of three components. The activation component computes a probabilistic match between the input acoustic signal and representations in DIANA’s lexicon, resulting in a list of word hypotheses changing over time as the input unfolds. The decision component operates on this list and selects a word as soon as sufficient evidence is available. Finally, the execution component accounts for the time to execute a behavioral action. We show that DIANA well simulates the average participant in a word recognition experiment.
  • Ten Bosch, L., Boves, L., Tucker, B., & Ernestus, M. (2015). DIANA: Towards computational modeling reaction times in lexical decision in North American English. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2015: The 16th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1576-1580).

    Abstract

    DIANA is an end-to-end computational model of speech processing, which takes as input the speech signal, and provides as output the orthographic transcription of the stimulus, a word/non-word judgment and the associated estimated reaction time. So far, the model has only been tested for Dutch. In this paper, we extend DIANA such that it can also process North American English. The model is tested by having it simulate human participants in a large scale North American English lexical decision experiment. The simulations show that DIANA can adequately approximate the reaction times of an average participant (r = 0.45). In addition, they indicate that DIANA does not yet adequately model the cognitive processes that take place after stimulus offset.
  • ten Bosch, L., & Scharenborg, O. (2005). ASR decoding in a computational model of human word recognition. In Interspeech'2005 - Eurospeech, 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology (pp. 1241-1244). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the interaction between acoustic scores and symbolic mismatch penalties in multi-pass speech decoding techniques that are based on the creation of a segment graph followed by a lexical search. The interaction between acoustic and symbolic mismatches determines to a large extent the structure of the search space of these multipass approaches. The background of this study is a recently developed computational model of human word recognition, called SpeM. SpeM is able to simulate human word recognition data and is built as a multi-pass speech decoder. Here, we focus on unravelling the structure of the search space that is used in SpeM and similar decoding strategies. Finally, we elaborate on the close relation between distances in this search space, and distance measures in search spaces that are based on a combination of acoustic and phonetic features.
  • Terband, H., Rodd, J., & Maas, E. (2015). Simulations of feedforward and feedback control in apraxia of speech (AOS): Effects of noise masking on vowel production in the DIVA model. In M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahan, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015).

    Abstract

    Apraxia of Speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder whose precise nature is still poorly understood. A recent behavioural experiment featuring a noise masking paradigm suggests that AOS reflects a disruption of feedforward control, whereas feedback control is spared and plays a more prominent role in achieving and maintaining segmental contrasts [10]. In the present study, we set out to validate the interpretation of AOS as a feedforward impairment by means of a series of computational simulations with the DIVA model [6, 7] mimicking the behavioural experiment. Simulation results showed a larger reduction in vowel spacing and a smaller vowel dispersion in the masking condition compared to the no-masking condition for the simulated feedforward deficit, whereas the other groups showed an opposite pattern. These results mimic the patterns observed in the human data, corroborating the notion that AOS can be conceptualized as a deficit in feedforward control
  • Torreira, F. (2015). Melodic alternations in Spanish. In The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015 (Ed.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015) (pp. 946.1-5). Glasgow, UK: The University of Glasgow. Retrieved from http://www.icphs2015.info/pdfs/Papers/ICPHS0946.pdf.

    Abstract

    This article describes how the tonal elements of two common Spanish intonation contours –the falling statement and the low-rising-falling request– align with the segmental string in broad-focus utterances differing in number of prosodic words. Using an imitation-and-completion task, we show that (i) the last stressed syllable of the utterance, traditionally viewed as carrying the ‘nuclear’ accent, associates with either a high or a low tonal element depending on phrase length (ii) that certain tonal elements can be realized or omitted depending on the availability of specific metrical positions in their intonational phrase, and (iii) that the high tonal element of the request contour associates with either a stressed syllable or an intonational phrase edge depending on phrase length. On the basis of these facts, and in contrast to previous descriptions of Spanish intonation relying on obligatory and constant nuclear contours (e.g., L* L% for all neutral statements), we argue for a less constrained intonational morphology involving tonal units linked to the segmental string via contour-specific principles.
  • Tourtouri, E. N., Delogu, F., & Crocker, M. W. (2015). ERP indices of situated reference in visual contexts. In D. Noelle, R. Dale, A. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 2422-2427). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Violations of the maxims of Quantity occur when utterances provide more (over-specified) or less (under-specified) information than strictly required for referent identification. While behavioural datasuggest that under-specified expressions lead to comprehension difficulty and communicative failure, there is no consensus as to whether over-specified expressions are also detrimental to comprehension. In this study we shed light on this debate, providing neurophysiological evidence supporting the view that extra information facilitates comprehension. We further present novel evidence that referential failure due to under-specification is qualitatively different from explicit cases of referential failure, when no matching referential candidate is available in the context.
  • Trilsbeek, P., Broeder, D., Elbers, W., & Moreira, A. (2015). A sustainable archiving software solution for The Language Archive. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC).
  • Verhoef, T., Roberts, S. G., & Dingemanse, M. (2015). Emergence of systematic iconicity: Transmission, interaction and analogy. In D. Noelle, R. Dale, A. S. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 2481-2486). Austin, Tx: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Languages combine arbitrary and iconic signals. How do iconic signals emerge and when do they persist? We present an experimental study of the role of iconicity in the emergence of structure in an artificial language. Using an iterated communication game in which we control the signalling medium as well as the meaning space, we study the evolution of communicative signals in transmission chains. This sheds light on how affordances of the communication medium shape and constrain the mappability and transmissibility of form-meaning pairs. We find that iconic signals can form the building blocks for wider compositional patterns
  • Wanrooij, K., De Vos, J., & Boersma, P. (2015). Distributional vowel training may not be effective for Dutch adults. In Scottish consortium for ICPhS 2015, M. Wolters, J. Livingstone, B. Beattie, R. Smith, M. MacMahon, J. Stuart-Smith, & J. Scobbie (Eds.), Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2015). Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

    Abstract

    Distributional vowel training for adults has been reported as “effective” for Spanish and Bulgarian learners of Dutch vowels, in studies using a behavioural task. A recent study did not yield a similar clear learning effect for Dutch learners of the English vowel contrast /æ/~/ε/, as measured with event-related potentials (ERPs). The present study aimed to examine the possibility that the latter result was related to the method. As in the ERP study, we tested whether distributional training improved Dutch adult learners’ perception of English /æ/~/ε/. However, we measured behaviour instead of ERPs, in a design identical to that used in the previous studies with Spanish learners. The results do not support an effect of distributional training and thus “replicate” the ERP study. We conclude that it remains unclear whether distributional vowel training is effective for Dutch adults.
  • Zhang, Y., Yurovsky, D., & Yu, C. (2015). Statistical word learning is a continuous process: Evidence from the human simulation paradigm. In D. Noelle, R. Dale, A. Warlaumont, J. Yoshimi, T. Matlock, C. D. Jennings, & P. P. Maglio (Eds.), Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2015) (pp. 2422-2427). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    In the word-learning domain, both adults and young children are able to find the correct referent of a word from highly ambiguous contexts that involve many words and objects by computing distributional statistics across the co-occurrences of words and referents at multiple naming moments (Yu & Smith, 2007; Smith & Yu, 2008). However, there is still debate regarding how learners accumulate distributional information to learn object labels in natural learning environments, and what underlying learning mechanism learners are most likely to adopt. Using the Human Simulation Paradigm (Gillette, Gleitman, Gleitman & Lederer, 1999), we found that participants’ learning performance gradually improved and that their ability to remember and carry over partial knowledge from past learning instances facilitated subsequent learning. These results support the statistical learning model that word learning is a continuous process.

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