Fluency in dialogue: Turn‐taking behavior shapes perceived fluency in native and nonnative speech

Fluency is an important part of research on second language learning, but most research on language proficiency typically has not included oral fluency as part of interaction, even though natural communication usually occurs in conversations. The present study considered aspects of turn-taking behavior as part of the construct of fluency and investigated whether these aspects differentially influence perceived fluency ratings of native and non-native speech. Results from two experiments using acoustically manipulated speech showed that, in native speech, too ‘eager’ (interrupting a question with a fast answer) and too ‘reluctant’ answers (answering slowly after a long turn gap) negatively affected fluency ratings. However, in non-native speech, only too ‘reluctant’ answers led to lower fluency ratings. Thus, we demonstrate that acoustic properties of dialogue are perceived as part of fluency. By adding to our current understanding of dialogue fluency, these lab-based findings carry implications for language teaching and assessmen

Visual world studies of conversational perspective taking: similar findings, diverging interpretations

Visual-world eyetracking greatly expanded the potential for insight into how listeners access and use common ground during situated language comprehension. Past reviews of visual world studies on perspective taking have largely taken the diverging findings of the various studies at face value, and attributed these apparently different findings to differences in the extent to which the paradigms used by different labs afford collaborative interaction. Researchers are asking questions about perspective taking of an increasingly nuanced and sophisticated nature, a clear indicator of progress. But this research has the potential not only to improve our understanding of conversational perspective taking. Grappling with problems of data interpretation in such a complex domain has the unique potential to drive visual world researchers to a deeper understanding of how to best map visual world data onto psycholinguistic theory. I will argue against this interactional affordances explanation, on two counts. First, it implies that interactivity affects the overall ability to form common ground, and thus provides no straightforward explanation of why, within a single noninteractive study, common ground can have very large effects on some aspects of processing (referential anticipation) while having negligible effects on others (lexical processing). Second, and more importantly, the explanation accepts the divergence in published findings at face value. However, a closer look at several key studies shows that the divergences are more likely to reflect inconsistent practices of analysis and interpretation that have been applied to an underlying body of data that is, in fact, surprisingly consistent. The diverging interpretations, I will argue, are the result of differences in the handling of anticipatory baseline effects (ABEs) in the analysis of visual world data. ABEs arise in perspective-taking studies because listeners have earlier access to constraining information about who knows what than they have to referential speech, and thus can already show biases in visual attention even before the processing of any referential speech has begun. To be sure, these ABEs clearly indicate early access to common ground; however, access does not imply integration, since it is possible that this information is not used later to modulate the processing of incoming speech. Failing to account for these biases using statistical or experimental controls leads to over-optimistic assessments of listeners’ ability to integrate this information with incoming speech. I will show that several key studies with varying degrees of interactional affordances all show similar temporal profiles of common ground use during the interpretive process: early anticipatory effects, followed by bottom-up effects of lexical processing that are not modulated by common ground, followed (optionally) by further late effects that are likely to be post-lexical. Furthermore, this temporal profile for common ground radically differs from the profile of contextual effects related to verb semantics. Together, these findings are consistent with the proposal that lexical processes are encapsulated from common ground, but cannot be straightforwardly accounted for by probabilistic constraint-based approaches

Directional adposition use in English, Swedish and Finnish

Directional adpositions such as to the left of describe where a Figure is in relation to a Ground. English and Swedish directional adpositions refer to the location of a Figure in relation to a Ground, whether both are static or in motion. In contrast, the Finnish directional adpositions edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) solely describe the location of a moving Figure in relation to a moving Ground (Nikanne, 2003). When using directional adpositions, a frame of reference must be assumed for interpreting the meaning of directional adpositions. For example, the meaning of to the left of in English can be based on a relative (speaker or listener based) reference frame or an intrinsic (object based) reference frame (Levinson, 1996). When a Figure and a Ground are both in motion, it is possible for a Figure to be described as being behind or in front of the Ground, even if neither have intrinsic features. As shown by Walker (in preparation), there are good reasons to assume that in the latter case a motion based reference frame is involved. This means that if Finnish speakers would use edellä (in front of) and jäljessä (behind) more frequently in situations where both the Figure and Ground are in motion, a difference in reference frame use between Finnish on one hand and English and Swedish on the other could be expected. We asked native English, Swedish and Finnish speakers’ to select adpositions from a language specific list to describe the location of a Figure relative to a Ground when both were shown to be moving on a computer screen. We were interested in any differences between Finnish, English and Swedish speakers. All languages showed a predominant use of directional spatial adpositions referring to the lexical concepts TO THE LEFT OF, TO THE RIGHT OF, ABOVE and BELOW. There were no differences between the languages in directional adpositions use or reference frame use, including reference frame use based on motion. We conclude that despite differences in the grammars of the languages involved, and potential differences in reference frame system use, the three languages investigated encode Figure location in relation to Ground location in a similar way when both are in motion. Levinson, S. C. (1996). Frames of reference and Molyneux’s question: Crosslingiuistic evidence. In P. Bloom, M.A. Peterson, L. Nadel & M.F. Garrett (Eds.) Language and Space (pp.109-170). Massachusetts: MIT Press. Nikanne, U. (2003). How Finnish postpositions see the axis system. In E. van der Zee & J. Slack (Eds.), Representing direction in language and space. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Walker, C. (in preparation). Motion encoding in language, the use of spatial locatives in a motion context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Lincoln, Lincoln. United Kingdo

The brain is a prediction machine that cares about good and bad - Any implications for neuropragmatics?

