Disfluency in typical and stuttered speech

MilanoThis paper discusses what happens when things go wrong in the planning and execution of running speech, comparing disfluency in typical speech with pathological disfluency in stuttering. Spontaneous speech by typical speakers is rarely completely fluent. There are several reasons why fluency can break down in typical speech. Various studies suggest that we produce disfluencies at a rate of around 6 per 100 fluent words, so a significant proportion of our utterances are disfluent in some way. Stuttering can halt the flow of speech at a much higher rate than typical disfluency. While persons who stutter are also prone to the same kinds of disfluency as typical speakers, their impairment results in the production of other forms of disfluency that are both quantitatively and qualitatively different from typical forms. In this paper, I give an overview of the causes of disfluency in both typical and stuttered speech and relate these causes to their articulatory and phonetic realisations. I show how typical and stuttered disfluencies differ in both their cause and their realisations.caslpub5323pub

A psycholinguistic exploration of disfluency behavior during the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

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How fluent is the fluent speech of people who stutter? A new approach to measuring kinematics with ultrasound

AM deposited 2020-06-22We present a new approach to the investigation of dynamic ultrasound tongue imaging (UTI) data, applied here to analyse the subtle aspects of the fluency of people who stutter (PWS). Fluent productions of CV syllables (C = /k/; V = /, i, /) from three PWS and three control speakers (PNS) were analysed for duration and peak velocity relative to articulatory movement towards (onset) and away from (offset) the consonantal closure. The objective was to apply a replicable methodology for kinematic investigation to speech of PWS in order to test Wingate's Fault-Line hypothesis. As was hypothesised, results show comparable onset behaviours for both groups. Regarding offsets, groups differ in peak velocity. Results suggest that PWS do not struggle initiating consonantal closure (onset). In transition from consonantal closure into the vowel, however, groups appear to employ different strategies expressed in increased variation (PNS) versus decreased mean peak velocity (PWS).casl30pub4219pub3-

Towards a psycholinguistics of dialogue: defining reaction time and error rate in a dialogue corpus.

This study uses the multi-level coding of a designed corpus of unscripted task-oriented dialogues to demonstrate that time to respond (Inter-Move Interval, IMI) and rate of disfluency behave like psycholinguistic measures, reaction time and error rate, in reflecting the speakers' cognitive burdens. Multiple-regression analyses show that IMI is sensitive to social distance between interlocutors, to the difficulty of the task which the dialogue serves, and to comprehension of the prior utterance and production of the current one. Rate of simple overt disfluency, in contrast, shows social and task effects, with most of the uniquely explained variance associated with planning and producing the current utterance. The results suggest that coded corpora may be useful in developing models of human interlocutors.caslpub2260pu

Children's perception of direct and indirect reported speech

This study investigated the abilities of adults and children to distinguish direct reported speech from indirect reported speech in sentences read aloud by a native English speaker. The adults were highly successful, the older children less so and the younger children were relatively unsuccessful. Indirect reported speech appeared to be the default category for the children. Potential prosodic cues were identified and measured from waveforms and pitch contours of the stimulus sentences. Statistical analysis was applied with a view to ascertaining which (combination of) cues best predicted the listener responses. The results suggest that pitch movement and duration both provided important cues to distinguishing the sentence types. The analysis also revealed a learning effect by all groups.caslpub2247pu

