Are affective speakers effective speakers? – Exploring the link between the vocal expression of positive emotions and communicative effectiveness

This thesis explores the effect of vocal affect expression on communicative effectiveness. Two studies examined whether positive speaker affect facilitates the encoding and decoding of the message, combining methods from Phonetics and Psychology.This research has been funded through a Faculty Studentship by the University of Stirling and a Fellowship by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)

Does child-directed speech facilitate language development in all domains? A study space analysis of the existing evidence

Because child-directed speech (CDS) is ubiquitous in some cultures and because positive associations between certain features of the language input and certain learning outcomes have been attested it has often been claimed that the function of CDS is to aid children’s language development in general. We argue that for this claim to be generalisable, superior learning from CDS compared to non-CDS, such as adult-directed speech (ADS), must be demonstrated across multiple input domains and learning outcomes. To determine the availability of such evidence we performed a study space analysis of the research literature on CDS. A total of 942 relevant papers were coded with respect to (i) CDS features under consideration, (ii) learning outcomes and (iii) whether a comparison between CDS and ADS was reported. The results show that only 16.2% of peer-reviewed studies in this field compared learning outcomes between CDS and ADS, almost half of which focussed on the ability to discriminate between the two registers. Crucially, we found only 20 studies comparing learning outcomes between CDS and ADS for morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features and none for pragmatic and extra-linguistic features. Although these 20 studies provided preliminary evidence for a facilitative effect of some specific morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features, overall CDS-ADS comparison studies are very unevenly distributed across the space of CDS features and outcome measures. The disproportional emphasis on prosodic, phonetic, and phonological input features, and register discrimination as the outcome invites caution with respect to the generalisability of the claim that CDS facilitates language development across the breadth of input domains and learning outcomes. Future research ought to resolve the discrepancy between sweeping claims about the function of CDS as facilitating language development on the one hand and the narrow evidence base for such a claim on the other by conducting CDS-ADS comparisons across a wider range of input features and outcome measures

Complex patterns in silent speech preparation: Preparing for fast response might be different to preparing for fast speech in a reaction time experiment

This paper presents articulatory data on silent preparation in a standard Verbal Reaction Time experiment. We have reported in a previous study [6] that Reaction Time is reliably detectable in Ultrasound Tongue Imaging and lip video data, and between 120 to 180 ms ahead of the standard acoustics-based measurements. The aim of the current study was to investigate in more detail how silent speech preparation is timed in relation to faster and slower Reaction Times, and faster and slower articulation rates of the verbal response. The results suggest that the standard acoustic-based measurements of Reaction Time may not only routinely underestimate fastness of response but also obscure considerable variation in actual response behaviour. Particularly tokens with fast Reaction Times seem to exhibit substantial variation with respect to when the response is actually initiated, i.e. detectable in the articulatory data.The use of orthotics in the management of rheumatoid arthritis appears to be relatively commonplace within occupational therapy departments. The aim of this study was to identify the frequency of orthotic use by occupational therapists, their beliefs about the efficacy of orthotic use, what they aimed to achieve by orthotic provision and any outcome measures used. The total membership of the British Association of Hand Therapists who were both occupational therapists and self-identified as working and/or having an interest in rheumatology (n = 132) were surveyed through a postal questionnaire. Of the responses received (n = 89, 67%), all the respondents (100%) were regular users of orthotics in the management of rheumatoid arthritis. The results showed that the most highly rated reasons for orthotic provision were to decrease hand and wrist pain and to improve hand function. Subjective comments from the respondents provided evidence of positive beliefs about the efficacy of orthotic use, despite a lack of objective outcome measures to support such comment. Given the complexity of the intervening variables that occur with orthotic use, perhaps there is no easy answer; however, with the expectation of evidence-based practice and intervention, it is suggested that an increased use of standardised outcome measures may provide additional strength in presenting, often subjective, evidence.https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs/icphs2015caslpub3948pub86

Adult speakers' tongue-palate contact patterns for bilabial stops within complex clusters

