Publications

Displaying 1 - 100 of 123
  • Alhama, R. G., & Zuidema, W. (2017). Segmentation as Retention and Recognition: the R&R model. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 1531-1536). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    We present the Retention and Recognition model (R&R), a probabilistic exemplar model that accounts for segmentation in Artificial Language Learning experiments. We show that R&R provides an excellent fit to human responses in three segmentation experiments with adults (Frank et al., 2010), outperforming existing models. Additionally, we analyze the results of the simulations and propose alternative explanations for the experimental findings.
  • Allerhand, M., Butterfield, S., Cutler, A., & Patterson, R. (1992). Assessing syllable strength via an auditory model. In Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics: Vol. 14 Part 6 (pp. 297-304). St. Albans, Herts: Institute of Acoustics.
  • Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Cognitive profiles in Portuguese children with dyslexia. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 23). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Visual processing factors contribute to object naming difficulties in dyslexic readers. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 39). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Azar, Z., Backus, A., & Ozyurek, A. (2017). Highly proficient bilinguals maintain language-specific pragmatic constraints on pronouns: Evidence from speech and gesture. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 81-86). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    The use of subject pronouns by bilingual speakers using both a pro-drop and a non-pro-drop language (e.g. Spanish heritage speakers in the USA) is a well-studied topic in research on cross-linguistic influence in language contact situations. Previous studies looking at bilinguals with different proficiency levels have yielded conflicting results on whether there is transfer from the non-pro-drop patterns to the pro-drop language. Additionally, previous research has focused on speech patterns only. In this paper, we study the two modalities of language, speech and gesture, and ask whether and how they reveal cross-linguistic influence on the use of subject pronouns in discourse. We focus on elicited narratives from heritage speakers of Turkish in the Netherlands, in both Turkish (pro-drop) and Dutch (non-pro-drop), as well as from monolingual control groups. The use of pronouns was not very common in monolingual Turkish narratives and was constrained by the pragmatic contexts, unlike in Dutch. Furthermore, Turkish pronouns were more likely to be accompanied by localized gestures than Dutch pronouns, presumably because pronouns in Turkish are pragmatically marked forms. We did not find any cross-linguistic influence in bilingual speech or gesture patterns, in line with studies (speech only) of highly proficient bilinguals. We therefore suggest that speech and gesture parallel each other not only in monolingual but also in bilingual production. Highly proficient heritage speakers who have been exposed to diverse linguistic and gestural patterns of each language from early on maintain monolingual patterns of pragmatic constraints on the use of pronouns multimodally.
  • Bergmann, C., Tsuji, S., & Cristia, A. (2017). Top-down versus bottom-up theories of phonological acquisition: A big data approach. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 2103-2107).

    Abstract

    Recent work has made available a number of standardized meta- analyses bearing on various aspects of infant language processing. We utilize data from two such meta-analyses (discrimination of vowel contrasts and word segmentation, i.e., recognition of word forms extracted from running speech) to assess whether the published body of empirical evidence supports a bottom-up versus a top-down theory of early phonological development by leveling the power of results from thousands of infants. We predicted that if infants can rely purely on auditory experience to develop their phonological categories, then vowel discrimination and word segmentation should develop in parallel, with the latter being potentially lagged compared to the former. However, if infants crucially rely on word form information to build their phonological categories, then development at the word level must precede the acquisition of native sound categories. Our results do not support the latter prediction. We discuss potential implications and limitations, most saliently that word forms are only one top-down level proposed to affect phonological development, with other proposals suggesting that top-down pressures emerge from lexical (i.e., word-meaning pairs) development. This investigation also highlights general procedures by which standardized meta-analyses may be reused to answer theoretical questions spanning across phenomena.

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  • Bethard, S., Lai, V. T., & Martin, J. (2009). Topic model analysis of metaphor frequency for psycholinguistic stimuli. In Proceedings of the NAACL HLT Workshop on Computational Approaches to Linguistic Creativity, Boulder, Colorado, June 4, 2009 (pp. 9-16). Stroudsburg, PA: Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    Psycholinguistic studies of metaphor processing must control their stimuli not just for word frequency but also for the frequency with which a term is used metaphorically. Thus, we consider the task of metaphor frequency estimation, which predicts how often target words will be used metaphorically. We develop metaphor classifiers which represent metaphorical domains through Latent Dirichlet Allocation, and apply these classifiers to the target words, aggregating their decisions to estimate the metaphorical frequencies. Training on only 400 sentences, our models are able to achieve 61.3 % accuracy on metaphor classification and 77.8 % accuracy on HIGH vs. LOW metaphorical frequency estimation.
  • Black, A., & Bergmann, C. (2017). Quantifying infants' statistical word segmentation: A meta-analysis. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 124-129). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Theories of language acquisition and perceptual learning increasingly rely on statistical learning mechanisms. The current meta-analysis aims to clarify the robustness of this capacity in infancy within the word segmentation literature. Our analysis reveals a significant, small effect size for conceptual replications of Saffran, Aslin, & Newport (1996), and a nonsignificant effect across all studies that incorporate transitional probabilities to segment words. In both conceptual replications and the broader literature, however, statistical learning is moderated by whether stimuli are naturally produced or synthesized. These findings invite deeper questions about the complex factors that influence statistical learning, and the role of statistical learning in language acquisition.
  • Bosker, H. R., & Kösem, A. (2017). An entrained rhythm's frequency, not phase, influences temporal sampling of speech. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 2416-2420). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-73.

    Abstract

    Brain oscillations have been shown to track the slow amplitude fluctuations in speech during comprehension. Moreover, there is evidence that these stimulus-induced cortical rhythms may persist even after the driving stimulus has ceased. However, how exactly this neural entrainment shapes speech perception remains debated. This behavioral study investigated whether and how the frequency and phase of an entrained rhythm would influence the temporal sampling of subsequent speech. In two behavioral experiments, participants were presented with slow and fast isochronous tone sequences, followed by Dutch target words ambiguous between as /ɑs/ “ash” (with a short vowel) and aas /a:s/ “bait” (with a long vowel). Target words were presented at various phases of the entrained rhythm. Both experiments revealed effects of the frequency of the tone sequence on target word perception: fast sequences biased listeners to more long /a:s/ responses. However, no evidence for phase effects could be discerned. These findings show that an entrained rhythm’s frequency, but not phase, influences the temporal sampling of subsequent speech. These outcomes are compatible with theories suggesting that sensory timing is evaluated relative to entrained frequency. Furthermore, they suggest that phase tracking of (syllabic) rhythms by theta oscillations plays a limited role in speech parsing.
  • Bosker, H. R. (2017). The role of temporal amplitude modulations in the political arena: Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 2228-2232). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-142.

    Abstract

    Speech is an acoustic signal with inherent amplitude modulations in the 1-9 Hz range. Recent models of speech perception propose that this rhythmic nature of speech is central to speech recognition. Moreover, rhythmic amplitude modulations have been shown to have beneficial effects on language processing and the subjective impression listeners have of the speaker. This study investigated the role of amplitude modulations in the political arena by comparing the speech produced by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the three presidential debates of 2016. Inspection of the modulation spectra, revealing the spectral content of the two speakers’ amplitude envelopes after matching for overall intensity, showed considerably greater power in Clinton’s modulation spectra (compared to Trump’s) across the three debates, particularly in the 1-9 Hz range. The findings suggest that Clinton’s speech had a more pronounced temporal envelope with rhythmic amplitude modulations below 9 Hz, with a preference for modulations around 3 Hz. This may be taken as evidence for a more structured temporal organization of syllables in Clinton’s speech, potentially due to more frequent use of preplanned utterances. Outcomes are interpreted in light of the potential beneficial effects of a rhythmic temporal envelope on intelligibility and speaker perception.
  • Boves, L., Carlson, R., Hinrichs, E., House, D., Krauwer, S., Lemnitzer, L., Vainio, M., & Wittenburg, P. (2009). Resources for speech research: Present and future infrastructure needs. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 1803-1806).

    Abstract

    This paper introduces the EU-FP7 project CLARIN, a joint effort of over 150 institutions in Europe, aimed at the creation of a sustainable language resources and technology infrastructure for the humanities and social sciences research community. The paper briefly introduces the vision behind the project and how it relates to speech research with a focus on the contributions that CLARIN can and will make to research in spoken language processing.
  • Bowerman, M. (1983). Hidden meanings: The role of covert conceptual structures in children's development of language. In D. Rogers, & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), The acquisition of symbolic skills (pp. 445-470). New York: Plenum Press.
  • Bramão, I., Faísca, L., Forkstam, C., Inácio, K., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Interaction between perceptual color and color knowledge information in object recognition: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 39). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Burchfield, L. A., Luk, S.-.-H.-K., Antoniou, M., & Cutler, A. (2017). Lexically guided perceptual learning in Mandarin Chinese. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 576-580). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-618.

