The impact of shared knowledge on speakers’ prosody

International audienceHow does the knowledge shared by interlocutors during interaction modify the way speakers speak? Specifically, how does prosody change when speakers know that their addressees do not share the same knowledge as them? We studied these effects in an interactive paradigm in which French speakers gave instructions to addressees about where to place a cross between different objects (e.g., You put the cross between the red mouse and the red house). We manipulated (i) whether the two interlocutors shared or did not necessarily share the same objects and (ii) the informational status of referents. We were interested in two types of prosodic variations: global prosodic variations that affect entire utterances (i.e., pitch range and speech rate variations) and more local prosodic variations that encode infor-mational status of referents (i.e., prosodic phrasing for French). We found that participants spoke more slowly and with larger pitch excursions in the not-shared knowledge condition than in the shared knowledge condition while they did not prosodically encode the informa-tional status of referents regardless of the knowledge condition. Results demonstrated that speakers kept track of what the addressee knew, and that they adapted their global prosody to their interlocutors. This made the task too cognitively demanding to allow the prosodic encoding of the informational status of referents. Our findings are in line with the idea that complex reasoning usually implicated in constructing a model of the addressee co-exists with speaker-internal constraints such as cognitive load to affect speaker's prosody during interaction

Perceptual evaluation of tonal and contextual cues to sarcasm in French

International audienceVerbal irony is a mode of expression in which what is stated differs from (or is even opposed to) what is meant. Irony exists in the majority of the languages and cultures of the world (Pexman, 2008). Some researchers have proposed that acoustic irony cues are only employed if the common ground is not sufficient to indicate the intended message (Cutler, 1974). More recent research has shown that ironic content can be identified even in absence of contextual cues thanks to global acoustic/prosodic cues (Bryant & Fox Tree 2002). However, we still do not know what is the actual role of prosody, in particular of intonational phonology features (Ladd, 1996/2008), in irony comprehension. Concerning actual acoustic cues, sarcasm appears to be encoded in speech through various global manipulations in acoustic parameters such as fundamental frequency (f0), amplitude, speech rate, voice quality and vowel hyperarticulation (Attardo et al., 2003; Bryant & Fox Tree, 2005; Cheang & Pell, 2008; Rockwell, 2000; Sharrer & Christman, 2011; inter alia). In this study, we explore the expression of sarcasm in French, for which phonological data are still lacking. Specifically, here we test the acceptability of prototypical sarcastic tonal contours in presence of matching or conflicting contextual cues

Prosodic cues of sarcastic speech in French: slower, higher, wider

International audienceVerbal irony is characterized by the use of specific acoustic modulations, especially global prosodic cues as well as vowel hyperarticulation. Little is known concerning the expression of sarcastic speech in French. Here we report on global prosodic features of sarcastic speech in a corpus of declarative French utterances. Our data show that sarcastic productions are characterized by utterance lengthening, by increased f0 modulations and a global raising of the pitch level and range. The results are discussed in the light of results on the acoustic features of ironic speech in languages other than French

Referential Choices in a Collaborative Storytelling Task: Discourse Stages and Referential Complexity Matter

During a narrative discourse, accessibility of the referents is rarely fixed once and for all. Rather, each referent varies in accessibility as the discourse unfolds, depending on the presence and prominence of the other referents. This leads the speaker to use various referential expressions to refer to the main protagonists of the story at different moments in the narrative. This study relies on a new, collaborative storytelling in sequence task designed to assess how speakers adjust their referential choices when they refer to different characters at specific discourse stages corresponding to the introduction, maintaining, or shift of the character in focus, in increasingly complex referential contexts. Referential complexity of the stories was manipulated through variations in the number of characters (1 vs. 2) and, for stories in which there were two characters, in their ambiguity in gender (different vs. same gender). Data were coded for the type of reference markers as well as the type of reference content (i.e., the extent of the information provided in the referential expression). Results showed that, beyond the expected effects of discourse stages on reference markers (more indefinite markers at the introduction stage, more pronouns at the maintaining stage, and more definite markers at the shift stage), the number of characters and their ambiguity in gender also modulated speakers' referential choices at specific discourse stages, For the maintaining stage, an effect of the number of characters was observed for the use of pronouns and of definite markers, with more pronouns when there was a single character, sometimes replaced by definite expressions when two characters were present in the story. For the shift stage, an effect of gender ambiguity was specifically noted for the reference content with more specific information provided in the referential expression when there was referential ambiguity. Reference content is an aspect of referential marking that is rarely addressed in a narrative context, yet it revealed a quite flexible referential behavior by the speakers

