Entrainment as a basis for co-ordinated actions in speech

This paper asks how rhythmicity is used to manage speaker transition in spontaneous talk and how temporal alignment helps to achieve interactional alignment. 56 Question + Answer (Q+A) pairs were analysed. 44 (79%) Qs ended rhythmically: in their last few accented syllables, f0 prominences were quasi-periodic. Of the As to these rhythmic Qs, 32 (73%) began with the same periodicity as the Q. As with non-rhythmic entry into ‘turn space’ set up by a rhythmic Q were sequentially and interactionally complex. Rhythmic A entries included accented syllables, in-breaths, clicks and nods, suggesting ‘embodied’ rather than solely ‘linguistic’ temporal entrainment. Interactional alignment thus seems to exploit temporal entrainment in the vicinity of turn boundaries, like that established for musicians

Pitch-interval analysis of ‘periodic’ and ‘aperiodic’ Question+Answer pairs

In English Question+Answer (Q+A) pairs, periodicity typically emerges across turn space, to a degree of precision matching standards of music perception. Interactionally- aligned Q+A pairs display such shared periodicity across the turn, while unaligned pairs do not. Periodicity is measured as temporal location of f0 maxima or minima, ‘pikes’, in successive accented syllables. This study asks whether periodicity of pikes across a turn is accompanied by systematic use of musical pitch intervals across the turn space. Recordings of 77 Q+A pairs from 8 pairs of native English speakers talking naturally. Ratios of f0 in the last pike of the Question and the first of the Answer fell more reliably into Western musical interval categories when the Q+A pair’s turn transition was periodic (the Answer was aligned or preferred, re the Question) than when it was aperiodic (disaligned, dispreferred). Similar results were found for ratios of modal f0. Such pitch ratios are better described by musical interval categories of Western tuning systems than by those of three non-Western systems, and best of all by semitones, suggesting close connections between culturally-specific uses of pitch in conversation and in music. Judgments of arousal/valence suggest weak relations with specific pitch intervals. Theoretical implications are discussed

The actions of peripheral linguistic objects: clicks

This paper is a conversation analytic study of the linguistic, phonetic, sequential and multimodal resources participants in conversation have to make sense of clicks in spoken English

Spring School on Language, Music, and Cognition: Organizing Events in Time

The interdisciplinary spring school “Language, music, and cognition: Organizing events in time” was held from February 26 to March 2, 2018 at the Institute of Musicology of the University of Cologne. Language, speech, and music as events in time were explored from different perspectives including evolutionary biology, social cognition, developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience of speech, language, and communication, as well as computational and biological approaches to language and music. There were 10 lectures, 4 workshops, and 1 student poster session. Overall, the spring school investigated language and music as neurocognitive systems and focused on a mechanistic approach exploring the neural substrates underlying musical, linguistic, social, and emotional processes and behaviors. In particular, researchers approached questions concerning cognitive processes, computational procedures, and neural mechanisms underlying the temporal organization of language and music, mainly from two perspectives: one was concerned with syntax or structural representations of language and music as neurocognitive systems (i.e., an intrapersonal perspective), while the other emphasized social interaction and emotions in their communicative function (i.e., an interpersonal perspective). The spring school not only acted as a platform for knowledge transfer and exchange but also generated a number of important research questions as challenges for future investigations

Investigating Everyday Musical Interaction During COVID-19: An Experimental Procedure for Exploring Collaborative Playlist Engagement.