    Abstract

    Lexically guided perceptual learni ng refers to the use of lexical knowledge to retune sp eech categories and thereby adapt to a novel talker’s pronunciation. This adaptation has been extensively documented, but primarily for segmental-based learning in English and Dutch. In languages with lexical tone, such as Mandarin Chinese, tonal categories can also be retuned in this way, but segmental category retuning had not been studied. We report two experiment s in which Mandarin Chinese listeners were exposed to an ambiguous mixture of [f] and [s] in lexical contexts favoring an interpretation as either [f] or [s]. Listeners were subsequently more likely to identify sounds along a continuum between [f] and [s], and to interpret minimal word pairs, in a manner consistent with this exposure. Thus lexically guided perceptual learning of segmental categories had indeed taken place, consistent with suggestions that such learning may be a universally available adaptation process
  • Burnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N. and 10 moreBurnham, D., Ambikairajah, E., Arciuli, J., Bennamoun, M., Best, C. T., Bird, S., Butcher, A. R., Cassidy, S., Chetty, G., Cox, F. M., Cutler, A., Dale, R., Epps, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Goecke, R., Grayden, D. B., Hajek, J. T., Ingram, J. C., Ishihara, S., Kemp, N., Kinoshita, Y., Kuratate, T., Lewis, T. W., Loakes, D. E., Onslow, M., Powers, D. M., Rose, P., Togneri, R., Tran, D., & Wagner, M. (2009). A blueprint for a comprehensive Australian English auditory-visual speech corpus. In M. Haugh, K. Burridge, J. Mulder, & P. Peters (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2008 HCSNet Workshop on Designing the Australian National Corpus (pp. 96-107). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    Large auditory-visual (AV) speech corpora are the grist of modern research in speech science, but no such corpus exists for Australian English. This is unfortunate, for speech science is the brains behind speech technology and applications such as text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis, automatic speech recognition (ASR), speaker recognition and forensic identification, talking heads, and hearing prostheses. Advances in these research areas in Australia require a large corpus of Australian English. Here the authors describe a blueprint for building the Big Australian Speech Corpus (the Big ASC), a corpus of over 1,100 speakers from urban and rural Australia, including speakers of non-indigenous, indigenous, ethnocultural, and disordered forms of Australian English, each of whom would be sampled on three occasions in a range of speech tasks designed by the researchers who would be using the corpus.
  • Campisi, E. (2009). La gestualità co-verbale tra comunicazione e cognizione: In che senso i gesti sono intenzionali. In F. Parisi, & M. Primo (Eds.), Natura, comunicazione, neurofilosofie. Atti del III convegno 2009 del CODISCO. Rome: Squilibri.
  • Casasanto, D., Willems, R. M., & Hagoort, P. (2009). Body-specific representations of action verbs: Evidence from fMRI in right- and left-handers. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 875-880). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    According to theories of embodied cognition, understanding a verb like throw involves unconsciously simulating the action throwing, using areas of the brain that support motor planning. If understanding action words involves mentally simulating our own actions, then the neurocognitive representation of word meanings should differ for people with different kinds of bodies, who perform actions in systematically different ways. In a test of the body-specificity hypothesis (Casasanto, 2009), we used fMRI to compare premotor activity correlated with action verb understanding in right- and left-handers. Right-handers preferentially activated left premotor cortex during lexical decision on manual action verbs (compared with non-manual action verbs), whereas left-handers preferentially activated right premotor areas. This finding helps refine theories of embodied semantics, suggesting that implicit mental simulation during language processing is body-specific: Right and left-handers, who perform actions differently, use correspondingly different areas of the brain for representing action verb meanings.
  • Casasanto, D., & Jasmin, K. (2009). Emotional valence is body-specific: Evidence from spontaneous gestures during US presidential debates. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1965-1970). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    What is the relationship between motor action and emotion? Here we investigated whether people associate good things more strongly with the dominant side of their bodies, and bad things with the non-dominant side. To find out, we analyzed spontaneous gestures during speech expressing ideas with positive or negative emotional valence (e.g., freedom, pain, compassion). Samples of speech and gesture were drawn from the 2004 and 2008 US presidential debates, which involved two left-handers (Obama, McCain) and two right-handers (Kerry, Bush). Results showed a strong association between the valence of spoken clauses and the hands used to make spontaneous co-speech gestures. In right-handed candidates, right-hand gestures were more strongly associated with positive-valence clauses, and left-hand gestures with negative-valence clauses. Left-handed candidates showed the opposite pattern. Right- and left-handers implicitly associated positive valence more strongly with their dominant hand: the hand they can use more fluently. These results support the body-specificity hypothesis, (Casasanto, 2009), and suggest a perceptuomotor basis for even our most abstract ideas.
  • Casasanto, D., Fotakopoulou, O., & Boroditsky, L. (2009). Space and time in the child's mind: Evidence for a cross-dimensional asymmetry. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1090-1095). Austin: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    What is the relationship between space and time in the human mind? Studies in adults show an asymmetric relationship between mental representations of these basic dimensions of experience: representations of time depend on space more than representations of space depend on time. Here we investigated the relationship between space and time in the developing mind. Native Greek-speaking children (N=99) watched movies of two animals traveling along parallel paths for different distances or durations and judged the spatial and temporal aspects of these events (e.g., Which animal went for a longer time, or a longer distance?) Results showed a reliable cross-dimensional asymmetry: for the same stimuli, spatial information influenced temporal judgments more than temporal information influenced spatial judgments. This pattern was robust to variations in the age of the participants and the type of language used to elicit responses. This finding demonstrates a continuity between space-time representations in children and adults, and informs theories of analog magnitude representation.
  • Casillas, M., Bergelson, E., Warlaumont, A. S., Cristia, A., Soderstrom, M., VanDam, M., & Sloetjes, H. (2017). A New Workflow for Semi-automatized Annotations: Tests with Long-Form Naturalistic Recordings of Childrens Language Environments. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 2098-2102). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1418.

    Abstract

    Interoperable annotation formats are fundamental to the utility, expansion, and sustainability of collective data repositories.In language development research, shared annotation schemes have been critical to facilitating the transition from raw acoustic data to searchable, structured corpora. Current schemes typically require comprehensive and manual annotation of utterance boundaries and orthographic speech content, with an additional, optional range of tags of interest. These schemes have been enormously successful for datasets on the scale of dozens of recording hours but are untenable for long-format recording corpora, which routinely contain hundreds to thousands of audio hours. Long-format corpora would benefit greatly from (semi-)automated analyses, both on the earliest steps of annotation—voice activity detection, utterance segmentation, and speaker diarization—as well as later steps—e.g., classification-based codes such as child-vs-adult-directed speech, and speech recognition to produce phonetic/orthographic representations. We present an annotation workflow specifically designed for long-format corpora which can be tailored by individual researchers and which interfaces with the current dominant scheme for short-format recordings. The workflow allows semi-automated annotation and analyses at higher linguistic levels. We give one example of how the workflow has been successfully implemented in a large cross-database project.
  • Casillas, M., Amatuni, A., Seidl, A., Soderstrom, M., Warlaumont, A., & Bergelson, E. (2017). What do Babies hear? Analyses of Child- and Adult-Directed Speech. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 2093-2097). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1409.

    Abstract

    Child-directed speech is argued to facilitate language development, and is found cross-linguistically and cross-culturally to varying degrees. However, previous research has generally focused on short samples of child-caregiver interaction, often in the lab or with experimenters present. We test the generalizability of this phenomenon with an initial descriptive analysis of the speech heard by young children in a large, unique collection of naturalistic, daylong home recordings. Trained annotators coded automatically-detected adult speech 'utterances' from 61 homes across 4 North American cities, gathered from children (age 2-24 months) wearing audio recorders during a typical day. Coders marked the speaker gender (male/female) and intended addressee (child/adult), yielding 10,886 addressee and gender tags from 2,523 minutes of audio (cf. HB-CHAAC Interspeech ComParE challenge; Schuller et al., in press). Automated speaker-diarization (LENA) incorrectly gender-tagged 30% of male adult utterances, compared to manually-coded consensus. Furthermore, we find effects of SES and gender on child-directed and overall speech, increasing child-directed speech with child age, and interactions of speaker gender, child gender, and child age: female caretakers increased their child-directed speech more with age than male caretakers did, but only for male infants. Implications for language acquisition and existing classification algorithms are discussed.
  • Cavaco, P., Curuklu, B., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). Artificial grammar recognition using two spiking neural networks. Frontiers in Neuroinformatics. Conference abstracts: 2nd INCF Congress of Neuroinformatics. doi:10.3389/conf.neuro.11.2009.08.096.