Evaluation of delexicalization methods for research on emotional speech

Perceptual evaluation of non-controlled emotional speech requires delexicalization to neutralize semantic variation. However, most existing methods imply losing spectral cues crucial to emotional attribution, related to both laryngeal and supralaryngeal settings. We propose a method relying on voice morphing to retain part of the spectral information of the original stimuli, as an additional step to diphone synthesis delexicalization. After previous assessment of intelligibility loss, this study evaluates the naturalness of angry and neutral expressions in French films, delexicalized using low-pass filtering and the proposed method implemented with MBROLA and STRAIGHT. Results show that morphing-based delexicalization, which leads to accurate emotional attribution, is rated with a higher degree of naturalness than low-pass filtering. Implications for research in affective speech are discussed with regards to other delexicalization methods proposed in the literature

Que nous révèle le langage sur la représentation du monde et des autres dans la shcizophrénie?

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Etude de l'importance relative des contraintes linguistiques et extralinguistiques conduisant à la compréhension de l'ironie

Irony is a common linguistic phenomenon that occurs in everyday interactions. However, by its indirect nature, it carries the risk of miscommunication. When we talk about irony, we have the tendency to think of ironic criticisms who are more frequent, and most of the time easier to understand (i.e., asymmetry of irony). Nevertheless, there is another form of ironic utterances: ironic praises. In different models of irony understanding, factors have been proposed as playing a role in understanding ironic criticism and praises. Several models of irony processing have also been highlighted, including the Constraints Satisfaction model. According to this model, different types of factors (i.e., constraints) are integrated rapidly and in parallel in order to construct an interpretation that better fits the available information than an alternative interpretation would have done.The objective of this thesis was, using the framework of the Constraints Satisfaction model, to determine, for the first time in French, the role played by several types of constraints (i.e., pragmatic, linguistic and sociocultural) in the understanding of ironic criticisms and ironic praises.The results of a first experiment, in which we used a listening task, showed that the incongruity between the context and the utterance was a stronger cue than prosody in the understanding of ironic critics. Indeed, we showed that while all participants, in their interpretations, relied on contextual information, only some participants also used prosodic cues. The results of the two subsequent experiments, consisting of written tasks, confirmed the main role played by pragmatic constraints in irony understanding, and particularly in understanding of ironic criticisms. Our results also highlighted the contribution, while at a lower level than pragmatic constraints, of sociocultural constraints of the participants in the irony understanding. Our results also confirmed the asymmetry of irony and showed that the pragmatic constraints contributing to the understanding of ironic praises would be different from those contributing to the understanding of ironic criticism.L’ironie est un phénomène linguistique particulièrement présent dans nos interactions. Pourtant, de par sa nature indirecte, elle comporte des risques d’incompréhension. Quand nous parlons d’ironie, nous avons tendance à penser aux critiques ironiques qui sont plus fréquentes, et souvent plus faciles à comprendre (i.e., asymétrie de l’ironie). Néanmoins, il est aussi possible de rencontrer des compliments ironiques. Dans différents modèles de compréhension de l’ironie, des facteurs ont été proposés comme jouant un rôle dans la compréhension des critiques et des compliments ironiques. Plusieurs modèles de traitement de l’ironie ont également été mis en évidence, parmi lesquels le modèle de Satisfaction de Contraintes. Ce modèle envisage la compréhension de l’ironie comme l’intégration rapide et en parallèle de différents types de facteurs (i.e., contraintes), permettant de construire une interprétation cohérente, qui correspondrait mieux aux informations disponibles qu’une interprétation alternative.Ce travail de thèse a eu pour vocation, en utilisant le cadre du modèle de Satisfaction de Contraintes, de déterminer, pour la première fois en français, le rôle joué par plusieurs types de contraintes (i.e., pragmatiques, linguistiques et socioculturelles) dans la compréhension des critiques et des compliments ironiques.Suite à une première étude dans laquelle nous avons utilisé une tâche auditive, nos résultats ont mis en évidence que l’incongruité entre le contexte et l’énoncé était un indice plus fort que la prosodie lors de la compréhension de critiques ironiques. En effet, nous avons montré que si tous les participants, lors de l’interprétation, s’appuyaient sur les informations contextuelles, seuls certains participants utilisaient également les indices prosodiques. Les résultats des deux études suivantes, composées de tâches écrites, ont confirmé le rôle majeur des contraintes pragmatiques (i.e., allusion à une attente déçue, tension négative et présence d’une victime) dans la compréhension de l’ironie, et notamment dans la compréhension des critiques ironiques. Nos résultats ont également mis en évidence la contribution, bien qu’à un niveau inférieur à celle des contraintes pragmatiques, de contraintes socioculturelles des participants dans la compréhension de l’ironie. Ils ont aussi confirmé l’asymétrie de l’ironie et montré que les contraintes pragmatiques contribuant à la compréhension des compliments ironiques seraient différentes de celles contribuant à la compréhension des critiques ironiques