Magnitude estimation of disfluency by stutterers and nonstutterers

UKEveryone produces disfluencies when they speak spontaneously. However, whereas most disfluencies pass unnoticed, the repetitions, blocks and prolongations produced by stutterers can have a severely disruptive effect on communication. The causes of stuttering have proven hard to pin down - researchers differ widely in their views on the cognitive mechanisms that underlie it. The present chapter presents initial research which supports a view (Vasic and Wijnen, this volume) that places the emphasis firmly on the self-monitoring system, suggesting that stuttering may be a consequence of over-sensitivity to the types of minor speech error that we all make. Our study also allows us to ask whether the speech of people who stutter is perceived as qualitatively different from that of nonstutterers, when it is fluent and when it contains similar types of minor disfluencies. Our results suggest that for closely matched, naturally occurring segments of speech, listeners rate the speech of stutterers as more disfluent than that of nonstutterers.caslAdams, F.R., Freeman, F.J., & Conture, E.G., (1985). Laryngeal dynamics of stutterers. In R.F. Curlee, W.H. Perkins, (Eds.), Nature and treatment of stuttering: New directions. San Diego, CA: College-Hill Press. Anderson, A.H., Bader, M., Bard, E.G., Boyle, E., Doherty, G., Garrod, S., Isard, S., Kowtko, J., McAllister, J., Miller, J., Sotillo, C., Thompson, H. & Weinert, R. (1991). The HCRC Map Task Corpus. Language and Speech, 34, 351-366 Bard, E.G. & Lickley, R.J. (1998). Graceful Failure in the Recognition of Running Speech. Proceedings of The 20th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA, pp.108-113. Bard, E.G., Robertson, D. & Sorace, A. (1996). Magnitude estimation of linguistic acceptability. Language, Vol. 72, No. 1, 32-68, Blackmer, E.R., & Mitton, J.L. (1991). Theories of monitoring and the timing of repairs in spontaneous speech. Cognition, 39, 173-194. Bloodstein, O. (1970). Stuttering and normal nonfluency: A continuity hypothesis. British Journal of Disorders of Communication, 1970, 30-39. Branigan, H., Lickley, R.J. & McKelvie, D. (1999). Non-linguistic influences on rates of disfluency in spontaneous speech. Proceedings of the ICPhS, International Congress on Phonetic Sciences, San Francisco, pp 387-390. Cohen, J.D., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M. & Provost, J. (1993). Psyscope: A new graphic interactive environment for designing psychology experiments. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 25 (2), 257-271. Cross, D.E. (n.d.) A systems approach to stuttering. Retrieved 30 October, 2002, from http://www.ithaca.edu/cross/SPECIALIZATIONS/STUTTERING/Stuthome.html Dell, G.S. and Repka, R.J., (1992). Errors in inner speech. In B.J. Baars (Ed.), Experimental slips and human error: Exploring the architecture of volition. New York, NY: Plenum Press. Hartsuiker, R.J., & Kolk, H.H.J. (2001). Error monitoring in speech production: A computational test of the perceptual loop theory. Cognitive Psychology, 42, 113-157. Hartsuiker, R.J., Kolk, H.H.J. & Lickley, R.J. (2003). Stuttering on function words and content words: A computational test of the Covert Repair Hypothesis. In R.J. Hartsuiker, R. Bastiaanse, A. Postma, & F. Wijnen (Eds.), Phonological encoding and monitoring in normal and pathological speech. Hove (East Sussex): Psychology Press. Keller, F. (2000). Gradience in grammar: Experimental and computational aspects of degrees of grammaticality. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Edinburgh. Keller, F. & Alexopoulou, T. (2001). Phonology competes with syntax: Experimental evidence for the interaction of word order and accent placement in the realization of information structure. Cognition, 79, 301-372. Laver, J.D.M., (1973). The detection and correction of slips of tongue. In V.A. Fromkin (Ed.), Speech errors as linguistic evidence. The Hague: Mouton. Laver, J.D.M., (1980). Monitoring systems in the neurolinguistic control of speech production. In V.A. Fromkin (Ed.), Errors in linguistic performance: Slips of the tongue, ear, pen, and hand. New York, NY: Academic Press. Levelt, W.J.M. (1983). Monitoring and self-repair in speech. Cognition, 14, 41-104. Levelt, W.J.M. (1989). Speaking: From intention to articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lickley, R.J. (1998). HCRC Disfluency Coding Manual. HCRC Technical Report. HCRC/TR-100, Human Communication Research Centre, University of Edinburgh. Lickley, R.J. (2001). Dialogue Moves and Disfluency Rates. In Proceedings of DiSS '01, Disfluency in spontaneous speech, ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop, University of Edinburgh, pp 93-96. MacKay, D.G. (1987). The organization of perception and action: a theory for language and other cognitive skills. New York, NY: Springer. MacKay, D.G. (1992a). Awareness and error detection: New theories and research paradigms. Consciousness and Cognition, 1, 199-225. MacKay, D.G. (1992b). Errors, ambiguity, and awareness in language perception and production. In B.J. Baars (Ed.), Experimental slips and human error: Exploring the architecture of volition. New York, NY: Plenum Press. Melnick, K., Conture, E. & Ohde, R. (2003). Phonological Encoding in Young Children who Stutter. In R.J. Hartsuiker, R. Bastiaanse, A. Postma, & F. Wijnen (Eds.), Phonological encoding and monitoring in normal and pathological speech. Hove (East Sussex): Psychology Press. Perkins, W.H. (1990). What is stuttering? Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders, 55, 370-382. Perkins, W.H. (1995). Stuttering and science. San Diego, CA: Singular Publishing Group. Postma, A. (2000). Detection of errors during speech production: a review of speech monitoring models. Cognition, 77, 97-131. Postma, A. and Kolk, H.H.J. (1992). Error monitoring in people who stutter: Evidence against auditory feedback defect theories. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35, 1024-1032. Postma, A. & Kolk, H. (1993). The covert repair hypothesis: Prearticulatory repair processes in normal and stuttered disfluencies. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 36, 472-487. Raaijmakers, J.G.W., Schrijnemakers, J.M.C., & Gremmen, F. (1999). How to deal with The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: Common misconceptions and alternative solutions. Journal of Memory and Language, 41, 416-426. Schiavetti, N., Sacco, P.R., Metz, D.E., & Sitler, R.W. (1983). Direct magnitude estimation and interval scaling of stuttering severity. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 26, 568- 573. Vasic, N. & Wijnen, F. (2003). Stuttering as a monitoring deficit. In R.J. Hartsuiker, R. Bastiaanse, A. Postma, & F. Wijnen (Eds.), Phonological encoding and monitoring in normal and pathological speech. Hove (East Sussex): Psychology Press. Van Riper, C. (1982). The Nature of Stuttering. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Wijnen, F. (2000). Stotteren als resultaat van inadequate spraakmonitoring [Stuttering as the result of inadequate speech monitoring]. Stem-, Spraak- en Taalpathologie, 9. Wood, S. (1995). An electropalatographic analysis of stutterers' speechE. uropean Journal of Disorders of Communication, 30, 226-236.1pub239pub

