Search results for "speech"
showing 10 items of 1281 documents
When nominal features are marked on verbs: A transcranial magnetic stimulation study
2006
It has been claimed that verb processing (as opposed to noun processing) is subserved by specific neural circuits in the left prefrontal cortex. In this study, we took advantage of the unusual grammatical characteristics of clitic pronouns in Italian (e.g., lo and la in portalo and portala 'bring it [masculine]/[feminine]', respectively)-the fact that clitics have both nominal and verbal characteristics, to explore the neural correlates of verb and clitic processing. We used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to suppress the excitability of the left prefrontal cortex and to assess its role in producing verb+det+noun and verb+clitic phrases. Results showed an interference ef…
Measures of native and non-native rhythm in a quantity language.
2005
The traditional phonetic classification of language rhythm as stress-timed or syllable-timed is attributed to Pike. Recently, two different proposals have been offered for describing the rhythmic structure of languages from acoustic-phonetic measurements. Ramus has suggested a metric based on the proportion of vocalic intervals and the variability ( SD) of consonantal intervals. Grabe has proposed Pairwise Variability Indices (nPVI, rPVI) calculated from the differences in vocalic and consonantal durations between successive syllables. We have calculated both the Ramus and Grabe metrics for Latvian, traditionally considered a syllable rhythm language, and for Latvian as spoken by Russian l…
The German hearing in noise test
2020
The aims of this study were to develop a German Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) using the same methodology as with previous HINT tests; to develop sentence lists for measuring speech reception thresholds (SRTs); and to determine test-retest reliability and norms for measures obtained under headphones.The following steps were followed: develop and record sentences, synthesise masking noise, determine the performance-intensity (PI) function, equalise sentence difficulty in the masking noise. Form sentence lists of equal difficulty. Measure SRTs for normal hearing individuals to determine practice/learning effects, test-retest reliability, and norms.Three groups of adults (median age = 25 years) …
Human voice pitch measures are robust across a variety of speech recordings: methodological and theoretical implications
2021
Fundamental frequency ( f o ), perceived as voice pitch, is the most sexually dimorphic, perceptually salient and intensively studied voice parameter in human nonverbal communication. Thousands of studies have linked human f o to biological and social speaker traits and life outcomes, from reproductive to economic. Critically, researchers have used myriad speech stimuli to measure f o and infer its functional relevance, from individual vowels to longer bouts of spontaneous speech. Here, we acoustically analysed f o in nearly 1000 affectively neutral speech utterances (vowels, words, counting, greetings, read paragraphs and free spontaneous speech) produced by the same 154 men and women, ag…
Chromosome 15q BP3 to BP5 deletion is a likely locus for speech delay and language impairment: Report on a four‐member family and an unrelated boy
2020
Abstract Background Deletions in chromosome 15q13 have been reported both in healthy people and individuals with a wide range of behavioral and neuropsychiatric disturbances. Six main breakpoint (BP) subregions (BP1‐BP6) are mapped to the 15q13 region and three further embedded BP regions (BP3‐BP5). The deletion at BP4‐BP5 is the rearrangement most frequently observed compared to other known deletions in BP3‐BP5 and BP3‐BP4 regions. Deletions of each of these three regions have previously been implicated in a variable range of clinical phenotypes, including minor dysmorphism, developmental delay/intellectual disability, epilepsy, autism spectrum disorders, behavioral disturbances, and speec…
Evidence for a spatial bias in the perception of sequences of brief tones
2013
Listeners are unable to report the physical order of particular sequences of brief tones. This phenomenon of temporal dislocation depends on tone durations and frequencies. The current study empirically shows that it also depends on the spatial location of the tones. Dichotically testing a three-tone sequence showed that the central tone tends to be reported as the first or the last element when it is perceived as part of a left-to-right motion. Since the central-tone dislocation does not occur for right-to-left sequences of the same tones, this indicates that there is a spatial bias in the perception of sequences. © 2013 Acoustical Society of America.
Temporal weighting of loudness: Comparison between two different psychophysical tasks
2016
International audience; Psychophysical studies on loudness have so far examined the temporal weighting of loudness solely in level-discrimination tasks. Typically, listeners were asked to discriminate hundreds of level-fluctuating sounds regarding their global loudness. Temporal weights, i.e., the importance of each temporal portion of the stimuli for the loudness judgment, were then estimated from listeners' responses. Consistent non-uniform " u-shaped " temporal weighting patterns were observed, with greater weights assigned to the first and the last temporal portions of the stimuli, revealing significant primacy and recency effects, respectively. In this study, the question was addressed…
Measuring and modeling real-time responses to music: the dynamics of tonality induction.
2003
We examined a variety of real-time responses evoked by a single piece of music, the organ Duetto BWV 805 by J S Bach. The primary data came from a concurrent probe-tone method in which the probe-tone is sounded continuously with the music. Listeners judged how well the probe tone fit with the music at each point in time. The process was repeated for all probe tones of the chromatic scale. A self-organizing map (SOM) [Kohonen 1997 Self-organizing Maps (Berlin: Springer)] was used to represent the developing and changing sense of key reflected in these judgments. The SOM was trained on the probe-tone profiles for 24 major and minor keys (Krumhansl and Kessler 1982 Psychological Review89 334–…
Interval between two sequential arrays determines their storage state in visual working memory.
2020
AbstractThe visual information can be stored as either “active” representations in the active state or “activity-silent” representations in the passive state during the retention period in visual working memory (VWM). Catering to the dynamic nature of visual world, we explored how the temporally dynamic visual input was stored in VWM. In the current study, the memory arrays were presented sequentially, and the contralateral delay activity (CDA), an electrophysiological measure, was used to identify whether the memory representations were transferred into the passive state. Participants were instructed to encode two sequential arrays and retrieve them respectively, with two conditions of int…
Ability for Voice Recognition Is a Marker for Dyslexia in Children
2014
A recent voice recognition experiment conducted by Perrachione, Del Tufo, and Gabrieli (2011) revealed that, in normal adult readers, the accuracy at identifying human voices was better in the participants’ mother tongue than in an unfamiliar language, while this difference was absent in a group of adults with dyslexia. This pattern favored a view of dyslexia as due to “fundamentally impoverished native-language phonological representations.” To further examine this issue, we conducted two voice recognition experiments, one with children with/without dyslexia, and the other with adults with/without dyslexia. Results revealed that children/adults with dyslexia were less accurate at identify…