Musical Group Interaction (MGI) has been found to promote prosocial tendencies, including empathy, across various populations. However, experimental study is lacking in respect of effects of everyday forms of musical engagement on prosocial tendencies, as well as whether key aspects-such as physical co-presence of MGI participants-are necessary to enhance prosocial tendencies. We developed an experimental procedure in order to study online engagement with collaborative playlists and to investigate socio-cognitive components of prosocial tendencies expected to increase as a consequence of engagement. We aimed to determine whether mere perceived presence of a partner during playlist-making could elicit observable correlates of social processing implicated in both MGI and prosocial behaviors more generally and identify the potential roles of demographic, musical, and inter-individual differences. Preliminary results suggest that for younger individuals, some of the social processes involved in joint music-making and implicated in empathic processes are likely to be elicited even by an assumption of virtual co-presence. In addition, individual differences in styles of listening behavior may mediate the effects of mere perceived partner presence on recognition memory

The Multimodal and Sequential Design of Co-Animation as a Practice for Association in English Interaction

This thesis describes the understudied interactional practice of co-animation: during the development of an activity in conversation, a speaker incorporates an animation -i.e. a quote, or (re)enactment - and a co-participant responds, pre-emptively, or in the contiguous turn, with a completion or continuation of the animation of the same figure. Based on the study of 89 co-animation sequences found in 10 hours of video-recordings of naturalistic English interaction between friends, relatives or co-workers, this thesis adopts the theoretical and methodological tenets of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Linguistics to describe the multimodal, sequential, and relational organisation of this practice. This thesis analyses how participants mark the shift from the here-and-now into the animation space, and how co-participants make their contributions both hearable as coherent with prior animations, and as fitted affiliative responses that further the ongoing course of action. Lexico-grammatical, phonetic, and gestural-postural resources are analysed for their interactional import in their concurrent framing of animation and the display of stance and conditional relevance. The organisation of resources in responsive co-animations is found to be positionally-sensitive, with co-participants negotiating agency and epistemic access and entitlement differently relative to the onset of co-animation and to the stage in the ongoing activity. The scrutiny of the situated deployment of co-animation in the social activities of troubles-tellings/complaint stories on the one hand, and teasing/joint fictionalisation on the other, reveals how co-animation contributes to the process of association, that is, the building of single momentary units of participation (collectivities). Co-participants are found to team up around what is presented as a shared stance, values, and identity, against absent but invoked behaviours or individuals engaging in moral transgressions, by jointly “doing being” the same voice

Rhythm matters: the role of rhythmic attending for non-native learners of English

