Are words easier to learn from infant- than adult-directed speech? A quantitative corpus-based investigation

We investigate whether infant-directed speech (IDS) could facilitate word form learning when compared to adult-directed speech (ADS). To study this, we examine the distribution of word forms at two levels, acoustic and phonological, using a large database of spontaneous speech in Japanese. At the acoustic level we show that, as has been documented before for phonemes, the realizations of words are more variable and less discriminable in IDS than in ADS. At the phonological level, we find an effect in the opposite direction: the IDS lexicon contains more distinctive words (such as onomatopoeias) than the ADS counterpart. Combining the acoustic and phonological metrics together in a global discriminability score reveals that the bigger separation of lexical categories in the phonological space does not compensate for the opposite effect observed at the acoustic level. As a result, IDS word forms are still globally less discriminable than ADS word forms, even though the effect is numerically small. We discuss the implication of these findings for the view that the functional role of IDS is to improve language learnability.Comment: Draf

The role of vowel hyperarticulation in clear speech to foreigners and infants

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonResearch on clear speech has shown that the type of clear speech produced can vary depending on the speaker, the listener and the medium. Although prior research has suggested that clear speech is more intelligible than conversational speech for normal-hearing listeners in noisy environments, it is not known which acoustic features of clear speech are the most responsible for enhanced intelligibility and comprehension. This thesis focused on investigating the acoustic characteristics that are produced in clear speech to foreigners and infants. Its aim was to assess the utility of these features in enhancing speech intelligibility and comprehension. The results of Experiment 1 showed that native speakers produced exaggerated vowel space in natural interactions with foreign-accented listeners compared to native-accented listeners. Results of Experiment 2 indicated that native speakers exaggerated vowel space and pitch to infants compared to clear read speech. Experiments 3 and 4 focused on speech perception and used transcription and clarity rating tasks. Experiment 3 contained speech directed at foreigners and showed that speech to foreign-accented speakers was rated clearer than speech to native-accented speakers. Experiment 4 contained speech directed at infants and showed that native speakers rated infant-directed speech as clearer than clear read speech. In the fifth and final experiment, naturally elicited clear speech towards foreign-accented interlocutors was used in speech comprehension tasks for native and non-native listeners with varying proficiency of English. It was revealed that speech with expanded vowel space improved listeners’ comprehension of speech in quiet and noise conditions. Results are discussed in terms of the Lindblom’s (1990) theory of Hyper and Hypoarticulation, an influential framework of speech production and perception.Brunel University Isambard Research Scholarshi

Interactively skimming recorded speech

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-156).Barry Michael Arons.Ph.D

Dog-directed speech: why do we use it and do dogs pay attention to it?

Pet-directed speech is strikingly similar to infant-directed speech, a peculiar speaking pattern with higher pitch and slower tempo known to engage infants' attention and promote language learning. Here, we report the first investigation of potential factors modulating the use of dog-directed speech, as well as its immediate impact on dogs' behaviour. We recorded adult participants speaking in front of pictures of puppies, adult and old dogs, and analysed the quality of their speech. We then performed playback experiments to assess dogs' reaction to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. We found that human speakers used dog-directed speech with dogs of all ages and that the acoustic structure of dog-directed speech was mostly independent of dog age, except for sound pitch which was relatively higher when communicating with puppies. Playback demonstrated that, in the absence of other non-auditory cues, puppies were highly reactive to dog-directed speech, and that the pitch was a key factor modulating their behaviour, suggesting that this specific speech register has a functional value in young dogs. Conversely, older dogs did not react differentially to dog-directed speech compared with normal speech. The fact that speakers continue to use dog-directed with older dogs therefore suggests that this speech pattern may mainly be a spontaneous attempt to facilitate interactions with non-verbal listeners

Assessing the adequate treatment of fast speech in unit selection systems for the visually impaired

Moers D, Wagner P. Assessing the adequate treatment of fast speech in unit selection systems for the visually impaired. In: Proceedings of the 6th ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on Speech Synthesis (SSW-6). 2007: 282-287.This paper describes work in progress concerning the adequate modeling of fast speech in unit selection speech synthesis systems – mostly having in mind blind and visually impaired users. Initially, a survey of the main phonetic characteristics of fast speech will be given. From this, certain conclusions concerning an adequate modeling of fast speech in unit selection synthesis will be drawn. Subsequently, a questionnaire assessing synthetic speech related preferences of visually impaired users will be presented. The last section deals with future experiments aiming at a definition of criteria for the development of synthesis corpora modeling fast speech within the unit selection paradigm

Say again? Individual acoustic strategies for producing a clearly-spoken minimal pair wordlist

Paper number: 0769James Scobbie - ORCID: 0000-0003-4509-6782 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4509-6782People make their speech clearer in difficult conversational contexts using global mechanisms (e.g. “Lombard Speech”) and by targeted enhancements of linguistic constituents (“hyperspeech”). We describe production changes observed in four speakers of Scottish English who produced three repetitions of twelve CVC words: V was one of six monophthongs and C_C was either /p_p/ or /m_m/. Thus each word differed (near-) minimally from six others. In a “neutral” condition each participant read aloud from a randomised wordlist. A “clear” condition was an interactive task in which an interlocutor had to repeat back every word correctly, despite their hearing being impaired by headphone-delivered noise. If the speaker was mis-perceived by the interlocutor, the speaker tried again, until the word was correctly repeated. We describe the surprisingly speaker-specific acoustic hyperspeech effects (in vowel F1, vowel space area, and acoustic segment durations) in the clear speech. A companion paper describes the associated articulatory changes.https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/content/icphspubpu

Ambient Gestures

We present Ambient Gestures, a novel gesture-based system designed to support ubiquitous ‘in the environment’ interactions with everyday computing technology. Hand gestures and audio feedback allow users to control computer applications without reliance on a graphical user interface, and without having to switch from the context of a non-computer task to the context of the computer. The Ambient Gestures system is composed of a vision recognition software application, a set of gestures to be processed by a scripting application and a navigation and selection application that is controlled by the gestures. This system allows us to explore gestures as the primary means of interaction within a multimodal, multimedia environment. In this paper we describe the Ambient Gestures system, define the gestures and the interactions that can be achieved in this environment and present a formative study of the system. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and future applications of Ambient Gestures in ubiquitous computing

Acoustic-Phonetic Characteristics of Clear Speech in Bilinguals

This study examined the language-dependency of clear speech modifications by comparing the clear speech strategies of late bilinguals in both their L1 (Finnish) and L2 (English). Results generally supported the hypothesis of language-independent enhancement of global clear speech modifications, but language-dependent segmental enhancement. The global clear speech strategies produced by Finnish-English bilinguals in their L2 (English) were similar in the extent of the modifications to those of native English speakers, indicating a surprising flexibility of the non-native speech production system

Two types of bilinguals – Two types of production contexts

Language context affects different kinds of bilinguals differently at the preattentive level in speech perception. Bilinguals from birth (balanced bilinguals) perceive their languages in both language contexts similarly, which indicates that they have one unified phonological system. In contrast, bilinguals who have learned their second language in a classroom (dominant bilinguals) perceive speech according to separate, language specific systems and have separate phonological systems for the two languages. The present study focuses on speech production in similar kinds of bilinguals. We used three different language contexts, monolingual Finnish and Swedish and a bilingual context, in speech production tasks. Language context effects are seen in speech production of both bilingual groups. The difference in mother tongue identity is also shown as the dominant bilinguals differ from the balanced bilinguals in the production of Swedish vowels between monolingual and bilingual language contexts.</p