Parallels in the sequential organization of birdsong and human speech.

Human speech possesses a rich hierarchical structure that allows for meaning to be altered by words spaced far apart in time. Conversely, the sequential structure of nonhuman communication is thought to follow non-hierarchical Markovian dynamics operating over only short distances. Here, we show that human speech and birdsong share a similar sequential structure indicative of both hierarchical and Markovian organization. We analyze the sequential dynamics of song from multiple songbird species and speech from multiple languages by modeling the information content of signals as a function of the sequential distance between vocal elements. Across short sequence-distances, an exponential decay dominates the information in speech and birdsong, consistent with underlying Markovian processes. At longer sequence-distances, the decay in information follows a power law, consistent with underlying hierarchical processes. Thus, the sequential organization of acoustic elements in two learned vocal communication signals (speech and birdsong) shows functionally equivalent dynamics, governed by similar processes

Study to determine potential flight applications and human factors design guidelines for voice recognition and synthesis systems

A study was conducted to determine potential commercial aircraft flight deck applications and implementation guidelines for voice recognition and synthesis. At first, a survey of voice recognition and synthesis technology was undertaken to develop a working knowledge base. Then, numerous potential aircraft and simulator flight deck voice applications were identified and each proposed application was rated on a number of criteria in order to achieve an overall payoff rating. The potential voice recognition applications fell into five general categories: programming, interrogation, data entry, switch and mode selection, and continuous/time-critical action control. The ratings of the first three categories showed the most promise of being beneficial to flight deck operations. Possible applications of voice synthesis systems were categorized as automatic or pilot selectable and many were rated as being potentially beneficial. In addition, voice system implementation guidelines and pertinent performance criteria are proposed. Finally, the findings of this study are compared with those made in a recent NASA study of a 1995 transport concept

Automated assessment of second language comprehensibility: Review, training, validation, and generalization studies

Whereas many scholars have emphasized the relative importance of comprehensibility as an ecologically valid goal for L2 speech training, testing, and development, eliciting listeners’ judgments is time-consuming. Following calls for research on more efficient L2 speech rating methods in applied linguistics, and growing attention toward using machine learning on spontaneous unscripted speech in speech engineering, the current study examined the possibility of establishing quick and reliable automated comprehensibility assessments. Orchestrating a set of phonological (maximum posterior probabilities and gaps between L1 and L2 speech), prosodic (pitch and intensity variation), and temporal measures (articulation rate, pause frequency), the regression model significantly predicted how naïve listeners intuitively judged low, mid, high, and nativelike comprehensibility among 100 L1 and L2 speakers’ picture descriptions. The strength of the correlation (r = .823 for machine vs. human ratings) was comparable to naïve listeners’ interrater agreement (r = .760 for humans vs. humans). The findings were successfully replicated when the model was applied to a new dataset of 45 L1 and L2 speakers (r = .827) and tested under a more freely constructed interview task condition (r = .809)

FROM LANGUAGE TO LITERACY: STRUCTURAL FEATURES OF ACQUIRED LANGUAGES FACILITATING ENGLISH MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS

Morphological awareness is a crucial metalinguistic skill, specifically for English Language Learners (ELLs). Since languages differ widely in degree of orthographic opacity, degree of morphological fusion, and degree of morphological synthesis, this thesis sought to evaluate the impact of the structural features of other languages upon ELLs’ levels of English morphological awareness. Additionally, the study investigated the relationship between morphological awareness and perceived levels of literacy and oracy proficiency. Multilingual individuals responded to an online survey containing a morphological awareness task and a language history questionnaire. Each language represented in the sample was coded according to its structural features. Subsequently, the relationship between the features and morphological awareness was analyzed. Morphological awareness was impacted by a confluence of all three structural features. Knowledge of languages with higher degrees of morphological synthesis or higher degrees of orthographic opacity was found to predict higher levels of morphological awareness. Additionally, perceived English literacy proficiency explained a larger degree of the variance in English morphological awareness than perceived English oracy proficiency, though both were statistically significant. The findings indicate the acquisition of English may be impacted by familiarity with other languages and by perceptions of English proficienc

Facilitation Of Phonological Awareness In Three And Four Year Old Children

This study investigated the effect of a short-term facilitation programme aimed at increasing the phonological awareness of pre-school, pre-literate children between three-and-a half and four-and-a-half years of age. Forty-eight subjects were assessed both before and after a four-week intervention phase on four measures of metaphonological ability as well as measures of metasyntactic ability, auditory memory, auditory discrimination. Following the pre-intervention assessments, subjects were allocated to one of three groups. Groups A, B and C each containing sixteen subjects and matched for age, gender, social background and linguistic ability. Group A received a programme specifically designed to facilitate metaphonological abilities in 8 half-hour sessions. The first control group (Group B) received the same amount of input with a programme targeting semantics instead. Group C, the second control group, received no intervention. The increase in mean combined metaphonological score from pre- to post-intervention testing for Group A was significantly greater than for either Group B or Group C while the two control groups did not significantly differ from one another. No significant difference was found amongst the three groups for any other measures. No statistically significant difference was found amongst Groups A, B and C tor any of the preintervention assessment measures. The results suggest that the metaphonological intervention programme significantly influenced the metaphonological abilities of a group of three and four year old children while the control conditions had no such effect. Although previous studies have obtained similar results, they have all involved older pre-school or school-age children. The present study provides evidence that a metaphonological intervention programme could benefit young pre-school, pre-literate children in their preparation for school and their pursuit of reading readiness. Pre-school children have disparate levels of metaphonological ability having had different metaphonological experiences. Not all children are equally ready to develop literacy skills when they start school. Children with poor phonological awareness, especially those with delayed or disordered language, are thought to be at risk of future reading difficulties and would particularly benefit from pre-school metaphonological intervention