In English connected speech, reduction processes can dramatically affect the phonetic shape of words, especially function words, reducing their intelligibility for non-native listeners. There is a close connection between reduction and speech rhythm: metrically weak syllables reduce more, and may be cued only by subtle phonetic detail that non- native listeners struggle to detect. Despite growing evidence that attention to speech and music is rhythmically guided and that speech processing depends on language rhythm, little work has tested whether encouraging non-native learners to attend to rhythm might support their comprehension of casual speech. This thesis investigates whether comprehension of Glaswegian connected speech can be improved if English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners receive training which relies on entraining the learners’ attention to a rhythmic speech stimulus. Three experiments were conducted. All three of them followed the same pre-test, training and post-test structure. The training differed across experiments as explained below, but in all cases, the pre-test and post-test assessed participants’ comprehension of reduced unstressed function words and morphemes in casually-spoken sentences. All pre-tests and post-tests involved listening to fast casual sentences spoken by Glaswegian English native speakers while reading the sentences on a computer screen where they appeared with gaps, corresponding to reduced unstressed function words. Participants’ task was to fill these gaps with the words they heard. The participants’ score on these tests was the dependent variable. Experiment 1 investigated whether listening to rhythmically organized speech would improve learners’ comprehension as opposed to speech that was not rhythmically organized. In its training phase, EFL learners in the experimental group listened to speech of high rhythmicity, i.e. sentences of regular metrical structure which had been recorded by asking the speaker to align their speech to a regular metronome beat. Each sentence was presented four times, with its rate increasing from slow to fast, so that participants were exposed to a range of degrees of phonetic reduction, within a rhythmically predictable frame. A control group of learners listened to speech of low rhythmicity: metrically irregular sentences which had been recorded without a metronome beat, as part of a read story; again they heard four presentations ranging from slow to fast rate. To maintain attention, participants’ task during training was to count the number of times food was mentioned. Experiment 1 did not show a significant difference between the experimental and control group in terms of improvement in pre- and post-test comprehension scores, though the numerical result showed more improvement in the experimental than in the control group, i.e. in the expected direction. Experiment 2 tested whether sensorimotor synchronisation with the beat in speech would improve the learners’ connected speech comprehension, as opposed to control training. Participants in the experimental group received training in which they performed sensorimotor synchronisation (i.e. finger tapping) with the beat they perceived in the speech they heard, while the control group received training in which they listened to the same stimuli but did not tap to the beat. Instead their task was to listen and tap their finger when they heard a randomly placed click sound. Three listener groups took part in this experiment: Chinese EFL learners, native English speakers of a different variety than the speech presented (Canadian and US English), and Glaswegian English native speakers. The results showed that only the Chinese EFL learners improved in the post-test, compared to the control group. In the Canadian/US group, an interesting interaction was found suggesting that the listener’s musical ability affected whether they could benefit from the training. No improvement was found in the Glaswegian native group, whose performance was highest overall. In the third experiment, Chinese EFL learners, who were attending a preparatory course to study at the University of Glasgow, took part in a short 4-week course, with one 40-minute session per week. In this training phase they learned, as a group, to drum the rhythm of Glaswegian English utterances. The control group continued their curriculum as usual. Neither group showed a significant improvement in comprehension from pre- to post-test, which may relate to aspects of the group training setting, or to the level of English of the participants. The results allowed further exploration of the role of prior musical ability, but this did not appear to affect performance, unlike in Experiment 2. Taken together, these results are interpreted in the light of Dynamic Attending Theory (Large & Jones 1999) as well as of previous research on perceptual learning and the role of musical ability in learning a second language. Overall, the results of the three experiments offer only limited support for the idea that rhythmic training helps comprehension. The mix of negative and positive findings is interpreted in the light of Dynamic Attending Theory (L&J 1999), as well as previous research on perceptual learning and the role of musical ability in learning a second language. The conclusion argued for here is that benefits of rhythmic training are seen under specific circumstances, where training is set up in such a way as to optimize the possibility of entrainment to speech

The Human Faculty for Music: What's special about it?

Abstract (short version) This thesis presents a model of a narrow faculty for music - qualities that are at once universally present and operational in music across cultures whilst also being specific to our species and to the domain of music. The comparative approach taken focuses on core psychological and physiological capabilities that root and enable appropriate engagement with music rather than on their observable physical correlates. Configurations of musical pulse; musical tone; and musical motivation are described as providing a sustained attentional structure for managing personal experience and interpersonal interaction and as offering a continually renewing phenomenological link between the immediate past, the perceptual present and future expectation. Constituent parts of the narrow faculty for music are considered most fundamentally as a potentiating, quasi-architectural framework in which our most central affective and socio-intentional drives are afforded extended time, stability, and a degree of abstraction, intensity, focus and meaning. The author contends, therefore, that music's defining characteristics, specific functionalities and/or situated efficacies are not demarcated in broadly termed “musical” qualities such as melodic contour or rhythm or in those surprisingly elusive “objective facts” of musical structure. Rather they are solely the attentional/motivational frameworks which root our faculty to make and make sense of music. Our generic capacities for culture and the manifold uses of action, gesture, and sound to express and induce emotion; to regulate affective states; to create or reflect meaning; to signify; to ritualize; coordinate; communicate; interrelate; embody; entrain; and/or intentionalize, none of these is assessed as being intrinsically unique to music performance. Music is, instead, viewed as an ordered expression of human experience, behaviour, interaction, and vitality, all shaped, shared, given significance, and/or transformed in time. The relevance of this model to topical debates on music and evolution is discussed and the author contends that the perspective offered affords significant implications for our understanding of why music is evidently and remarkably effective in certain settings and in the pursuit of certain social, individual, and therapeutic goals.Cambridge University Millennium Fun