Lingual Coarticulation in Preadolescents and Adults: An Ultrasound Study. ESRC End of Award Report, RES-000-22-4075

SwindonWhen people combine sounds to make words, there is overlap in the tongue movements involved in articulating individual sounds, referred to as lingual coarticulation. For example, in adult speech, tongue positions at mid-consonant, in the words she- and shah-, differ because of the influence of the following vowel. The research team's earlier work showed that young children differed from adults in the extent of vowel-on-consonant coarticulation. In this project, for the first time, a quantitative analysis of the dynamics of tongue movements was performed. The project used high-speed ultrasound to measure lingual coarticulation in the syllables she-, shah-, sea- and 'Sah', comparing preadolescent children and adults, fifteen speakers in each age group. In both age groups and both consonants, the tongue position at mid-consonant was affected by the identity of the following vowel. There was no significant effect of age on the size of the vowel-related difference in tongue posture, nor on within-speaker variability in tongue placement. Age-related differences were observed in the onset of coarticulation. While in the adults, the vowel effect was present throughout the consonant for both consonants, in preadolescents the effect was apparent later into the first half of the consonant. The results of the study suggest a near-adult-like achievement in the development of lingual control by preadolescents, with respect to the coarticulation of fricative-vowel sequences. However age-related differences in timing may indicate that preadolescents have still to gain the extent of forward planning in speech production which is possible for a typical adult.caslpub3341pu

Matched-accent processing: Bulgarian-English bilinguals do not have a processing advantage with Bulgarian-accented English over native English speech

James Scobbie - ORCID: 0000-0003-4509-6782 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4509-6782Robin Lickley - ORCID: 0000-0003-2583-5461 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2583-5461The Interlanguage Intelligibility Benefit hypothesis (ISIB) for Talkers suggests that there is a potential benefit when listening to one’s second language when it is produced in the accent of one’s first language (matched-accent processing). This study explores ISIB, considering listener proficiency. According to second language learning theories, the listener’s second language proficiency determines the extent to which they rely on their first language phonetics, hence the magnitude of ISIB may be affected by listener proficiency. The accuracy and reaction times of Bulgarian-English bilinguals living in the UK were recorded in a lexical decision task. The English stimuli were produced by native English speakers and Bulgarian-English bilinguals. Listeners responded more slowly and less accurately to the matched-accent stimuli than the native English stimuli. In addition, they adapted their reaction times faster to new speakers with a native English accent compared to a Bulgarian accent. However, the listeners with the lowest English proficiency had no advantage in reaction times and accuracy for either accent. The results offer mixed support for ISIB for Talkers and are consistent with second language learning theories, according to which listeners rely less on their native language phonology when their proficiency in the second language has increased.This study was funded by the full-time doctoral bursary of Queen Margaret University.https://www.journal-labphon.org/inpressinpres

Acoustic speech markers for tracking changes in hypokinetic dysarthria associated with Parkinson’s Disease

Joan Ma - ORCID: 0000-0003-2051-8360 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2051-8360https://icpla2023.at