L1 literacy and L2 learning: connecting the dots

Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura CorrespondenteBigelow e Tarone (2004) propõem que aprendizes de língua estrangeira (LE) com níveis baixos de letramento em língua materna (LM), e, por conseqüência, com limitações em consciência metalingüística, terão dificuldades de perceber a diferença entre a sua produção em LE e o insumo recebido. Todavia, esses pesquisadores não mediram o nível de consciência metalingüística de seus participantes em nenhum dos estudos que conduziram. Sendo assim, dados foram coletados com 24 brasileiros (com nível básico de inglês como LE), que fizeram testes de letramento em LM (PISA), consciência metalingüística (fonológica, morfológica e sintática) em LM e LE, e pré- e pós-testes de proficiência em LE (KET). Os objetivos do estudo foram averiguar se há correlação entre o nível de consciência metalingüística desses aprendizes e seu nível de letramento e verificar se consciência metalingüística em LM e/ou LE e/ou letramento seria eficaz em prever ganhos na proficiência em LE entre os dois testes e a nota final em um semestre de um curso de inglês. A análise dos dados permite argumentar que (1) o letramento e a consciência sintática em LM estão relacionados, (2) a consciência sintática, assim como a fonológica, transferem-se da LM para a LE, (3) a consciência fonológica em LM tem um papel prejudicial no aprendizado de LE, e (4) a consciência sintática em LE tem papel benéfico no aprendizado de LE e leva os aprendizes a alcançarem um nível maior de proficiência. A tese proposta é de que o envolvimento com o código escrito (pelo menos para aqueles aprendizes que não têm limitações na consciência fonológica) leva ao refinamento da consciência sintática. Esse conhecimento, quando transferido para a LE, impulsiona o seu desenvolvimento. De acordo com esses resultados, diferentemente do que Krashen (1982) propôs, existe, sim, um papel para o conhecimento explícito no aprendizado de LE

Remediating Difficulties in Learning to Read and Spell by Teaching Kindergarten Students to Listen to Composite Words and Vocally Segment the Component Phonemes

In 2 experiments I used a delayed multiple probe design to test the effects of teaching students to vocally segment the component phonemes after listening to composite words on the emergence of untaught textual responses, spelling responses, and vocal phoneme blends. All participants were kindergarten students and had been selected because they could textually respond to and write graphemes but did not learn textual responses and spelling responses for words from instruction. There were 2 phases in Experiment I. In Experiment I, Phase 1, I examined the effect of teaching 3 students to vocally segment the component phonemes in a five-word subset of phonemically transparent Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) words on the emergence of (a) textual responses, (b) dictated written spelling responses (c) vocally blending the component phonemes into a composite word, and (d) vocally segmenting the component phonemes from untaught composite words. During the vocal phoneme segmentation intervention participants were vocally presented with a composite word and were taught to vocally segment and produce each component phoneme separately in the same sequential order as the component word (e.g., cat...c...a...t). Results showed that derived relations emerged across all topographies after learning to vocally segment the phonemes in 2 sets of consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. In Phase 2, I used the same response topographies as Phase 1 using a set of 20 consonant-consonant-vowel-consonant (CCVC) words. All 3 participants demonstrated errors in which they did not include a fourth phoneme (e.g., spelling stop as sop). Results showed that learning to vocally segment a 5-word set of CCVC words established the essential stimulus control for correctly responding to CCVC words. Experiment II was a systematic replication (Sidman, 1960) of Experiment I, Phase 1, which included extra measures of learning and experimental control. Five participants acquired untaught derived relations after learning to vocally segment the component phonemes in composite CVC words. The participants in Experiment II required between 2 and 3 instructional sets before demonstrating derived learning. An additional measure showed that the rate of learning for textual responses increased across all participants after the intervention. Results also showed that verbal operants learned before the intervention joined with the newly acquired spelling repertoire for some participants after the intervention. The results from both experiments demonstrated that children who can identify phonemes and graphemes, but do not learn to textually respond and spell from instruction will acquire those skills as a function of learning the relationship between composite words and the component phonemes through vocal phoneme segmentation

Vocabulary and Phonological Awareness in 3- to 4-Year-Old Children: Effects of a Training Program

The impact of a preschool training program that combined a vocabulary instruction strategy with phonological awareness activities and instruction in the alphabetic principle, as well as incidental teaching of basic vocabulary items was evaluated using a pretest-posttest design with a control group. This language and literacy (LL) training targeted three to four year-old English as a second language (L2) learners and monolingual (L1) English speakers (n = 63) and was conducted twice a week for two hours, for a total of 24 weeks. Both language groups contained a low socioeconomic status (SES) and a middle SES groups. The children in the control group attended a math intervention (n= 17) or general Early Years programs (n = 6). The results of analyses, controlling for non-verbal reasoning, show that children in the LL training group significantly outperformed the children in the control group on performance on the posttest measures of standardized vocabulary (PPVT-III; Dunn & Dunn, 1997) and letter-sound identification. It is remarkable that at posttest the English L2 children had scores similar to the range of English L1 children at pretest. That is, with this LL training program, at posttest the English L2 children reached the pretest levels of English L1 children. These are the levels of vocabulary knowledge that native speakers will typically have when they start kindergarten. One of the implications of this research is that only an early provision of a vocabulary training program in which conceptual linkages between words are emphasized in a flexible and rich manner can lead to meaningful changes in vocabulary development. In contrast, teaching words does not meaningfully increase general vocabulary knowledge, a result that is supported by a plethora of research to date