2,052 research outputs found
Situational influences on rhythmicity in speech, music, and their interaction.
Brain processes underlying the production and perception of rhythm indicate considerable flexibility in how physical signals are interpreted. This paper explores how that flexibility might play out in rhythmicity in speech and music. There is much in common across the two domains, but there are also significant differences. Interpretations are explored that reconcile some of the differences, particularly with respect to how functional properties modify the rhythmicity of speech, within limits imposed by its structural constraints. Functional and structural differences mean that music is typically more rhythmic than speech, and that speech will be more rhythmic when the emotions are more strongly engaged, or intended to be engaged. The influence of rhythmicity on attention is acknowledged, and it is suggested that local increases in rhythmicity occur at times when attention is required to coordinate joint action, whether in talking or music-making. Evidence is presented which suggests that while these short phases of heightened rhythmical behaviour are crucial to the success of transitions in communicative interaction, their modality is immaterial: they all function to enhance precise temporal prediction and hence tightly coordinated joint action
How non-native speakers make do with words when doing things with words : an analysis of communication strategies in storytelling by Mandarin-speaking learners of English
This study employs a conversation analysis (CA) approach, which is concerned with
the analysis of closely transcribed examples of actual talk recorded in naturally occurring
settings. The study aims to describe and analyse sequences of actions generated by
Native Speakers( NS) and Non-Native Speaker( NNS) in the course of telling a story.
Emergent communication problems during the talk-in-interaction were engaged with
and resolved through the application of communication strategies (CS). The storyteller
and her/his co-participants utilized CS in an attempt not only to overcome communication
difficulties so as to reach mutual understanding, but also to co-ordinate their actions with
each other, or to enhance sufficient participant engagement in order to accomplish
communication goals. In addition, the range of CS used by NS and NNS during ongoing
discourses are identified, illustrated, and analysed. The differences and similarities in
the way NS and NNS approach interactional tasks are examined.
In addition, CS descriptions from the literature and this study are compared. CS
categories and functions in the present study are shown to be more diverse and broader in
shape. The conceptualisation of CS proposed in this study is thus richer than that
proposed in the previous CS literature. The empirical investigation undertaken in this
study shows that CS function not only as problem-solving devices or meaning-negotiation
strategies, but also as meaning-creating and communication-enhancing strategies
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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
Turn-Taking in Human Communicative Interaction
The core use of language is in face-to-face conversation. This is characterized by rapid turn-taking. This turn-taking poses a number central puzzles for the psychology of language. Consider, for example, that in large corpora the gap between turns is on the order of 100 to 300 ms, but the latencies involved in language production require minimally between 600ms (for a single word) or 1500 ms (for as simple sentence). This implies that participants in conversation are predicting the ends of the incoming turn and preparing in advance. But how is this done? What aspects of this prediction are done when? What happens when the prediction is wrong? What stops participants coming in too early? If the system is running on prediction, why is there consistently a mode of 100 to 300 ms in response time?
The timing puzzle raises further puzzles: it seems that comprehension must run parallel with the preparation for production, but it has been presumed that there are strict cognitive limitations on more than one central process running at a time. How is this bottleneck overcome? Far from being 'easy' as some psychologists have suggested, conversation may be one of the most demanding cognitive tasks in our everyday lives. Further questions naturally arise: how do children learn to master this demanding task, and what is the developmental trajectory in this domain?
Research shows that aspects of turn-taking such as its timing are remarkably stable across languages and cultures, but the word order of languages varies enormously. How then does prediction of the incoming turn work when the verb (often the informational nugget in a clause) is at the end? Conversely, how can production work fast enough in languages that have the verb at the beginning, thereby requiring early planning of the whole clause? What happens when one changes modality, as in sign languages -- with the loss of channel constraints is turn-taking much freer? And what about face-to-face communication amongst hearing individuals -- do gestures, gaze, and other body behaviors facilitate turn-taking? One can also ask the phylogenetic question: how did such a system evolve? There seem to be parallels (analogies) in duetting bird species, and in a variety of monkey species, but there is little evidence of anything like this among the great apes.