Théorie de l'esprit et fonctions exécutives dans la pathologie

International audienceL'objectif de cette présentation est de caractériser les déficits d'attribution d'états mentaux dans la schizophrénie et chez les individus avec troubles légers de la cognition

Évaluation de la cognition sociale en situation d’interaction dans le traumatisme crânien

Social cognition represents our ability to attribute mental states (intentions,knowledge, beliefs and desires) to others (theory of mind) and to identify his/heremotions. This ability is an important component of our social interactions as it helps usreading others’ behavior and speech, so we can adapt our own reactions accordingly.These social cognition abilities are often impaired in various pathologies, includingtraumatic brain injury (TBI), and it is also known that TBI people often experiencedisruptions in their social interactions. Despite this finding, social cognition is neverassessed in social interactions in TBI, but is rather assessed through traditionalexperimental tasks, with a « pen-and-paper » or a video format, for which theparticipant has to infer mental states and emotions of characters depicted in writtenstories, comic-strips or videos. Thus, this type of evaluation involves a mindful anddeliberate reasoning, since it requires answering explicit questions about the characters.On the contrary, a growing number of researchers argue that assessing social cognitionin communication situations would involve more implicit, unaware and automaticprocesses.The goal of this study was to assess social cognition using paradigms that activelyinvolve the participant in a social interaction, which has never been done in TBI, and tocompare the results obtained on this type of tests with those obtained on traditionaltasks with a « pen-and-paper » format. To this aim, we administered to TBI and controlparticipants two social cognition tasks including the participant in a conversationsituation: a referential communication task, which is a collaborative game with anexperimenter, and a novel task (named EViCog) involving the participants in audiovisualconversations on topics of everyday-life with virtual humans who expressemotions and produce speech content that requires mental states inferences (such asattribution of an ironic intent and attribution of knowledge / desires). Three socialcognition tasks widely used in the literature that do not include the participant in aninteraction were also administered: the Ekman & Friesen’s emotion recognition test (1976), the Character Intention Task (Sarfati et al., 1997) (comic-strips), and a task ofirony understanding (written texts) (Champagne-Lavau et al., 2012). Finally, the aim ofthis study was also to investigate the cognitive processes (mnemonic and executive)involved in social cognition in TBI, and more specifically, to determine if the cognitivemechanisms involved vary according to the type of task, i.e. whether the participant isincluded in the interaction or not.Results showed that TBI participants were more impaired than the control groupon all the social cognition tasks, except the referential communication task. Theassessment of social cognition using the EViCog task has shown that mentalizing andemotion recognition impairments of TBI people were even more noticeable in aconversation situation compared to the classic « pen-and-paper » format. Finally, socialcognition performance assessed in a situation communication seem to rely onmnemonic abilities, such as autobiographical memory and context memory, and onexecutive functioning, especially working memory and access processes. On thecontrary, emotion recognition and theory of mind abilities assessed throughconventional tasks would not be explained by mnemonic abilities, but only by certainexecutive functions such as access to mental lexicon and flexibility.La cognition sociale, c’est-à-dire notre capacité à attribuer des états mentaux(intention, connaissances, croyances, désirs…) { autrui (théorie de l’esprit) et { identifierses émotions, est une composante fondamentale de nos interactions sociales, dans lamesure où elle nous permet d’interpréter le comportement et le discours d’autrui, etd’ajuster nos propres réactions en conséquence. Ces habiletés de cognition sociale fontdéfaut dans de nombreuses pathologies, incluant le traumatisme crânien (TC), lespersonnes atteintes expérimentant par ailleurs souvent des perturbations importantesde leurs relations sociales. En dépit de ce constat, la cognition sociale n’est jamaisévaluée en situation d’interaction