Previous studies using Electropalatography (EPG) have shown that individuals with speech disorders sometimes produce articulation errors that affect bilabial targets, but currently there is limited normative data available. In this study, EPG and acoustic data were recorded during complex word final /sps/ clusters spoken by 20 normal adults. A total contact (TC) index measured amount of tongue-palate contact during clusters in words such as 'crisps'. Bilabial closure was inferred from the acoustic signal. The TC profiles indicated that normal adults hold their tongues in a steady /s/-like position throughout the cluster; most speakers (85%, n=17) had no significant difference in TC values during bilabial closure compared to flanking fricatives. The results are interpreted as showing that normal speakers produce double bilabial-alveolar articulations for /p/ in these clusters. Although steady state TC profiles were typical of the group, absolute TC values varied considerably between speakers, with some speakers having up to three times more contact than others. These findings add to the knowledge about normal articulation, and will help to improve diagnosis and treatment of individuals with speech disorders

Mothers are less efficient in employing prosodic disambiguation in child-directed speech than non-mothers : is there a trade-off between affective and linguistic prosody?

This study examines prosodic disambiguation in child-directed (CD) speech. Twenty-four mothers addressed syntactically ambiguous sentences to their 2;0 to 3;8 year old child and to an adult confederate. Twenty-four non-mothers addressed an imaginary toddler and an imaginary adult. We found that only mothers increased pitch and produced the CD-typical pitch excursions when addressing their children. In contrast, non-mothers, but not mothers, used prosodic disambiguation in CD speech, which was corroborated by a forced choice test in which 48 listeners judged the intended meaning of each sentence. The results suggest that if speakers express genuine positive affect, they tend to emphasise affective prosody at the expense of linguistic prosody. In the case of CD speech, this communication strategy may be more effective as it serves to elicit the child's attention.casl[1] Baum, S., Pell, M. 1999. The neural bases of prosody:Insights from lesion studies and neuroimaging. Aphasiology, 13(8), 581-608. [2] Boersma, P., Weenink, D. 2005. Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer (Version 4.3.04) [Computer Program]. [3] Fernald, A. 1994. Human maternal vocalizations to infants as biologically relevant signals: An evolutionary perspective. In P. Bloom (Ed.), Language Acquisition: Core Readings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [4] Fernald, A., Mazzie, C. 1991. Prosody and focus in speech to infants and adults. Inf. Behav. Dev., 27, 209- 221. [5] Kaplan, P., Bachorowski, J.-A., Zarlengo-Strouse, P. 1999. Child-directed speech produced by mothers with symptoms of depression fails to promote associative learning in 4-month-old infants. Child Dev., 70(3), 560- 570. [6] Kaplan, P., Bachorowski, J.-A., Smoski, M., Hudenko, W.J. 2002. Infants of depressed mothers, although competent learners, fail to learn in response to their own mothers' infant-directed speech. Psych. Sci., 13(3), 268- 271. [7] Kraljic, T., Brennan, S. 2005. Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic structure: For the speaker or for the addressee? Cog. Psych., 50, 194-231. [8] McRoberts, G., Studdert-Kennedy, M., Shankweiler, D. 1995. The role of fundamental frequency in signalling linguistic stress and affect: Evidence for a dissociation. Perception & Psychophysics, (2), 159-174. [9] Morgan, J., Demuth, C. 1996. Signal to Syntax: Bootstrapping from Speech to Grammar in Early Acquisition. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [10] Nitschke, J., Nelson, E., Rusch, B., Fox, A., Oakes, T., Davidson, R. 2004. Orbitofrontal cortex tracks positive mood in mothers viewing pictures of their newborn infants. NeuroImage, 21, 583-592. [11] Singh, L., Morgan, J., Best, C. 2002. Infants' listening preferences: Baby talk or happy talk? Infancy 3, 365-394. [12] Snedeker, J., Trueswell, J. 2003. Using prosody to avoid ambiguity: Effects of speaker awareness and referential context. J. Mem. Lang., 48, 103-130. [13] Thiessen, E. D., Hill, E. A., Saffran, J. R. 2005. Infantdirected speech facilitates word segmentation. Infancy, 7(1), 53-71. [14] Wong, P. 2002. Hemispheric specialization of linguistic pitch patterns. Brain Res. Bul., 59(2), 83-95. [15] Ziegler, W. 2003. Speech motor control is task-specific: Evidence from dysarthria and apraxia of speech. Aphasiology, 17(1), 3-36.pub49pu

Are affective speakers effective speakers? : exploring the link between the vocal expression of positive emotions and communicative effectiveness

This thesis explores the effect of vocal affect expression on communicative effectiveness. Two studies examined whether positive speaker affect facilitates the encoding and decoding of the message, combining methods from Phonetics and Psychology.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceUniversity of Stirling : German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)GBUnited Kingdo