    Abstract

    In this paper we explore the feasibility of artificial (formal) grammar recognition (AGR) using spiking neural networks. A biologically inspired minicolumn architecture is designed as the basic computational unit. A network topography is defined based on the minicolumn architecture, here referred to as nodes, connected with excitatory and inhibitory connections. Nodes in the network represent unique internal states of the grammar’s finite state machine (FSM). Future work to improve the performance of the networks is discussed. The modeling framework developed can be used by neurophysiological research to implement network layouts and compare simulated performance characteristics to actual subject performance.
  • Chu, M., & Kita, S. (2009). Co-speech gestures do not originate from speech production processes: Evidence from the relationship between co-thought and co-speech gestures. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 591-595). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    When we speak, we spontaneously produce gestures (co-speech gestures). Co-speech gestures and speech production are closely interlinked. However, the exact nature of the link is still under debate. To addressed the question that whether co-speech gestures originate from the speech production system or from a system independent of the speech production, the present study examined the relationship between co-speech and co-thought gestures. Co-thought gestures, produced during silent thinking without speaking, presumably originate from a system independent of the speech production processes. We found a positive correlation between the production frequency of co-thought and co-speech gestures, regardless the communicative function that co-speech gestures might serve. Therefore, we suggest that co-speech gestures and co-thought gestures originate from a common system that is independent of the speech production processes
  • Cutler, A., & Fear, B. D. (1991). Categoricality in acceptability judgements for strong versus weak vowels. In J. Llisterri (Ed.), Proceedings of the ESCA Workshop on Phonetics and Phonology of Speaking Styles (pp. 18.1-18.5). Barcelona, Catalonia: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

    Abstract

    A distinction between strong and weak vowels can be drawn on the basis of vowel quality, of stress, or of both factors. An experiment was conducted in which sets of contextually matched word-intial vowels ranging from clearly strong to clearly weak were cross-spliced, and the naturalness of the resulting words was rated by listeners. The ratings showed that in general cross-spliced words were only significantly less acceptable than unspliced words when schwa was not involved; this supports a categorical distinction based on vowel quality.
  • Cutler, A. (2017). Converging evidence for abstract phonological knowledge in speech processing. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 1447-1448). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    The perceptual processing of speech is a constant interplay of multiple competing albeit convergent processes: acoustic input vs. higher-level representations, universal mechanisms vs. language-specific, veridical traces of speech experience vs. construction and activation of abstract representations. The present summary concerns the third of these issues. The ability to generalise across experience and to deal with resulting abstractions is the hallmark of human cognition, visible even in early infancy. In speech processing, abstract representations play a necessary role in both production and perception. New sorts of evidence are now informing our understanding of the breadth of this role.
  • Ip, M. H. K., & Cutler, A. (2017). Intonation facilitates prediction of focus even in the presence of lexical tones. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 1218-1222). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-264.

    Abstract

    In English and Dutch, listeners entrain to prosodic contours to predict where focus will fall in an utterance. However, is this strategy universally available, even in languages with different phonological systems? In a phoneme detection experiment, we examined whether prosodic entrainment is also found in Mandarin Chinese, a tone language, where in principle the use of pitch for lexical identity may take precedence over the use of pitch cues to salience. Consistent with the results from Germanic languages, response times were facilitated when preceding intonation predicted accent on the target-bearing word. Acoustic analyses revealed greater F0 range in the preceding intonation of the predicted-accent sentences. These findings have implications for how universal and language-specific mechanisms interact in the processing of salience.
  • Cutler, A., Kearns, R., Norris, D., & Scott, D. (1992). Listeners’ responses to extraneous signals coincident with English and French speech. In J. Pittam (Ed.), Proceedings of the 4th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 666-671). Canberra: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association.

    Abstract

    English and French listeners performed two tasks - click location and speeded click detection - with both English and French sentences, closely matched for syntactic and phonological structure. Clicks were located more accurately in open- than in closed-class words in both English and French; they were detected more rapidly in open- than in closed-class words in English, but not in French. The two listener groups produced the same pattern of responses, suggesting that higher-level linguistic processing was not involved in these tasks.
  • Cutler, A., Davis, C., & Kim, J. (2009). Non-automaticity of use of orthographic knowledge in phoneme evaluation. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 380-383). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    Two phoneme goodness rating experiments addressed the role of orthographic knowledge in the evaluation of speech sounds. Ratings for the best tokens of /s/ were higher in words spelled with S (e.g., bless) than in words where /s/ was spelled with C (e.g., voice). This difference did not appear for analogous nonwords for which every lexical neighbour had either S or C spelling (pless, floice). Models of phonemic processing incorporating obligatory influence of lexical information in phonemic processing cannot explain this dissociation; the data are consistent with models in which phonemic decisions are not subject to necessary top-down lexical influence.
  • Cutler, A. (1991). Prosody in situations of communication: Salience and segmentation. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: Vol. 1 (pp. 264-270). Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, Service des publications.

    Abstract

    Speakers and listeners have a shared goal: to communicate. The processes of speech perception and of speech production interact in many ways under the constraints of this communicative goal; such interaction is as characteristic of prosodic processing as of the processing of other aspects of linguistic structure. Two of the major uses of prosodic information in situations of communication are to encode salience and segmentation, and these themes unite the contributions to the symposium introduced by the present review.
  • Cutler, A. (1983). Semantics, syntax and sentence accent. In M. Van den Broecke, & A. Cohen (Eds.), Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (pp. 85-91). Dordrecht: Foris.
  • Cutler, A., & Robinson, T. (1992). Response time as a metric for comparison of speech recognition by humans and machines. In J. Ohala, T. Neary, & B. Derwing (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 189-192). Alberta: University of Alberta.

    Abstract

    The performance of automatic speech recognition systems is usually assessed in terms of error rate. Human speech recognition produces few errors, but relative difficulty of processing can be assessed via response time techniques. We report the construction of a measure analogous to response time in a machine recognition system. This measure may be compared directly with human response times. We conducted a trial comparison of this type at the phoneme level, including both tense and lax vowels and a variety of consonant classes. The results suggested similarities between human and machine processing in the case of consonants, but differences in the case of vowels.
  • Dimitrova, D. V., Redeker, G., & Hoeks, J. C. J. (2009). Did you say a BLUE banana? The prosody of contrast and abnormality in Bulgarian and Dutch. In 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association [Interspeech 2009] (pp. 999-1002). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    In a production experiment on Bulgarian that was based on a previous study on Dutch [1], we investigated the role of prosody when linguistic and extra-linguistic information coincide or contradict. Speakers described abnormally colored fruits in conditions where contrastive focus and discourse relations were varied. We found that the coincidence of contrast and abnormality enhances accentuation in Bulgarian as it did in Dutch. Surprisingly, when both factors are in conflict, the prosodic prominence of abnormality often overruled focus accentuation in both Bulgarian and Dutch, though the languages also show marked differences.
  • Dimroth, C., & Narasimhan, B. (2009). Accessibility and topicality in children's use of word order. In J. Chandlee, M. Franchini, S. Lord, & G. M. Rheiner (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd annual Boston University Conference on Language Development (BULCD) (pp. 133-138).
  • Dingemanse, M. (2009). Ideophones in unexpected places. In P. K. Austin, O. Bond, M. Charette, D. Nathan, & P. Sells (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory (pp. 83-97). London: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
  • Doherty, M., & Klein, W. (Eds.). (1991). Übersetzung [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (84).
  • Doumas, L. A. A., Hamer, A., Puebla, G., & Martin, A. E. (2017). A theory of the detection and learning of structured representations of similarity and relative magnitude. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 1955-1960). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Responding to similarity, difference, and relative magnitude (SDM) is ubiquitous in the animal kingdom. However, humans seem unique in the ability to represent relative magnitude (‘more’/‘less’) and similarity (‘same’/‘different’) as abstract relations that take arguments (e.g., greater-than (x,y)). While many models use structured relational representations of magnitude and similarity, little progress has been made on how these representations arise. Models that developuse these representations assume access to computations of similarity and magnitude a priori, either encoded as features or as output of evaluation operators. We detail a mechanism for producing invariant responses to “same”, “different”, “more”, and “less” which can be exploited to compute similarity and magnitude as an evaluation operator. Using DORA (Doumas, Hummel, & Sandhofer, 2008), these invariant responses can serve be used to learn structured relational representations of relative magnitude and similarity from pixel images of simple shapes
  • Edmiston, P., Perlman, M., & Lupyan, G. (2017). Creating words from iterated vocal imitation. In G. Gunzelman, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 331-336). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    We report the results of a large-scale (N=1571) experiment to investigate whether spoken words can emerge from the process of repeated imitation. Participants played a version of the children’s game “Telephone”. The first generation was asked to imitate recognizable environmental sounds (e.g., glass breaking, water splashing); subsequent generations imitated the imitators for a total of 8 generations. We then examined whether the vocal imitations became more stable and word-like, retained a resemblance to the original sound, and became more suitable as learned category labels. The results showed (1) the imitations became progressively more word-like, (2) even after 8 generations, they could be matched above chance to the environmental sound that motivated them, and (3) imitations from later generations were more effective as learned category labels. These results show how repeated imitation can create progressively more word-like forms while retaining a semblance of iconicity.
  • Ernestus, M. (2009). The roles of reconstruction and lexical storage in the comprehension of regular pronunciation variants. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 1875-1878). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates how listeners process regular pronunciation variants, resulting from simple general reduction processes. Study 1 shows that when listeners are presented with new words, they store the pronunciation variants presented to them, whether these are unreduced or reduced. Listeners thus store information on word-specific pronunciation variation. Study 2 suggests that if participants are presented with regularly reduced pronunciations, they also reconstruct and store the corresponding unreduced pronunciations. These unreduced pronunciations apparently have special status. Together the results support hybrid models of speech processing, assuming roles for both exemplars and abstract representations.
  • Fitz, H., & Chang, F. (2009). Syntactic generalization in a connectionist model of sentence production. In J. Mayor, N. Ruh, & K. Plunkett (Eds.), Connectionist models of behaviour and cognition II: Proceedings of the 11th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop (pp. 289-300). River Edge, NJ: World Scientific Publishing.

