Spoken-word production in Korean: A non-word masked priming and phonological Stroop task investigation

Speech production studies have shown that phonological unit initially used to fill the metrical frame during phonological encoding is language specific, that is, a phoneme for English and Dutch, an atonal syllable for Mandarin Chinese, and a mora for Japanese. However, only a few studies chronometrically investigated speech production in Korean, and they obtained mixed results. Korean is particularly interesting as there might be both phonemic and syllabic influences during phonological encoding. The purpose of this study is to further examine the initial phonological preparation unit in Korean, employing a masked priming task (Experiment 1) and a phonological Stroop task (Experiment 2). The results showed that significant onset (and onset-plus, that is, consonant-vowel [CV]) effects were found in both experiments, but there was no compelling evidence for a prominent role for the syllable. When the prime words were presented in three different forms related to the targets, namely, without any change, with re-syllabified codas, and with nasalised codas, there were no significant differences in facilitation among the three forms. Alternatively, it is also possible that participants may not have had sufficient time to process the primes up to the point that re-syllabification or nasalisation could have been carried out. In addition, the results of a Stroop task demonstrated that the onset phoneme effect was not driven by any orthographic influence. These findings suggest that the onset segment and not the syllable is the initial (or proximate) phonological unit used in the segment-to-frame encoding process during speech planning in Korean

Aggregation of ecological indicators for mapping aquatic nature quality : overview of existing methods and case studies

Indicators for aquatic nature quality are calculated using ecological monitoring data from individual sampling stations. For reporting purposes, these results need to be aggregated and scaled up to higher levels (catchment area, country). This report provides an overview of different existing spatial aggregation methods for this purpose, including an evaluation of their suitability for aquatic ecological indicators. So-called „model-based„ methods, consisting of some sort of „kriging¿ step followed by calculation of the arithmetic mean, appeared to be the most appropriate. Application of these methods to multimetric indicators of aquatic macroinvertebrates in two Dutch subcatchment areas confirmed their suitability. However, the methods that were used were based on aggregation (using kriging) over Euclidian (straight), distances. It is recommended to conduct further research on the suitability of interpolation through stream networks, i.e., through the waterways themselves

A three-dimensional finite-element model of gluteus medius muscle incorporating inverse-dynamics-based optimization for simulation of non-uniform muscle contraction

Non-uniform contraction exists in many skeletal muscles and plays an important role in the function of the musculoskeletal system. Particularly in the gluteus medius (GM) muscle, its three subdivisions appear activated differently while performing various motion tasks. However, the non-uniform contractile mechanism of GM is poorly understood. In this study, a three-dimensional finite element (FE) model of GM was developed. Non-uniform contraction patterns of the three subdivisions of GM during abduction, internal and external rotation were simulated through an inverse-dynamics-based optimization approach. A set of sensitivity studies were also undertaken to evaluate the influence of parameters including the cost function of optimization and dimension of GM subdivisions on the predicted non-uniform contraction and biomechanics of the muscle. Contraction across GM was found to be highly non-uniform during various motions. The whole GM was activated during abduction, whereas only the anterior and posterior subdivisions were primarily involved in internal and external rotation, respectively. The active contractile stress in a subdivision during abduction was increased if its proportion in GM was expanded. The cost functions of minimizing the sum of active contractile stresses squared/cubed provide similar qualitative predictions of the trend of results. This approach provides the methodological basis to enable simulation of non-uniform muscle contraction using 3D musculoskeletal models

The proximate unit in Korean speech production: Phoneme or syllable?

We investigated the “proximate unit” in Korean, that is, the initial phonological unit selected in speech production by Korean speakers. Previous studies have shown mixed evidence indicating either a phoneme-sized or a syllable-sized unit. We conducted two experiments in which participants named pictures while ignoring superimposed non-words. In English, for this task, when the picture (e.g., dog) and distractor phonology (e.g., dark) initially overlap, typically the picture target is named faster. We used a range of conditions (in Korean) varying from onset overlap to syllabic overlap, and the results indicated an important role for the syllable, but not the phoneme. We suggest that the basic unit used in phonological encoding in Korean is different from Germanic languages such as English and Dutch and also from Japanese and possibly also Chinese. Models dealing with the architecture of language production can use these results when providing a framework suitable for all languages in the world, including Korean

Phonological encoding in Tongan: An experimental investigation

This study is the first to report chronometric evidence on Tongan language production. It has been speculated that the mora plays an important role during Tongan phonological encoding. A mora follows the (C)V form, so /a/ and /ka/ (but not /k/) denote a mora in Tongan. Using a picture-word naming paradigm, Tongan native speakers named pictures containing superimposed non-word distractors. This task has been used before in Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese to investigate the initially selected unit during phonological encoding (IPU). Compared to control distractors, both onset and mora overlapping distractors resulted in faster naming latencies. Several alternative explanations for the pattern of results - proficiency in English, knowledge of Latin script, and downstream effects - are discussed. However, we conclude that Tongan phonological encoding likely natively uses the phoneme, and not the mora, as the IPU.