Does Child-Directed Speech Facilitate Language Development in All Domains? A Study Space Analysis of the Existing Evidence

Sonja Schaeffler - ORCID: 0000-0003-0493-9165 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0493-9165Because child-directed speech (CDS) is ubiquitous in some cultures and because positive associations between certain features of the language input and certain learning outcomes have been attested it has often been claimed that the function of CDS is to aid children’s language development in general. We argue that for this claim to be generalisable, superior learning from CDS compared to non-CDS, such as adult-directed speech (ADS), must be demonstrated across multiple input domains and learning outcomes. To determine the availability of such evidence we performed a study space analysis of the research literature on CDS. A total of 942 relevant papers were coded with respect to (i) CDS features under consideration, (ii) learning outcomes and (iii) whether a comparison between CDS and ADS was reported. The results show that only 16.2% of peer-reviewed studies in this field compared learning outcomes between CDS and ADS, almost half of which focussed on the ability to discriminate between the two registers. Crucially, we found only 20 studies comparing learning outcomes between CDS and ADS for morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features and none for pragmatic and extra-linguistic features. Although these 20 studies provided preliminary evidence for a facilitative effect of some specific morphosyntactic and lexico-semantic features, overall CDS-ADS comparison studies are very unevenly distributed across the space of CDS features and outcome measures. The disproportional emphasis on prosodic, phonetic, and phonological input features, and register discrimination as the outcome invites caution with respect to the generalisability of the claim that CDS facilitates language development across the breadth of input domains and learning outcomes. Future research ought to resolve the discrepancy between sweeping claims about the function of CDS as facilitating language development on the one hand and the narrow evidence base for such a claim on the other by conducting CDS-ADS comparisons across a wider range of input features and outcome measures.72aheadofprintaheadofprin

Articulatory effects of prediction during comprehension:An ultrasound tongue imaging approach

We investigated whether effects of prediction during spoken\ud language comprehension are observable in speech-motor\ud output recorded via ultrasound tongue imaging: Predicted\ud words can be specified at a phonological level during reading\ud comprehension, and listening to speech activates speechmotor\ud regions. It has been suggested that speech-motor\ud activation may occur during prediction of upcoming material\ud (Pickering & Garrod, 2007). Speakers model their own\ud upcoming speech, with the effects being observable at an\ud articulatory level in the form of anticipatory co-articulation.\ud We investigated whether the effects of prediction as a listener\ud can also be observed at an articulatory level. We auditorily\ud presented high-cloze sentence-stems, immediately followed\ud by presentation of a picture for naming. Picture names either\ud fully matched the omitted sentence-cloze item or mismatched\ud it at onset (e.g., TAP-“cap”). By-condition differences in\ud picture-name articulation indicated that prediction of\ud upcoming material during speech listening can engage speechmotor\ud processe

Articulatory consequences of prediction during comprehension

It has been proposed that speech-motor activation observed during comprehension may, in part, reflect involvement of the speech-motor system in the top-down simulation of upcoming material [14]. In the current study we employed an automated approach to the analysis of ultrasound tongue imaging in order to investigate whether comprehension-elicited effects are observable at an articulatory-output level.\ud We investigated whether and how lexical predictions affect speech-motor output. Effects were found at a relatively early point during the pre-acoustic phase of articulation, and did not appear to be predicated upon the nature of the phonological-overlap between predicted and named items. In these respects effects related to comprehension-elicited predictions appear to differ in nature from those observed in production and perception experiments

Effect of phonetic onset on acoustic and articulatory speech reaction times studied with tongue ultrasound

We study the effect that phonetic onset has on acoustic and articulatory reaction times. An acoustic study by Rastle et al. (2005) shows that the place and manner of the first consonant in a target affects acoustic RT. An articulatory study by Kawamoto et al. (2008) shows that the same effect is not present in articulatory reaction time of the lips. We hypothesise, therefore, that in a replication with articulatory instrumentation for the tongue, we should find the same acoustic effect, but no effect in the articulatory reaction time. As a proof of concept of articulatory measurement from ultrasound images, we report results from a pilot experiment which also extends the dataset to include onset-less syllables. The hypothesis is essentially confirmed with statistical analysis and we explore and discuss the effect of different vowels and onset types (including null onsets) on articulatory and acoustic RT and speech production.https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs/icphs2015caslpub3946pub84