    Abstract

    We present a neural-symbolic learning model of sentence production which displays strong semantic systematicity and recursive productivity. Using this model, we provide evidence for the data-driven learnability of complex yes/no- questions.
  • Floyd, S. (2009). Nexos históricos, gramaticales y culturales de los números en cha'palaa [Historical, grammatical and cultural connections of Cha'palaa numerals]. In Proceedings of the Conference on Indigenous Languages of Latin America (CILLA) -IV.

    Abstract

    Los idiomas sudamericanas tienen una diversidad de sistemas numéricos, desde sistemas con solamente dos o tres términos en algunos idiomas amazónicos hasta sistemas con numerales extendiendo a miles. Una mirada al sistema del idioma cha’palaa de Ecuador demuestra rasgos de base-2, base-5, base-10 y base-20, ligados a diferentes etapas de cambio, desarrollo y contacto lingüístico. Conocer estas etapas nos permite proponer algunas correlaciones con lo que conocemos de la historia de contactos culturales en la región. The South American languages have diverse types of numeral systems, from systems of just two or three terms in some Amazonian languages to systems extending into the thousands. A look a the system of the Cha'palaa language of Ecuador demonstrates base-2, base-5, base-10 and base-20 features, linked to different stages of change, development and language contact. Learning about these stages permits up to propose some correlations between them and what we know about the history of cultural contact in the region.
  • Folia, V., Forkstam, C., Hagoort, P., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). Language comprehension: The interplay between form and content. In N. Taatgen, & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1686-1691). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    In a 2x2 event-related FMRI study we find support for the idea that the inferior frontal cortex, centered on Broca’s region and its homologue, is involved in constructive unification operations during the structure-building process in parsing for comprehension. Tentatively, we provide evidence for a role of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex centered on BA 9/46 in the control component of the language system. Finally, the left temporo-parietal cortex, in the vicinity of Wernicke’s region, supports the interaction between the syntax of gender agreement and sentence-level semantics.
  • Forkstam, C., Jansson, A., Ingvar, M., & Petersson, K. M. (2009). Modality transfer of acquired structural regularities: A preference for an acoustic route. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Human implicit learning can be investigated with implicit artificial grammar learning, a simple model for aspects of natural language acquisition. In this paper we investigate the remaining effect of modality transfer in syntactic classification of an acquired grammatical sequence structure after implicit grammar acquisition. Participants practiced either on acoustically presented syllable sequences or visually presented consonant letter sequences. During classification we independently manipulated the statistical frequency-based and rule-based characteristics of the classification stimuli. Participants performed reliably above chance on the within modality classification task although more so for those working on syllable sequence acquisition. These subjects were also the only group that kept a significant performance level in transfer classification. We speculate that this finding is of particular relevance in consideration of an ecological validity in the input signal in the use of artificial grammar learning and in language learning paradigms at large.
  • Franken, M. K., Eisner, F., Schoffelen, J.-M., Acheson, D. J., Hagoort, P., & McQueen, J. M. (2017). Audiovisual recalibration of vowel categories. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 655-658). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-122.

    Abstract

    One of the most daunting tasks of a listener is to map a
    continuous auditory stream onto known speech sound
    categories and lexical items. A major issue with this mapping
    problem is the variability in the acoustic realizations of sound
    categories, both within and across speakers. Past research has
    suggested listeners may use visual information (e.g., lipreading)
    to calibrate these speech categories to the current
    speaker. Previous studies have focused on audiovisual
    recalibration of consonant categories. The present study
    explores whether vowel categorization, which is known to show
    less sharply defined category boundaries, also benefit from
    visual cues.
    Participants were exposed to videos of a speaker
    pronouncing one out of two vowels, paired with audio that was
    ambiguous between the two vowels. After exposure, it was
    found that participants had recalibrated their vowel categories.
    In addition, individual variability in audiovisual recalibration is
    discussed. It is suggested that listeners’ category sharpness may
    be related to the weight they assign to visual information in
    audiovisual speech perception. Specifically, listeners with less
    sharp categories assign more weight to visual information
    during audiovisual speech recognition.
  • Fusaroli, R., Tylén, K., Garly, K., Steensig, J., Christiansen, M. H., & Dingemanse, M. (2017). Measures and mechanisms of common ground: Backchannels, conversational repair, and interactive alignment in free and task-oriented social interactions. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 2055-2060). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    A crucial aspect of everyday conversational interactions is our ability to establish and maintain common ground. Understanding the relevant mechanisms involved in such social coordination remains an important challenge for cognitive science. While common ground is often discussed in very general terms, different contexts of interaction are likely to afford different coordination mechanisms. In this paper, we investigate the presence and relation of three mechanisms of social coordination – backchannels, interactive alignment and conversational repair – across free and task-oriented conversations. We find significant differences: task-oriented conversations involve higher presence of repair – restricted offers in particular – and backchannel, as well as a reduced level of lexical and syntactic alignment. We find that restricted repair is associated with lexical alignment and open repair with backchannels. Our findings highlight the need to explicitly assess several mechanisms at once and to investigate diverse activities to understand their role and relations.
  • Galke, L., Mai, F., Schelten, A., Brunch, D., & Scherp, A. (2017). Using titles vs. full-text as source for automated semantic document annotation. In O. Corcho, K. Janowicz, G. Rizz, I. Tiddi, & D. Garijo (Eds.), Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Knowledge Capture (K-CAP 2017). New York: ACM.

    Abstract

    We conduct the first systematic comparison of automated semantic
    annotation based on either the full-text or only on the title metadata
    of documents. Apart from the prominent text classification baselines
    kNN and SVM, we also compare recent techniques of Learning
    to Rank and neural networks and revisit the traditional methods
    logistic regression, Rocchio, and Naive Bayes. Across three of our
    four datasets, the performance of the classifications using only titles
    reaches over 90% of the quality compared to the performance when
    using the full-text.
  • Galke, L., Saleh, A., & Scherp, A. (2017). Word embeddings for practical information retrieval. In M. Eibl, & M. Gaedke (Eds.), INFORMATIK 2017 (pp. 2155-2167). Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik. doi:10.18420/in2017_215.

    Abstract

    We assess the suitability of word embeddings for practical information retrieval scenarios. Thus, we assume that users issue ad-hoc short queries where we return the first twenty retrieved documents after applying a boolean matching operation between the query and the documents. We compare the performance of several techniques that leverage word embeddings in the retrieval models to compute the similarity between the query and the documents, namely word centroid similarity, paragraph vectors, Word Mover’s distance, as well as our novel inverse document frequency (IDF) re-weighted word centroid similarity. We evaluate the performance using the ranking metrics mean average precision, mean reciprocal rank, and normalized discounted cumulative gain. Additionally, we inspect the retrieval models’ sensitivity to document length by using either only the title or the full-text of the documents for the retrieval task. We conclude that word centroid similarity is the best competitor to state-of-the-art retrieval models. It can be further improved by re-weighting the word frequencies with IDF before aggregating the respective word vectors of the embedding. The proposed cosine similarity of IDF re-weighted word vectors is competitive to the TF-IDF baseline and even outperforms it in case of the news domain with a relative percentage of 15%.
  • Garcia, N., Lenkiewicz, P., Freire, M., & Monteiro, P. (2009). A new architecture for optical burst switching networks based on cooperative control. In Proceeding of the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (IEEE NCA09) (pp. 310-313).

    Abstract

    This paper presents a new architecture for optical burst switched networks where the control plane of the network functions in a cooperative manner. Each node interprets the data conveyed by the control packet and forwards it to the next nodes, making the control plane of the network distribute the relevant information to all the nodes in the network. A cooperation transmission tree is used, thus allowing all the nodes to store the information related to the traffic management in the network, and enabling better network resource planning at each node. A model of this network architecture is proposed, and its performance is evaluated.
  • Goldin-Meadow, S., Gentner, D., Ozyurek, A., & Gurcanli, O. (2009). Spatial language supports spatial cognition: Evidence from deaf homesigners [abstract]. Cognitive Processing, 10(Suppl. 2), S133-S134.
  • Gubian, M., Torreira, F., Strik, H., & Boves, L. (2009). Functional data analysis as a tool for analyzing speech dynamics a case study on the French word c'était. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 2199-2202).