All this constitutes a neglected set of problems at the heart of the psychology of language and of the language sciences. This research topic welcomes contributions from right across the board, for example from psycholinguists, developmental psychologists, students of dialogue and conversation analysis, linguists interested in the use of language, phoneticians, corpus analysts and comparative ethologists or psychologists. We welcome contributions of all sorts, for example original research papers, opinion pieces, and reviews of work in subfields that may not be fully understood in other subfields
Exploring unknown avenues of intra- and interspecies communication in Drosophila
The manuscripts within this dissertation aimed to investigate odor-mediated communication channels for the interactions of Drosophila flies with each other, other Drosophila species, and with microorganisms. Throughout the dissertation, I introduce the frass of adult Drosophila flies as a previously overseen intra- and possibly interspecies communication medium (manuscript I) and demonstrate the sensitivity of hardwired stereotypical behaviors, which are mediated by only a few chemosignals, to manipulation through harmful microbes (manuscript II). Furthermore, this dissertation highlights different factors that may be involved in Drosophila speciation events, such as niche partitioning (manuscript IV) and insect-microbe interactions (manuscript V). Finally, I worked on a previously described method that is used for the identification of ligand-receptor pairs of olfactory systems in mammals and tried to further establish this technique for the high-throughput identification of chemosensory receptor ligands in insects on the example of the vinegar fly D. melanogaster (manuscript III)
The Endothelial Cell Response to Inflammation, the Functional Role of the Endothelial-enriched Protein KANK3 and the Adipose Tissue Transcriptome
A compilation of three complementary projects explores various facets of endothelial cell biology and transcriptomics, illuminating the intricate dynamics underlying cellular responses to specific stimuli across different tissues.
The first project examines how endothelial cells react to the inflammatory molecule tumour necrosis factor (TNF), by studying these cells over time after TNF exposure. We identified distinct gene expression patterns and revealed two central temporal phases of gene upregulation in the endothelial response. The induction of interferon response genes, without de novo interferon production, was further investigated. An online resource was developed for comprehensive data exploration (www.endothelial-response.org).
The second project analysed adipose tissue to define cell type enriched transcripts and differences between the sexes and depot types. We found mesothelial cells to be the main driver for heterogeneity between subcutaneous and visceral adipose tissue. This data is accessible through the Human Protein Atlas.
The third project focuses on KANK3, which was predicted to be an endothelial enriched gene in the previous study, and others from the group. Our findings show that KANK3 is endothelial specific in multiple tissues through the body, inhibition of KANK3 in endothelial cells affects cell motility, expression of blood clotting proteins on gene and protein level, and thrombin generation.
Together, these projects enhance our understanding of endothelial cell responses to inflammation and detail the functional investigation of an uncharacterised endothelial protein. Each project offers a different perspective, by examining temporal responses, functional changes, and tissue-wide patterns. This multifaceted approach deepens our insights into cell biology and furthers our understanding of critical health processes
Enhancing Listening and Spoken Skills in Spanish Connected Speech for Anglophones
Native speech is directed towards native listeners, not designed for comprehension and analysis by language learners. Speed of delivery, or economy of effort, produces a speech signal to which the native listener can assign the correct words. There are no discrete words in the speech signal itself therefore there is often a linguistic barrier in dealing with the local spoken language.The creation, development and application of the Dynamic Spanish Speech Corpus (DSSC) facilitated an empirically-based appreciation of speaking speed and prosody as obstacles to intelligibility for learners of Spanish. “Duologues”, natural, relaxed dialogues recorded in such a manner that each interlocutor’s performance can be studied in isolation, thus avoiding problems normally caused by cross-talk and back-channelling, made possible the identification of the key phonetic features of informal native-native dialogue, and ultimately, the creation of high quality assets/ research data based on natural (unscripted) dialogues recorded at industry audio standards.These assets were used in this study, which involved documenting productive and receptive intelligibility problems when L2 users are exposed to the Spanish speech of native speakers. The aim was to observe where intelligibility problems occur and to determine the reasons for this, based on effects of the first language of the subjects, and other criteria, such as number of years learning/using Spanish, previous exposure to spoken Spanish and gender. This was achieved by playing recorded extracts/ snippets from the DSSC to which a time-scaling tool was applied
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