Mental simulations in comprehension of direct versus indirect speech quotations

In human communication, direct speech (e.g., Mary said: ‘I’m hungry’) coincides with vivid paralinguistic demonstrations of the reported speech acts whereas indirect speech (e.g., Mary said [that] she was hungry) provides mere descriptions of what was said. Hence, direct speech is usually more vivid and perceptually engaging than indirect speech. This thesis explores how this vividness distinction between the two reporting styles underlies language comprehension. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that in both silent reading and listening, direct speech elicited higher brain activity in the voice-selective areas of the auditory cortex than indirect speech, consistent with the intuition of an ‘inner voice’ experience during comprehension of direct speech. In the follow-up behavioural investigations, we demonstrated that this ‘inner voice’ experience could be characterised in terms of modulations of speaking rate, reflected in both behavioural articulation (oral reading) and eye-movement patterns (silent reading). Moreover, we observed context-concordant modulations of pitch and loudness in oral reading but not straightforwardly in silent reading. Finally, we obtained preliminary results which show that in addition to reported speakers’ voices, their facial expressions may also be encoded in silent reading of direct speech but not indirect speech. The results show that individuals are more likely to mentally simulate or imagine reported speakers’ voices and perhaps also their facial expressions during comprehension of direct as opposed to indirect speech, indicating a more vivid representation of the former. The findings are in line with the demonstration hypothesis of direct speech (Clark & Gerrig, 1990) and the embodied theories of language comprehension (e.g., Barsalou, 1999; Zwaan, 2004), suggesting that sensory experiences with pragmatically distinct reporting styles underlie language comprehension

Interweaving letters and sounds : the impact of phonics instruction in English on the oral production and symbolic representation of sounds among university-level L2 English learners

The study described in this thesis was conducted with a number of L1 Spanish learners of L2 English who were students of English Pronunciation Practice (EPP), an undergraduate pronunciation course taught in English Teaching, Translation and Research programs at Facultad de Lenguas (FL), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC). It was aimed at investigating whether explicit phonics instruction contributes positively to the oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words of a number of university-level L1 Spanish learners of L2 English. A quasi-experimental research designed was used and the data obtained were analyzed with a quantitative method. The participating students were divided into experimental and control groups. The total number of students whose performance was analyzed was 62 (experimental = 33 and control = 29). Both groups were pretested on oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words. Next, the experimental group received a six-lesson phonics instruction focusing on the pronunciation and transcription of six specific orthographic combinations. After that both groups were posttested in terms similar to the pretest. All the data collected were analyzed using the dependent t test (also known as paired t test) to assess the difference between the averages obtained in the pretest and posttest conditions by each group. This was complemented with a variability analysis conducted to determine the degree of difficulty caused by the different combinations to the participating students. The results obtained from this study confirm the hypothesis that students who received explicit phonics instruction performed better in terms of oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words containing the orthographic combinations chosen than did students who did not receive such instruction. Pedagogical implications, practical applications and directions for future research are given

Multimode delivery in the classroom

Because of recent technological advances, subtitling is now easier and more versatile than in the past. There is an increasing interest in the use of digitally-recorded audiovisual materials with both soundtrack and subtitles in the same language as a language-learning aid. The full potential of this is not currently attained because of poor-quality subtitling and less appropriate “caption” or “synopsis” rather than “transcription” subtitles. An adaptation of a format successful over two decades in Europe might be of value for South-East Asian language learners

Reading Poetry and Prose: Eye Movements and Acoustic Evidence

We examined genre-specific reading strategies for literary texts and hypothesized that text categorization (literary prose vs. poetry) modulates both how readers gather information from a text (eye movements) and how they realize its phonetic surface form (speech production). We recorded eye movements and speech while college students (N = 32) orally read identical texts that we categorized and formatted as either literary prose or poetry. We further varied the text position of critical regions (text-initial vs. text-medial) to compare how identical information is read and articulated with and without context; this allowed us to assess whether genre-specific reading strategies make differential use of identical context information. We observed genre-dependent differences in reading and speaking tempo that reflected several aspects of reading and articulation. Analyses of regions of interests revealed that word-skipping increased particularly while readers progressed through the texts in the prose condition; speech rhythm was more pronounced in the poetry condition irrespective of the text position. Our results characterize strategic poetry and prose reading, indicate that adjustments of reading behavior partly reflect differences in phonetic surface form, and shed light onto the dynamics of genre-specific literary reading. They generally support a theory of literary comprehension that assumes distinct literary processing modes and incorporates text categorization as an initial processing step

Teaching learners to communicate effectively in the L2: Integrating body language in the students\u2019 syllabus

In communication a great deal of meaning is exchanged through body language, including gaze, posture, hand gestures and body movements. Body language is largely culture-specific, and rests, for its comprehension, on people\u2019s sharing socio-cultural and linguistic norms. In cross-cultural communication, L2 speakers\u2019 use of body language may convey meaning that is not understood or misinterpreted by the interlocutors, affecting the pragmatics of communication. In spite of its importance for cross-cultural communication, body language is neglected in ESL/EFL teaching. This paper argues that the study of body language should be integrated in the syllabus of ESL/EFL teaching and learning. This is done by: 1) reviewing literature showing the tight connection between language, speech and gestures and the problems that might arise in cross-cultural communication when speakers use and interpret body language according to different conventions; 2) reporting the data from two pilot studies showing that L2 learners transfer L1 gestures to the L2 and that these are not understood by native L2 speakers; 3) reporting an experience teaching body language in an ESL/EFL classroom. The paper suggests that in multicultural ESL/EFL classes teaching body language should be aimed primarily at raising the students\u2019 awareness of the differences existing across cultures

Changes in the McGurk Effect Across Phonetic Contexts

To investigate the process underlying audiovisual speech perception, the McGurk illusion was examined across a range of phonetic contexts. Two major changes were found. First, the frequency of illusory /g/ fusion percepts increased relative to the frequency of illusory /d/ fusion percepts as vowel context was shifted from /i/ to /a/ to /u/. This trend could not be explained by biases present in perception of the unimodal visual stimuli. However, the change found in the McGurk fusion effect across vowel environments did correspond systematically with changes in second format frequency patterns across contexts. Second, the order of consonants in illusory combination percepts was found to depend on syllable type. This may be due to differences occuring across syllable contexts in the timecourses of inputs from the two modalities as delaying the auditory track of a vowel-consonant stimulus resulted in a change in the order of consonants perceived. Taken together, these results suggest that the speech perception system either fuses audiovisual inputs into a visually compatible percept with a similar second formant pattern to that of the acoustic stimulus or interleaves the information from different modalities, at a phonemic or subphonemic level, based on their relative arrival times.National Institutes of Health (R01 DC02852

Listening to limericks: a pupillometry investigation of perceivers’ expectancy

What features of a poem make it captivating, and which cognitive mechanisms are sensitive to these features? We addressed these questions experimentally by measuring pupillary responses of 40 participants who listened to a series of Limericks. The Limericks ended with either a semantic, syntactic, rhyme or metric violation. Compared to a control condition without violations, only the rhyme violation condition induced a reliable pupillary response. An anomaly-rating study on the same stimuli showed that all violations were reliably detectable relative to the control condition, but the anomaly induced by rhyme violations was perceived as most severe. Together, our data suggest that rhyme violations in Limericks may induce an emotional response beyond mere anomaly detection