Acomodación fonética durante las interacciones conversacionales: una visión general

During conversational interactions such as tutoring, instruction-giving tasks, verbal negotiations, or just talking with friends, interlocutors’ behaviors experience a series of changes due to the characteristics of their counterpart and to the interaction itself. These changes are pervasively present in every social interaction, and most of them occur in the sounds and rhythms of our speech, which is known as acoustic-prosodic accommodation, or simply phonetic accommodation. The consequences, linguistic and social constraints, and underlying cognitive mechanisms of phonetic accommodation have been studied for at least 50 years, due to the importance of the phenomenon to several disciplines such as linguistics, psychology, and sociology. Based on the analysis and synthesis of the existing empirical research literature, in this paper we present a structured and comprehensive review of the qualities, functions, onto- and phylogenetic development, and modalities of phonetic accommodation.Durante las interacciones conversacionales como dar una tutoría, dar instrucciones, las negociaciones verbales, o simplemente hablar con amigos, los comportamientos de las personas experimentan una serie de cambios debido a las características de su interlocutor y a la interacción en sí. Estos cambios están presentes en cada interacción social, y la mayoría de ellos ocurre en los sonidos y ritmos del habla, lo cual se conoce como acomodación acústico-prosódica, o simplemente acomodación fonética. Las consecuencias, las limitaciones lingüísticas y sociales, y los mecanismos cognitivos subyacentes a la acomodación fonética se han estudiado durante al menos 50 años, debido a la importancia del fenómeno para varias disciplinas como la lingüística, la psicología, y la sociología. A partir del análisis y síntesis de la literatura de investigación empírica existente, en este artículo presentamos una revisión estructurada y exhaustiva de las cualidades, funciones, desarrollo onto- y filogenético, y modalidades de la acomodación fonética

Vocal Expression In Schizophrenia: Examining The Role Of Vocal Accommodation In Clinical Ratings Of Speech

Diminished vocal expressivity, defined in terms of a diminution in speech production and intonation/emphasis, is a chronic symptom in schizophrenia. On interview-based measures of vocal deficits, clinicians typically rate patients with schizophrenia 4 to 6 SDs below their non-patient peers. However, recent studies utilizing objective computerized measures have failed to observe vocal expressivity deficits that approach this level. It may be that vocal deficits can only be understood within the boundaries of dyadic exchanges during interview-based assessments. Vocal accommodation, or the degree to which vocal characteristics (i.e., mean F0) between interlocutors synchronize over time, has been linked to enhanced social affiliation and may useful for understanding this discrepancy in the literature. The current study sought to leverage computerized technologies to determine whether vocal accommodation during structured clinical interviews unduly influences clinical ratings of vocal expression in schizophrenia. Overall, both controls (n = 30) and patients with schizophrenia (n = 57) exhibited vocal accommodation of mean F0 with their respective partners during a clinical interview, though at varying degrees. Contrary to expectations, vocal accommodation during a clinical interview did not significantly predict clinical ratings of vocal deficits in schizophrenia. The current findings extend the literature on communicative and social skills in schizophrenia. Implications and directions for future research are discussed

When I Move, You Move: Coordination in Conversation

Researchers have been interested in the dynamics of human conversation for several decades. One major focus of this line of research has been the mechanisms by which humans coordinate in conversation. To study the coordination of conversation within dyads often requires an understanding of statistical methods, which handle time series data. Traditionally, there are no definitive standards for defining one of the important parameters in time series analysis, window size. Therefore, the purpose of the current project was to elucidate the mechanisms through which conversational coordination emerges by utilizing conversational turn-taking as the basis for choosing the appropriate window size in the time series analysis. Data from previously collected videotaped conversational interactions were analyzed for the presence of movement coordination using an image-differencing algorithm in MATLAB. Additionally, speech signals time-locked to the video segments were examined for vocal synchrony in pitch using Praat. The participants from the original study were asked to engage in three tasks designed to elicit sarcasm. Only data from one of these tasks, discussing an ironic scenario, were analyzed for the current project. There were eleven dyads each contributing one conversation and each lasting between 2 and 8 minutes. It was thought that both movement and pitch were possible coordination mechanisms, but that coordination patterns would only be uncovered by using time series windows adjusted for turn-taking rates in each dyad. Results from windowed cross-correlations revealed that participants significantly coordinated movement. Post-hoc tests revealed an effect of window size on mean correlations. Although not significant, results from the analysis of vocal coordination revealed a pattern of results similar to those from the movement coordination study. This could be due to a lack of statistical power. Interestingly, patterns of movement coordination were found strictly as a function of a vocal parameter: turn-taking. These results suggest a novel approach to the study of conversational coordination and a more crucial role for turn-taking in the emergence of coordinative structures

Structuring information through gesture and intonation

Face-to-face communication is multimodal. In unscripted spoken discourse we can observe the interaction of several “semiotic layers”, modalities of information such as syntax, discourse structure, gesture, and intonation. We explore the role of gesture and intonation in structuring and aligning information in spoken discourse through a study of the co-occurrence of pitch accents and gestural apices. Metaphorical spatialization through gesture also plays a role in conveying the contextual relationships between the speaker, the government and other external forces in a naturally-occurring political speech setting

Real-world, high-stakes deceptive speech: Theoretical validation and an examination of its potential for detection automation

The study of deception and the theories which have been developed have relied heavily on laboratory experiments, in controlled environments, utilizing American college students, participating in mock scenarios. The goal of this study was to validate previous deception research in a real-world high-stakes environment. An additional focus of this study was the development of procedures to process data (e.g. video or audio recordings) from real-world environments in such a manner that behavioral measures can be extracted and analyzed. This study utilized previously confirmed speech cues and constructs to deception in an attempt to validate a leading deception theory, Interpersonal Deception Theory (IDT). Several measures and constructs, utilized and validated in existing research, were explored and validated in this study. The data analyzed came from an adjudicated real-world high-stakes criminal case in which the subject was sentenced in federal court to 470 years in prison for creating child pornography, rape, sexual exploitation of children, child sexual assault and kidnapping; a crime spree that spanned over a five years and four states. The results did validate IDT with mixed results on individual measures and their constructs. The exploratory nature of the study, the volume of data, and the numerous methods of analysis used generated many possibilities for future research