sociale au sein de cette population, mais plutôt { l’aidede tâches expérimentales traditionnelles, sous format « papier-crayon » ou vidéo, pourlesquelles la personne doit inférer les états mentaux ou les émotions de personnagesprésentés dans des histoires écrites, des bandes-dessinées ou encore des vidéos. Ainsi,ce mode d’évaluation fait intervenir un raisonnement conscient et délibéré, puisqu’ils’agit de répondre { des questions explicites sur les états mentaux des personnages. Aucontraire, de plus en plus de chercheurs suggèrent qu’évaluer la cognition sociale ensituation d’interaction mettrait en jeu des processus complètement différents, plusimplicites, inconscients et automatiques.Ce travail de thèse a donc pour vocation d’évaluer la cognition sociale enimpliquant activement le participant dans une situation de communication, ce qui n’ajamais été fait dans le traumatisme crânien, et de comparer les performances obtenuessur ce type d’épreuves avec celles obtenues sur des tâches traditionnelles sous format« papier-crayon ». Pour cela, nous avons administré aux participants TC et contrôles decette étude deux tâches d’évaluation de la cognition sociale impliquant le participantdans une situation d’interaction : une tâche de communication référentielle sous laforme d’un jeu collaboratif avec l’expérimentateur, et une tâche novatrice appeléeEViCog (Evaluation de la cognition sociale en interaction virtuelle) permettant auparticipant d’avoir des conversations audio-visuelles sur des thèmes de la vie courante 4avec des humains virtuels, qui expriment des émotions et produisent du discoursnécessitant d’inférer leurs états mentaux (attribution d’une intention ironique etattribution de connaissances/désirs). Trois tâches de cognition sociale largementutilisées dans la littérature pour lesquelles le participant n’est pas inclus dansl’interaction ont également été administrées : la tâche de reconnaissance des émotionsfaciales d’Ekman & Friesen (1976), la Character Intention Task (Sarfati et al., 1997)(inférence des intentions de personnages dans des bandes-dessinées), et une tâched’attribution d’intention ironique sous forme de textes écrits (Champagne-Lavau et al.,2012). Enfin, l’objectif de ce travail était également d’étudier les processus cognitifs(mnésiques et exécutifs) impliqués dans la cognition sociale chez les personnes ayant euun traumatisme crânien, et plus spécifiquement de déterminer si les mécanismescognitifs varient en fonction du type de tâche, c’est-à-dire selon que le participant estinclus ou non dans l’interaction.Les résultats ont montré que les participants TC avaient plus de difficultés decognition sociale que les contrôles pour toutes les tâches administrées, { l’exception dela tâche de communication référentielle. L’évaluation de la cognition sociale { l’aide de latâche EViCog a permis de montrer que les difficultés de TdE et de reconnaissanceémotionnelle des personnes TC étaient mises en évidence de manière encore plusimportante en situation de conversation par rapport au format classique « papiercrayon». Enfin, les performances de cognition sociale évaluées en situation d’interactionsemblent dépendre en partie des capacités mnésiques, telles que la mémoireautobiographique et la mémoire du contexte, ainsi que des fonctions exécutives,notamment la mémoire de travail et l’accès au lexique mental. Les performances dereconnaissance des émotions et de TdE évaluées { l’aide de tâches classiques ne seraientquant à elles pas expliquées par les capacités mnésiques, mais uniquement par certainescapacités exécutives telles que l’accès au lexique mental et la flexibilité

Théorie de l'esprit et pragmatique dans la schizophrénie : Des pistes pour une prise en charge.

L'objectif de ce chapitre est de montrer que la pragmatique est susceptible d'offrir des pistes de prise en charge pour améliorer les différents aspects de la cognition sociale et par conséquent le fonctionnement social des patients atteints de schizophrénie. Pour cela nous définirons la nature des troubles de la cognition sociale présents dans la schizophrénie avant de faire un état des lieux des différents programmes de prise en charge existants visant ces troubles de la cognition sociale. Nous nous concentrerons dans cette partie sur les outils de traitement ayant pour cible la cognition sociale, indépendamment du type d'approche utilisée. Nous terminerons ce chapitre en montrant les liens étroits qui existent entre pragmatique et cognition sociale proposant ainsi des pistes de prise en charge dans la cadre de la pragmatique