    Abstract

    In this paper we introduce Functional Data Analysis (FDA) as a tool for analyzing dynamic transitions in speech signals. FDA makes it possible to perform statistical analyses of sets of mathematical functions in the same way as classical multivariate analysis treats scalar measurement data. We illustrate the use of FDA with a reduction phenomenon affecting the French word c'était /setε/ 'it was', which can be reduced to [stε] in conversational speech. FDA reveals that the dynamics of the transition from [s] to [t] in fully reduced cases may still be different from the dynamics of [s] - [t] transitions in underlying /st/ clusters such as in the word stage.
  • Le Guen, O. (2009). Geocentric gestural deixis among Yucatecan Maya (Quintana Roo, México). In 18th IACCP Book of Selected Congress Papers (pp. 123-136). Athens, Greece: Pedio Books Publishing.
  • Hanulikova, A., & Davidson, D. (2009). Inflectional entropy in Slovak. In J. Levicka, & R. Garabik (Eds.), Slovko 2009, NLP, Corpus Linguistics, Corpus Based Grammar Research (pp. 145-151). Bratislava, Slovakia: Slovak Academy of Sciences.
  • Hanulikova, A., & Weber, A. (2009). Experience with foreign accent influences non-native (L2) word recognition: The case of th-substitutions [Abstract]. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125(4), 2762-2762.
  • Harbusch, K., & Kempen, G. (2009). Clausal coordinate ellipsis and its varieties in spoken German: A study with the TüBa-D/S Treebank of the VERBMOBIL corpus. In M. Passarotti, A. Przepiórkowski, S. Raynaud, & F. Van Eynde (Eds.), Proceedings of the The Eighth International Workshop on Treebanks and Linguistic Theories (pp. 83-94). Milano: EDUCatt.
  • Harbusch, K., & Kempen, G. (2009). Generating clausal coordinate ellipsis multilingually: A uniform approach based on postediting. In 12th European Workshop on Natural Language Generation: Proceedings of the Workshop (pp. 138-145). The Association for Computational Linguistics.

    Abstract

    Present-day sentence generators are often in-capable of producing a wide variety of well-formed elliptical versions of coordinated clauses, in particular, of combined elliptical phenomena (Gapping, Forward and Back-ward Conjunction Reduction, etc.). The ap-plicability of the various types of clausal co-ordinate ellipsis (CCE) presupposes detailed comparisons of the syntactic properties of the coordinated clauses. These nonlocal comparisons argue against approaches based on local rules that treat CCE structures as special cases of clausal coordination. We advocate an alternative approach where CCE rules take the form of postediting rules ap-plicable to nonelliptical structures. The ad-vantage is not only a higher level of modu-larity but also applicability to languages be-longing to different language families. We describe a language-neutral module (called Elleipo; implemented in JAVA) that gener-ates as output all major CCE versions of co-ordinated clauses. Elleipo takes as input linearly ordered nonelliptical coordinated clauses annotated with lexical identity and coreferentiality relationships between words and word groups in the conjuncts. We dem-onstrate the feasibility of a single set of postediting rules that attains multilingual coverage.
  • Isbilen, E. S., McCauley, S. M., Kidd, E., & Christiansen, M. H. (2017). Testing statistical learning implicitly: A novel chunk-based measure of statistical learning. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 564-569). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Attempts to connect individual differences in statistical learning with broader aspects of cognition have received considerable attention, but have yielded mixed results. A possible explanation is that statistical learning is typically tested using the two-alternative forced choice (2AFC) task. As a meta-cognitive task relying on explicit familiarity judgments, 2AFC may not accurately capture implicitly formed statistical computations. In this paper, we adapt the classic serial-recall memory paradigm to implicitly test statistical learning in a statistically-induced chunking recall (SICR) task. We hypothesized that artificial language exposure would lead subjects to chunk recurring statistical patterns, facilitating recall of words from the input. Experiment 1 demonstrates that SICR offers more fine-grained insights into individual differences in statistical learning than 2AFC. Experiment 2 shows that SICR has higher test-retest reliability than that reported for 2AFC. Thus, SICR offers a more sensitive measure of individual differences, suggesting that basic chunking abilities may explain statistical learning.
  • Janse, E. (2009). Hearing and cognitive measures predict elderly listeners' difficulty ignoring competing speech. In M. Boone (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics (pp. 1532-1535).
  • Jesse, A., & Janse, E. (2009). Visual speech information aids elderly adults in stream segregation. In B.-J. Theobald, & R. Harvey (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory-Visual Speech Processing 2009 (pp. 22-27). Norwich, UK: School of Computing Sciences, University of East Anglia.

    Abstract

    Listening to a speaker while hearing another speaker talks is a challenging task for elderly listeners. We show that elderly listeners over the age of 65 with various degrees of age-related hearing loss benefit in this situation from also seeing the speaker they intend to listen to. In a phoneme monitoring task, listeners monitored the speech of a target speaker for either the phoneme /p/ or /k/ while simultaneously hearing a competing speaker. Critically, on some trials, the target speaker was also visible. Elderly listeners benefited in their response times and accuracy levels from seeing the target speaker when monitoring for the less visible /k/, but more so when monitoring for the highly visible /p/. Visual speech therefore aids elderly listeners not only by providing segmental information about the target phoneme, but also by providing more global information that allows for better performance in this adverse listening situation.
  • Kapatsinski, V., & Harmon, Z. (2017). A Hebbian account of entrenchment and (over)-extension in language learning. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 2366-2371). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    In production, frequently used words are preferentially extended to new, though related meanings. In comprehension, frequent exposure to a word instead makes the learner confident that all of the word’s legitimate uses have been experienced, resulting in an entrenched form-meaning mapping between the word and its experienced meaning(s). This results in a perception-production dissociation, where the forms speakers are most likely to map onto a novel meaning are precisely the forms that they believe can never be used that way. At first glance, this result challenges the idea of bidirectional form-meaning mappings, assumed by all current approaches to linguistic theory. In this paper, we show that bidirectional form-meaning mappings are not in fact challenged by this production-perception dissociation. We show that the production-perception dissociation is expected even if learners of the lexicon acquire simple symmetrical form-meaning associations through simple Hebbian learning.
  • Karadöller, D. Z., Sumer, B., & Ozyurek, A. (2017). Effects of delayed language exposure on spatial language acquisition by signing children and adults. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 2372-2376). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Deaf children born to hearing parents are exposed to language input quite late, which has long-lasting effects on language production. Previous studies with deaf individuals mostly focused on linguistic expressions of motion events, which have several event components. We do not know if similar effects emerge in simple events such as descriptions of spatial configurations of objects. Moreover, previous data mainly come from late adult signers. There is not much known about language development of late signing children soon after learning sign language. We compared simple event descriptions of late signers of Turkish Sign Language (adults, children) to age-matched native signers. Our results indicate that while late signers in both age groups are native-like in frequency of expressing a relational encoding, they lag behind native signers in using morphologically complex linguistic forms compared to other simple forms. Late signing children perform similar to adults and thus showed no development over time.
  • Kember, H., Grohe, A.-.-K., Zahner, K., Braun, B., Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2017). Similar prosodic structure perceived differently in German and English. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 1388-1392). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-544.

    Abstract

    English and German have similar prosody, but their speakers realize some pitch falls (not rises) in subtly different ways. We here test for asymmetry in perception. An ABX discrimination task requiring F0 slope or duration judgements on isolated vowels revealed no cross-language difference in duration or F0 fall discrimination, but discrimination of rises (realized similarly in each language) was less accurate for English than for German listeners. This unexpected finding may reflect greater sensitivity to rising patterns by German listeners, or reduced sensitivity by English listeners as a result of extensive exposure to phrase-final rises (“uptalk”) in their language
  • Khetarpal, N., Majid, A., & Regier, T. (2009). Spatial terms reflect near-optimal spatial categories. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirty-First Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2396-2401). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Spatial terms in the world’s languages appear to reflect both universal conceptual tendencies and linguistic convention. A similarly mixed picture in the case of color naming has been accounted for in terms of near-optimal partitions of color space. Here, we demonstrate that this account generalizes to spatial terms. We show that the spatial terms of 9 diverse languages near-optimally partition a similarity space of spatial meanings, just as color terms near-optimally partition color space. This account accommodates both universal tendencies and cross-language differences in spatial category extension, and identifies general structuring principles that appear to operate across different semantic domains.
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1983). Intonation [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (49).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1992). Textlinguistik [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (86).
  • Klein, W. (Ed.). (1979). Sprache und Kontext [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (33).
  • Klein, W., & Dimroth, C. (Eds.). (2009). Worauf kann sich der Sprachunterricht stützen? [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, 153.
  • Koenig, A., Ringersma, J., & Trilsbeek, P. (2009). The Language Archiving Technology domain. In Z. Vetulani (Ed.), Human Language Technologies as a Challenge for Computer Science and Linguistics (pp. 295-299).

