When marking tone reduces fluency: an orthography experiment in Cameroon

Should an alphabetic orthography for a tone language include tone marks? Opinion and practice are divided along three lines: zero marking, phonemic marking and various reduced marking schemes. This paper examines the success of phonemic tone marking for Dschang, a Grassfields Bantu language which uses tone to distinguish lexical items and some grammatical constructions. Participants with a variety of ages and educational backgrounds, and having different levels of exposure to the orthography were tested on location in the Western Province of Cameroon. All but one had attended classes on tone marking. Participants read texts which were marked and unmarked for tone, then added tone marks to the unmarked texts. Analysis shows that tone marking degrades reading fluency and does not help to resolve tonally ambiguous words. Experienced writers attain an accuracy score of 83.5% in adding tone marks to a text, while inexperienced writers score a mere 53%, which is not much better than chance. The experiment raises serious doubts about the suitability of the phonemic method of marking tone for languages having widespread tone sandhi effects, and lends support to the notion that a writing system should have `fixed word images'. A critical review of other experimental work on African tone orthography lays the groundwork for the experiment, and contributes to the establishment of a uniform experimental paradigm

Dysfluencies as intra-utterance dialogue moves

Ginzburg J, Fernández R, Schlangen D. Dysfluencies as intra-utterance dialogue moves. Semantics and Pragmatics. 2014;7

Day-to-day Variability of Stuttering

Variability has long been known to be a primary feature of the disorder of stuttering (Bloodstein & Bernstein Ratner, 2008; Costello & Ingham, 1984; Yaruss, 1997a, 1997b). Many factors that affect variability have been investigated (Brown, 1937; Johnson & Brown, 1935; Quarrington, Conway, & Siegel, 1962) yet the typical range of variability experienced by speakers remains unknown. This study will examine the speech of six adult speakers in three spontaneous speaking situations and two reading tasks. The frequency, duration, and types of stuttered events that occur on the tasks will be compared within and between speakers. The focus will be on describing variability in stuttering frequency and duration within speakers and attempting to detect consistent patterns between speakers

The influence of imagined interactions on verbal fluency

Imagined interactions (IIs) are a type of social cognition and mental imagery whereby actors imagine an interaction with others for the purposes of planning. Within actual encounters, verbal fluency is a characteristic that contributes to the speaker\u27s credibility. The planning that takes place through imagined dialogues can help a speaker overcome disfluency found in speech. This study shows that improvements in speaking style are also dependent upon the trait of communication apprehension that an individual experiences. Visualization can decrease apprehension levels, thus producing higher verbal fluency. Results from this study indicate planning\u27s influence in the reduction of silent pauses but not vocalized pauses. Finally, the complexity of one\u27s imagined dialogue has been found to play a role in an increase of verbal fluency

The impact of viewing and making art on verbal fluency and memory in people with dementia in an art gallery setting

Dementia is a progressive disease characterized by a widespread impairment of mental functioning including cognitive skills. Research has suggested that the arts can have positive effects in terms of physical and mental health for people with a dementia. The present study sought to identify the impact of art-making and art-viewing activities, within the context of a publicly accessible art gallery, on verbal fluency and memory. Thirteen participants diagnosed with early to mid-stage dementia participated, along with their caregivers, in 8-week long art-viewing and art-making groups at an art gallery in the United Kingdom. Audio recordings of sessions were transcribed and analysed using quantitative content analysis. Findings suggested that the interventions described did not negatively affect cognitive ability in the dimensions measured and the data hints that improvements are possible. The results provide support for further controlled studies examining the impact of visual art, aesthetics, and art gallery-based programmes on cognition in people with dementia. Further research is required to address the methodological limitations presented in the current study

The efficacy of an actor-emotion technique on changing communication attitude in children who stutter: a treatment outcome study

The purpose of the present study was to test the efficacy of an actor-emotion strategy approach on changing communication attitudes in an adolescent child who stutters. The participant for this study was an eleven-year, ten-month old male attending a public middle school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana who presented with a severe fluency disorder. The participant attended group sessions Monday-Thursday from 9:00-12:00 for 6 weeks as part of a fluency day camp. The study used a worksheet-based measure to evaluate emotionality on a daily basis. Using an ABA withdrawal design, two analyses were completed. The first analysis examined the stability or reliability of the “emotions worksheet” as a measure to identify changes in emotional reaction to stuttering and speech. Results for Phase A showed an unusual range of “total” scores, and what appears to have been one outlier at measurement 2. Despite the relatively stable trends during phases B and A2, the overall data indicate that the “emotion worksheet” as applied in this study was not a reliable measure. The second analysis examined the data collected from the daily journal entries to determine efficacy of the actor-emotion strategy on changing communication attitude. In general, results show little change from the first baseline phase through the treatment phase. Withdrawal of the treatment in the second baseline phase also appeared to result in little change. The average for both comparisons was not reliably different, which suggests that the actor-emotion strategy as applied in this study was not an effective intervention technique for altering the child’s emotional reaction to his speech

The manifestation of stuttering in Spanish-English bilingual speakers : a systematic review

textThe purpose of this systematic review was to analyze the descriptions of bilingual Spanish-English (SE) participants provided in stuttering literature to determine whether critical factors were used to define bilingualism and appropriate criteria were used to classify stuttering. The method included a systematic search of published studies that included bilingual Spanish-English participants who stutter and reviewed the level of detail provided regarding language history, function, proficiency, stability, mode, accent, covert speech, and affective factors. The identification and diagnosis of stuttering was also analyzed using disfluency factors that were reported across the studies. Those factors included formal diagnosis, monolingual guidelines, self-report, parent/teacher concern, informal observation, family history, and disfluency types. Ten studies qualified to be included the bilingualism analysis, consisting of over 15 different speakers who were identified as bilinguals who stutter. Nine out of the 10 studies qualified to be included in the stuttering analysis of the systematic review. Of the 10 studies analyzing bilingualism, the most frequently reported language profile information involved language proficiency, language history, and language function. Affect, accent, mode, and language stability information were the least mentioned language factors in the studies. Of the nine studies included in the disfluency analysis, the most commonly reported disfluency profile information involved disfluency types, comparison to monolingual normative data, and informal observation. The least reported disfluency factors in the studies were formal diagnosis, parent/teacher concern, self-reported stutterer, and family history of stuttering. Results demonstrate that the definition of bilingualism and the classification of stuttering among bilinguals is lacking and inconsistent.Communication Sciences and Disorder