Experimental pragmatics asks how people construct contextualized meaning in communication. So what does it mean for this field to add neuroas a prefix to its name? After analyzing the options for any subfield of cognitive science, I argue that neuropragmatics can and occasionally should go beyond the instrumental use of EEG or fMRI and beyond mapping classic theoretical distinctions onto Brodmann areas. In particular, if experimental pragmatics ‘goes neuro’, it should take into account that the brain evolved as a control system that helps its bearer negotiate a highly complex, rapidly changing and often not so friendly environment. In this context, the ability to predict current unknowns, and to rapidly tell good from bad, are essential ingredients of processing. Using insights from non-linguistic areas of cognitive neuroscience as well as from EEG research on utterance comprehension, I argue that for a balanced development of experimental pragmatics, these two characteristics of the brain cannot be ignored

Speech and language therapy for aphasia following stroke

Background  Aphasia is an acquired language impairment following brain damage that affects some or all language modalities: expression and understanding of speech, reading, and writing. Approximately one third of people who have a stroke experience aphasia.  Objectives  To assess the effects of speech and language therapy (SLT) for aphasia following stroke.  Search methods  We searched the Cochrane Stroke Group Trials Register (last searched 9 September 2015), CENTRAL (2015, Issue 5) and other Cochrane Library Databases (CDSR, DARE, HTA, to 22 September 2015), MEDLINE (1946 to September 2015), EMBASE (1980 to September 2015), CINAHL (1982 to September 2015), AMED (1985 to September 2015), LLBA (1973 to September 2015), and SpeechBITE (2008 to September 2015). We also searched major trials registers for ongoing trials including ClinicalTrials.gov (to 21 September 2015), the Stroke Trials Registry (to 21 September 2015), Current Controlled Trials (to 22 September 2015), and WHO ICTRP (to 22 September 2015). In an effort to identify further published, unpublished, and ongoing trials we also handsearched theInternational Journal of Language and Communication Disorders(1969 to 2005) and reference lists of relevant articles, and we contacted academic institutions and other researchers. There were no language restrictions.  Selection criteria  Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing SLT (a formal intervention that aims to improve language and communication abilities, activity and participation) versus no SLT; social support or stimulation (an intervention that provides social support and communication stimulation but does not include targeted therapeutic interventions); or another SLT intervention (differing in duration, intensity, frequency, intervention methodology or theoretical approach).  Data collection and analysis  We independently extracted the data and assessed the quality of included trials. We sought missing data from investigators.  Main results  We included 57 RCTs (74 randomised comparisons) involving 3002 participants in this review (some appearing in more than one comparison). Twenty-seven randomised comparisons (1620 participants) assessed SLT versus no SLT; SLT resulted in clinically and statistically significant benefits to patients' functional communication (standardised mean difference (SMD) 0.28, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.06 to 0.49, P = 0.01), reading, writing, and expressive language, but (based on smaller numbers) benefits were not evident at follow-up. Nine randomised comparisons (447 participants) assessed SLT with social support and stimulation; meta-analyses found no evidence of a difference in functional communication, but more participants withdrew from social support interventions than SLT. Thirty-eight randomised comparisons (1242 participants) assessed two approaches to SLT. Functional communication was significantly better in people with aphasia that received therapy at a high intensity, high dose, or over a long duration compared to those that received therapy at a lower intensity, lower dose, or over a shorter period of time. The benefits of a high intensity or a high dose of SLT were confounded by a significantly higher dropout rate in these intervention groups. Generally, trials randomised small numbers of participants across a range of characteristics (age, time since stroke, and severity profiles), interventions, and outcomes.  Authors' conclusions  Our review provides evidence of the effectiveness of SLT for people with aphasia following stroke in terms of improved functional communication, reading, writing, and expressive language compared with no therapy. There is some indication that therapy at high intensity, high dose or over a longer period may be beneficial. HIgh-intensity and high dose interventions may not be acceptable to all

Analyzing collaborative learning processes automatically

In this article we describe the emerging area of text classification research focused on the problem of collaborative learning process analysis both from a broad perspective and more specifically in terms of a publicly available tool set called TagHelper tools. Analyzing the variety of pedagogically valuable facets of learners’ interactions is a time consuming and effortful process. Improving automated analyses of such highly valued processes of collaborative learning by adapting and applying recent text classification technologies would make it a less arduous task to obtain insights from corpus data. This endeavor also holds the potential for enabling substantially improved on-line instruction both by providing teachers and facilitators with reports about the groups they are moderating and by triggering context sensitive collaborative learning support on an as-needed basis. In this article, we report on an interdisciplinary research project, which has been investigating the effectiveness of applying text classification technology to a large CSCL corpus that has been analyzed by human coders using a theory-based multidimensional coding scheme. We report promising results and include an in-depth discussion of important issues such as reliability, validity, and efficiency that should be considered when deciding on the appropriateness of adopting a new technology such as TagHelper tools. One major technical contribution of this work is a demonstration that an important piece of the work towards making text classification technology effective for this purpose is designing and building linguistic pattern detectors, otherwise known as features, that can be extracted reliably from texts and that have high predictive power for the categories of discourse actions that the CSCL community is interested in

Sentiment and behaviour annotation in a corpus of dialogue summaries

This paper proposes a scheme for sentiment annotation. We show how the task can be made tractable by focusing on one of the many aspects of sentiment: sentiment as it is recorded in behaviour reports of people and their interactions. Together with a number of measures for supporting the reliable application of the scheme, this allows us to obtain sufficient to good agreement scores (in terms of Krippendorf's alpha) on three key dimensions: polarity, evaluated party and type of clause. Evaluation of the scheme is carried out through the annotation of an existing corpus of dialogue summaries (in English and Portuguese) by nine annotators. Our contribution to the field is twofold: (i) a reliable multi-dimensional annotation scheme for sentiment in behaviour reports; and (ii) an annotated corpus that was used for testing the reliability of the scheme and which is made available to the research community