    Abstract

    The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) manages an archive of linguistic research data with a current size of almost 20 Terabytes. Apart from in-house researchers other projects also store their data in the archive, most notably the Documentation of Endangered Languages (DoBeS) projects. The archive is available online and can be accessed by anybody with Internet access. To be able to manage this large amount of data the MPI's technical group has developed a software suite called Language Archiving Technology (LAT) that on the one hand helps researchers and archive managers to manage the data and on the other hand helps users in enriching their primary data with additional layers. All the MPI software is Java-based and developed according to open source principles (GNU, 2007). All three major operating systems (Windows, Linux, MacOS) are supported and the software works similarly on all of them. As the archive is online, many of the tools, especially the ones for accessing the data, are browser based. Some of these browser-based tools make use of Adobe Flex to create nice-looking GUIs. The LAT suite is a complete set of management and enrichment tools, and given the interaction between the tools the result is a complete LAT software domain. Over the last 10 years, this domain has proven its functionality and use, and is being deployed to servers in other institutions. This deployment is an important step in getting the archived resources back to the members of the speech communities whose languages are documented. In the paper we give an overview of the tools of the LAT suite and we describe their functionality and role in the integrated process of archiving, management and enrichment of linguistic data.
  • Kreuzer, H. (Ed.). (1971). Methodische Perspektiven [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik, (1/2).
  • Lausberg, H., & Sloetjes, H. (2009). NGCS/ELAN - Coding movement behaviour in psychotherapy [Meeting abstract]. PPmP - Psychotherapie · Psychosomatik · Medizinische Psychologie, 59: A113, 103.

    Abstract

    Individual and interactive movement behaviour (non-verbal behaviour / communication) specifically reflects implicit processes in psychotherapy [1,4,11]. However, thus far, the registration of movement behaviour has been a methodological challenge. We will present a coding system combined with an annotation tool for the analysis of movement behaviour during psychotherapy interviews [9]. The NGCS coding system enables to classify body movements based on their kinetic features alone [5,7]. The theoretical assumption behind the NGCS is that its main kinetic and functional movement categories are differentially associated with specific psychological functions and thus, have different neurobiological correlates [5-8]. ELAN is a multimodal annotation tool for digital video media [2,3,12]. The NGCS / ELAN template enables to link any movie to the same coding system and to have different raters independently work on the same file. The potential of movement behaviour analysis as an objective tool for psychotherapy research and for supervision in the psychosomatic practice is discussed by giving examples of the NGCS/ELAN analyses of psychotherapy sessions. While the quality of kinetic turn-taking and the therapistrsquor;s (implicit) adoption of the patientrsquor;s movements may predict therapy outcome, changes in the patientrsquor;s movement behaviour pattern may indicate changes in cognitive concepts and emotional states and thus, may help to identify therapeutically relevant processes [10].
  • Lee, R., Chambers, C. G., Huettig, F., & Ganea, P. A. (2017). Children’s semantic and world knowledge overrides fictional information during anticipatory linguistic processing. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 730-735). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Using real-time eye-movement measures, we asked how a fantastical discourse context competes with stored representations of semantic and world knowledge to influence children's and adults' moment-by-moment interpretation of a story. Seven-year- olds were less effective at bypassing stored semantic and world knowledge during real-time interpretation than adults. Nevertheless, an effect of discourse context on comprehension was still apparent.
  • Lenkiewicz, P., Pereira, M., Freire, M. M., & Fernandes, J. (2009). A new 3D image segmentation method for parallel architectures. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo [ICME 2009] June 28 – July 3, 2009, New York (pp. 1813-1816).

    Abstract

    This paper presents a novel model for 3D image segmentation and reconstruction. It has been designed with the aim to be implemented over a computer cluster or a multi-core platform. The required features include a nearly absolute independence between the processes participating in the segmentation task and providing amount of work as equal as possible for all the participants. As a result, it is avoid many drawbacks often encountered when performing a parallelization of an algorithm that was constructed to operate in a sequential manner. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm based on the new segmentation model is efficient and shows a very good, nearly linear performance growth along with the growing number of processing units.
  • Lenkiewicz, P., Pereira, M., Freire, M., & Fernandes, J. (2009). The dynamic topology changes model for unsupervised image segmentation. In Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Workshop on Multimedia Signal Processing (MMSP'09) (pp. 1-5).

    Abstract

    Deformable models are a popular family of image segmentation techniques, which has been gaining significant focus in the last two decades, serving both for real-world applications as well as the base for research work. One of the features that the deformable models offer and that is considered a much desired one, is the ability to change their topology during the segmentation process. Using this characteristic it is possible to perform segmentation of objects with discontinuities in their bodies or to detect an undefined number of objects in the scene. In this paper we present our model for handling the topology changes in image segmentation methods based on the Active Volumes solution. The said model is capable of performing the changes in the structure of objects while the segmentation progresses, what makes it efficient and suitable for implementations over powerful execution environment, like multi-core architectures or computer clusters.
  • Lenkiewicz, P., Pereira, M., Freire, M., & Fernandes, J. (2009). The whole mesh Deformation Model for 2D and 3D image segmentation. In Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing (ICIP 2009) (pp. 4045-4048).

    Abstract

    In this paper we present a novel approach for image segmentation using Active Nets and Active Volumes. Those solutions are based on the Deformable Models, with slight difference in the method for describing the shapes of interests - instead of using a contour or a surface they represented the segmented objects with a mesh structure, which allows to describe not only the surface of the objects but also to model their interiors. This is obtained by dividing the nodes of the mesh in two categories, namely internal and external ones, which will be responsible for two different tasks. In our new approach we propose to negate this separation and use only one type of nodes. Using that assumption we manage to significantly shorten the time of segmentation while maintaining its quality.
  • De León, L., & Levinson, S. C. (Eds.). (1992). Space in Mesoamerican languages [Special Issue]. Zeitschrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung, 45(6).
  • Levelt, W. J. M., & Plomp, R. (1962). Musical consonance and critical bandwidth. In Proceedings of the 4th International Congress Acoustics (pp. 55-55).
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1991). Lexical access in speech production: Stages versus cascading. In H. Peters, W. Hulstijn, & C. Starkweather (Eds.), Speech motor control and stuttering (pp. 3-10). Amsterdam: Excerpta Medica.
  • Levelt, W. J. M. (1983). The speaker's organization of discourse. In Proceedings of the XIIIth International Congress of Linguists (pp. 278-290).
  • Levinson, S. C. (1979). Pragmatics and social deixis: Reclaiming the notion of conventional implicature. In C. Chiarello (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society (pp. 206-223).
  • Little, H., Perlman, M., & Eryilmaz, K. (2017). Repeated interactions can lead to more iconic signals. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 760-765). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Previous research has shown that repeated interactions can cause iconicity in signals to reduce. However, data from several recent studies has shown the opposite trend: an increase in iconicity as the result of repeated interactions. Here, we discuss whether signals may become less or more iconic as a result of the modality used to produce them. We review several recent experimental results before presenting new data from multi-modal signals, where visual input creates audio feedback. Our results show that the growth in iconicity present in the audio information may come at a cost to iconicity in the visual information. Our results have implications for how we think about and measure iconicity in artificial signalling experiments. Further, we discuss how iconicity in real world speech may stem from auditory, kinetic or visual information, but iconicity in these different modalities may conflict.
  • Little, H. (Ed.). (2017). Special Issue on the Emergence of Sound Systems [Special Issue]. The Journal of Language Evolution, 2(1).
  • Maslowski, M., Meyer, A. S., & Bosker, H. R. (2017). Whether long-term tracking of speech rate affects perception depends on who is talking. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 586-590). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-1517.

    Abstract

    Speech rate is known to modulate perception of temporally ambiguous speech sounds. For instance, a vowel may be perceived as short when the immediate speech context is slow, but as long when the context is fast. Yet, effects of long-term tracking of speech rate are largely unexplored. Two experiments tested whether long-term tracking of rate influences perception of the temporal Dutch vowel contrast /ɑ/-/a:/. In Experiment 1, one low-rate group listened to 'neutral' rate speech from talker A and to slow speech from talker B. Another high-rate group was exposed to the same neutral speech from A, but to fast speech from B. Between-group comparison of the 'neutral' trials revealed that the low-rate group reported a higher proportion of /a:/ in A's 'neutral' speech, indicating that A sounded faster when B was slow. Experiment 2 tested whether one's own speech rate also contributes to effects of long-term tracking of rate. Here, talker B's speech was replaced by playback of participants' own fast or slow speech. No evidence was found that one's own voice affected perception of talker A in larger speech contexts. These results carry implications for our understanding of the mechanisms involved in rate-dependent speech perception and of dialogue.
  • McDonough, J., Lehnert-LeHouillier, H., & Bardhan, N. P. (2009). The perception of nasalized vowels in American English: An investigation of on-line use of vowel nasalization in lexical access. In Nasal 2009.

    Abstract

    The goal of the presented study was to investigate the use of coarticulatory vowel nasalization in lexical access by native speakers of American English. In particular, we compare the use of coart culatory place of articulation cues to that of coarticulatory vowel nasalization. Previous research on lexical access has shown that listeners use cues to the place of articulation of a postvocalic stop in the preceding vowel. However, vowel nasalization as cue to an upcoming nasal consonant has been argued to be a more complex phenomenon. In order to establish whether coarticulatory vowel nasalization aides in the process of lexical access in the same way as place of articulation cues do, we conducted two perception experiments: an off-line 2AFC discrimination task and an on-line eyetracking study using the visual world paradigm. The results of our study suggest that listeners are indeed able to use vowel nasalization in similar ways to place of articulation information, and that both types of cues aide in lexical access.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1992). Words within words: Lexical statistics and lexical access. In J. Ohala, T. Neary, & B. Derwing (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 221-224). Alberta: University of Alberta.

    Abstract

    This paper presents lexical statistics on the pattern of occurrence of words embedded in other words. We report the results of an analysis of 25000 words, varying in length from two to six syllables, extracted from a phonetically-coded English dictionary (The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English). Each syllable, and each string of syllables within each word was checked against the dictionary. Two analyses are presented: the first used a complete list of polysyllables, with look-up on the entire dictionary; the second used a sublist of content words, counting only embedded words which were themselves content words. The results have important implications for models of human speech recognition. The efficiency of these models depends, in different ways, on the number and location of words within words.
  • Monaghan, P., Brand, J., Frost, R. L. A., & Taylor, G. (2017). Multiple variable cues in the environment promote accurate and robust word learning. In G. Gunzelman, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 817-822). Retrieved from https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2017/papers/0164/index.html.

    Abstract

    Learning how words refer to aspects of the environment is a complex task, but one that is supported by numerous cues within the environment which constrain the possibilities for matching words to their intended referents. In this paper we tested the predictions of a computational model of multiple cue integration for word learning, that predicted variation in the presence of cues provides an optimal learning situation. In a cross-situational learning task with adult participants, we varied the reliability of presence of distributional, prosodic, and gestural cues. We found that the best learning occurred when cues were often present, but not always. The effect of variability increased the salience of individual cues for the learner, but resulted in robust learning that was not vulnerable to individual cues’ presence or absence. Thus, variability of multiple cues in the language-learning environment provided the optimal circumstances for word learning.
  • Musgrave, S., & Cutfield, S. (2009). Language documentation and an Australian National Corpus. In M. Haugh, K. Burridge, J. Mulder, & P. Peters (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 2008 HCSNet Workshop on Designing the Australian National Corpus: Mustering Languages (pp. 10-18). Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    Corpus linguistics and language documentation are usually considered separate subdisciplines within linguistics, having developed from different traditions and often operating on different scales, but the authors will suggest that there are commonalities to the two: both aim to represent language use in a community, and both are concerned with managing digital data. The authors propose that the development of the Australian National Corpus (AusNC) be guided by the experience of language documentation in the management of multimodal digital data and its annotation, and in ethical issues pertaining to making the data accessible. This would allow an AusNC that is distributed, multimodal, and multilingual, with holdings of text, audio, and video data distributed across multiple institutions; and including Indigenous, sign, and migrant community languages. An audit of language material held by Australian institutions and individuals is necessary to gauge the diversity and volume of possible content, and to inform common technical standards.
  • Nijland, L., & Janse, E. (Eds.). (2009). Auditory processing in speakers with acquired or developmental language disorders [Special Issue]. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 23(3).
  • Norris, D., Van Ooijen, B., & Cutler, A. (1992). Speeded detection of vowels and steady-state consonants. In J. Ohala, T. Neary, & B. Derwing (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Spoken Language Processing; Vol. 2 (pp. 1055-1058). Alberta: University of Alberta.

    Abstract

    We report two experiments in which vowels and steady-state consonants served as targets in a speeded detection task. In the first experiment, two vowels were compared with one voiced and once unvoiced fricative. Response times (RTs) to the vowels were longer than to the fricatives. The error rate was higher for the consonants. Consonants in word-final position produced the shortest RTs, For the vowels, RT correlated negatively with target duration. In the second experiment, the same two vowel targets were compared with two nasals. This time there was no significant difference in RTs, but the error rate was still significantly higher for the consonants. Error rate and length correlated negatively for the vowels only. We conclude that RT differences between phonemes are independent of vocalic or consonantal status. Instead, we argue that the process of phoneme detection reflects more finely grained differences in acoustic/articulatory structure within the phonemic repertoire.
  • Ortega, G., Schiefner, A., & Ozyurek, A. (2017). Speakers’ gestures predict the meaning and perception of iconicity in signs. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howe, & T. Tenbrink (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 889-894). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Sign languages stand out in that there is high prevalence of
    conventionalised linguistic forms that map directly to their
    referent (i.e., iconic). Hearing adults show low performance
    when asked to guess the meaning of iconic signs suggesting
    that their iconic features are largely inaccessible to them.
    However, it has not been investigated whether speakers’
    gestures, which also share the property of iconicity, may
    assist non-signers in guessing the meaning of signs. Results
    from a pantomime generation task (Study 1) show that
    speakers’ gestures exhibit a high degree of systematicity, and
    share different degrees of form overlap with signs (full,
    partial, and no overlap). Study 2 shows that signs with full
    and partial overlap are more accurately guessed and are
    assigned higher iconicity ratings than signs with no overlap.
    Deaf and hearing adults converge in their iconic depictions
    for some concepts due to the shared conceptual knowledge
    and manual-visual modality.
  • Pacheco, A., Araújo, S., Faísca, L., Petersson, K. M., & Reis, A. (2009). Profiling dislexic children: Phonology and visual naming skills. In Abstracts presented at the International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009. Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia (pp. 40). Retrieved from http://www.neuropsykologia.fi/ins2009/INS_MY09_Abstract.pdf.
  • Perlman, M., Fusaroli, R., Fein, D., & Naigles, L. (2017). The use of iconic words in early child-parent interactions. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 913-918). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    This paper examines the use of iconic words in early conversations between children and caregivers. The longitudinal data include a span of six observations of 35 children-parent dyads in the same semi-structured activity. Our findings show that children’s speech initially has a high proportion of iconic words, and over time, these words become diluted by an increase of arbitrary words. Parents’ speech is also initially high in iconic words, with a decrease in the proportion of iconic words over time – in this case driven by the use of fewer iconic words. The level and development of iconicity are related to individual differences in the children’s cognitive skills. Our findings fit with the hypothesis that iconicity facilitates early word learning and may play an important role in learning to produce new words.
  • Popov, V., Ostarek, M., & Tenison, C. (2017). Inferential Pitfalls in Decoding Neural Representations. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 961-966). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    A key challenge for cognitive neuroscience is to decipher the representational schemes of the brain. A recent class of decoding algorithms for fMRI data, stimulus-feature-based encoding models, is becoming increasingly popular for inferring the dimensions of neural representational spaces from stimulus-feature spaces. We argue that such inferences are not always valid, because decoding can occur even if the neural representational space and the stimulus-feature space use different representational schemes. This can happen when there is a systematic mapping between them. In a simulation, we successfully decoded the binary representation of numbers from their decimal features. Since binary and decimal number systems use different representations, we cannot conclude that the binary representation encodes decimal features. The same argument applies to the decoding of neural patterns from stimulus-feature spaces and we urge caution in inferring the nature of the neural code from such methods. We discuss ways to overcome these inferential limitations.
  • Pouw, W., Aslanidou, A., Kamermans, K. L., & Paas, F. (2017). Is ambiguity detection in haptic imagery possible? Evidence for Enactive imaginings. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 2925-2930). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    A classic discussion about visual imagery is whether it affords reinterpretation, like discovering two interpretations in the duck/rabbit illustration. Recent findings converge on reinterpretation being possible in visual imagery, suggesting functional equivalence with pictorial representations. However, it is unclear whether such reinterpretations are necessarily a visual-pictorial achievement. To assess this, 68 participants were briefly presented 2-d ambiguous figures. One figure was presented visually, the other via manual touch alone. Afterwards participants mentally rotated the memorized figures as to discover a novel interpretation. A portion (20.6%) of the participants detected a novel interpretation in visual imagery, replicating previous research. Strikingly, 23.6% of participants were able to reinterpret figures they had only felt. That reinterpretation truly involved haptic processes was further supported, as some participants performed co-thought gestures on an imagined figure during retrieval. These results are promising for further development of an Enactivist approach to imagination.
  • Ringersma, J., Zinn, C., & Kemps-Snijders, M. (2009). LEXUS & ViCoS From lexical to conceptual spaces. In 1st International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC).

    Abstract

    LEXUS and ViCoS: from lexicon to conceptual spaces LEXUS is a web-based lexicon tool and the knowledge space software ViCoS is an extension of LEXUS, allowing users to create relations between objects in and across lexica. LEXUS and ViCoS are part of the Language Archiving Technology software, developed at the MPI for Psycholinguistics to archive and enrich linguistic resources collected in the framework of language documentation projects. LEXUS is of primary interest for language documentation, offering the possibility to not just create a digital dictionary, but additionally it allows the creation of multi-media encyclopedic lexica. ViCoS provides an interface between the lexical space and the ontological space. Its approach permits users to model a world of concepts and their interrelations based on categorization patterns made by the speech community. We describe the LEXUS and ViCoS functionalities using three cases from DoBeS language documentation projects: (1) Marquesan The Marquesan lexicon was initially created in Toolbox and imported into LEXUS using the Toolbox import functionality. The lexicon is enriched with multi-media to illustrate the meaning of the words in its cultural environment. Members of the speech community consider words as keys to access and describe relevant parts of their life and traditions. Their understanding of words is best described by the various associations they evoke rather than in terms of any formal theory of meaning. Using ViCoS a knowledge space of related concepts is being created. (2) Kola-Sámi Two lexica are being created in LEXUS: RuSaDic lexicon is a Russian-Kildin wordlist in which the entries are of relative limited structure and content. SaRuDiC is a more complex structured lexicon with much richer content, including multi-media fragments and derivations. Using ViCoS we have created a connection between the two lexica, so that speakers who are familiair with Russian and wish to revitalize their Kildin can enter the lexicon through the RuSaDic and from there approach the informative SaRuDic. Similary we will create relations from the two lexica to external open databases, like e.g. Álgu. (3) Beaver A speaker database including kinship relations has been created and the database has been imported into LEXUS. In the LEXUS views the relations for individual speakers are being displayed. Using ViCoS the relational information from the database will be extracted to form a kisnhip relation space with specific relation types, like e.g 'mother-of'. The whole set of relations from the database can be displayed in one ViCoS relation window, and zoom functionality is available.
  • Sauter, D., Eisner, F., Ekman, P., & Scott, S. K. (2009). Universal vocal signals of emotion. In N. Taatgen, & H. Van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2009) (pp. 2251-2255). Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Emotional signals allow for the sharing of important information with conspecifics, for example to warn them of danger. Humans use a range of different cues to communicate to others how they feel, including facial, vocal, and gestural signals. Although much is known about facial expressions of emotion, less research has focused on affect in the voice. We compare British listeners to individuals from remote Namibian villages who have had no exposure to Western culture, and examine recognition of non-verbal emotional vocalizations, such as screams and laughs. We show that a number of emotions can be universally recognized from non-verbal vocal signals. In addition we demonstrate the specificity of this pattern, with a set of additional emotions only recognized within, but not across these cultural groups. Our findings indicate that a small set of primarily negative emotions have evolved signals across several modalities, while most positive emotions are communicated with culture-specific signals.
  • Scharenborg, O., & Okolowski, S. (2009). Lexical embedding in spoken Dutch. In INTERSPEECH 2009 - 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1879-1882). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    A stretch of speech is often consistent with multiple words, e.g., the sequence /hæm/ is consistent with ‘ham’ but also with the first syllable of ‘hamster’, resulting in temporary ambiguity. However, to what degree does this lexical embedding occur? Analyses on two corpora of spoken Dutch showed that 11.9%-19.5% of polysyllabic word tokens have word-initial embedding, while 4.1%-7.5% of monosyllabic word tokens can appear word-initially embedded. This is much lower than suggested by an analysis of a large dictionary of Dutch. Speech processing thus appears to be simpler than one might expect on the basis of statistics on a dictionary.
  • Scharenborg, O. (2009). Using durational cues in a computational model of spoken-word recognition. In INTERSPEECH 2009 - 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 1675-1678). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    Evidence that listeners use durational cues to help resolve temporarily ambiguous speech input has accumulated over the past few years. In this paper, we investigate whether durational cues are also beneficial for word recognition in a computational model of spoken-word recognition. Two sets of simulations were carried out using the acoustic signal as input. The simulations showed that the computational model, like humans, takes benefit from durational cues during word recognition, and uses these to disambiguate the speech signal. These results thus provide support for the theory that durational cues play a role in spoken-word recognition.
  • Schuller, B., Steidl, S., Batliner, A., Bergelson, E., Krajewski, J., Janott, C., Amatuni, A., Casillas, M., Seidl, A., Soderstrom, M., Warlaumont, A. S., Hidalgo, G., Schnieder, S., Heiser, C., Hohenhorst, W., Herzog, M., Schmitt, M., Qian, K., Zhang, Y., Trigeorgis, G. and 2 moreSchuller, B., Steidl, S., Batliner, A., Bergelson, E., Krajewski, J., Janott, C., Amatuni, A., Casillas, M., Seidl, A., Soderstrom, M., Warlaumont, A. S., Hidalgo, G., Schnieder, S., Heiser, C., Hohenhorst, W., Herzog, M., Schmitt, M., Qian, K., Zhang, Y., Trigeorgis, G., Tzirakis, P., & Zafeiriou, S. (2017). The INTERSPEECH 2017 computational paralinguistics challenge: Addressee, cold & snoring. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2017 (pp. 3442-3446). doi:10.21437/Interspeech.2017-43.

    Abstract

    The INTERSPEECH 2017 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge addresses three different problems for the first time in research competition under well-defined conditions: In the Addressee sub-challenge, it has to be determined whether speech produced by an adult is directed towards another adult or towards a child; in the Cold sub-challenge, speech under cold has to be told apart from ‘healthy’ speech; and in the Snoring subchallenge, four different types of snoring have to be classified. In this paper, we describe these sub-challenges, their conditions, and the baseline feature extraction and classifiers, which include data-learnt feature representations by end-to-end learning with convolutional and recurrent neural networks, and bag-of-audiowords for the first time in the challenge series
  • Schuppler, B., Van Dommelen, W., Koreman, J., & Ernestus, M. (2009). Word-final [t]-deletion: An analysis on the segmental and sub-segmental level. In Proceedings of the 10th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2009) (pp. 2275-2278). Causal Productions Pty Ltd.

    Abstract

    This paper presents a study on the reduction of word-final [t]s in conversational standard Dutch. Based on a large amount of tokens annotated on the segmental level, we show that the bigram frequency and the segmental context are the main predictors for the absence of [t]s. In a second study, we present an analysis of the detailed acoustic properties of word-final [t]s and we show that bigram frequency and context also play a role on the subsegmental level. This paper extends research on the realization of /t/ in spontaneous speech and shows the importance of incorporating sub-segmental properties in models of speech.
  • Sekine, K. (2017). Gestural hesitation reveals children’s competence on multimodal communication: Emergence of disguised adaptor. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2017) (pp. 3113-3118). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Speakers sometimes modify their gestures during the process of production into adaptors such as hair touching or eye scratching. Such disguised adaptors are evidence that the speaker can monitor their gestures. In this study, we investigated when and how disguised adaptors are first produced by children. Sixty elementary school children participated in this study (ten children in each age group; from 7 to 12 years old). They were instructed to watch a cartoon and retell it to their parents. The results showed that children did not produce disguised adaptors until the age of 8. The disguised adaptors accompany fluent speech until the children are 10 years old and accompany dysfluent speech until they reach 11 or 12 years of age. These results suggest that children start to monitor their gestures when they are 9 or 10 years old. Cognitive changes were considered as factors to influence emergence of disguised adaptors
  • Senft, G. (1991). Bakavilisi Biga - we can 'turn' the language - or: What happens to English words in Kilivila language? In W. Bahner, J. Schildt, & D. Viehwegger (Eds.), Proceedings of the XIVth International Congress of Linguists (pp. 1743-1746). Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2009). Logical systems and natural logical intuitions. In Current issues in unity and diversity of languages: Collection of the papers selected from the CIL 18, held at Korea University in Seoul on July 21-26, 2008. http://www.cil18.org (pp. 53-60).

    Abstract

    The present paper is part of a large research programme investigating the nature and properties of the predicate logic inherent in natural language. The general hypothesis is that natural speakers start off with a basic-natural logic, based on natural cognitive functions, including the basic-natural way of dealing with plural objects. As culture spreads, functional pressure leads to greater generalization and mathematical correctness, yielding ever more refined systems until the apogee of standard modern predicate logic. Four systems of predicate calculus are considered: Basic-Natural Predicate Calculus (BNPC), Aritsotelian-Abelardian Predicate Calculus (AAPC), Aritsotelian-Boethian Predicate Calculus (ABPC), also known as the classic Square of Opposition, and Standard Modern Predicate Calculus (SMPC). (ABPC is logically faulty owing to its Undue Existential Import (UEI), but that fault is repaired by the addition of a presuppositional component to the logic.) All four systems are checked against seven natural logical intuitions. It appears that BNPC scores best (five out of seven), followed by ABPC (three out of seven). AAPC and SMPC finish ex aequo with two out of seven.

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