Articulatory Task Research Articles

Oscillatory features of German–English sentence processing: Evidence from an EEG study

Aims and objectives: In this study, we investigated the neural oscillatory patterns occurring during sentence-level overt bilingual processing tasks on 46 German–English bilinguals with the intention of finding out if there were task-specific oscillations for this language pair. Methodology: Four tasks, including Language 2 (L2) listening, Language 1 (L1) speaking, L2 shadowing (i.e., repeating a segment of an utterance), and backward interpreting (i.e., orally translating L2 sentences to L1), were implemented with the technique of electroencephalography (EEG). Data and analysis: Data included demographic indices, neural oscillation metrics, and oral production scores from participants. Static spectral analysis, time–frequency analysis, principal components analysis, cross-frequency coupling, and inferential statistics were applied to the data. Findings: The sensory task and articulatory tasks differed greatly in the delta–theta band and the beta–gamma band in terms of time–frequency dynamics. Analyses also revealed variations in a frontal/prefrontal theta component and a distinct gamma component across the four tasks. Moreover, we found a right fronto-temporal theta–gamma coupling unique to backward interpreting. Originality: The task-wise comparison experiment paradigm has rarely been implemented in neuroimaging research on language, especially so in EEG research on bilingualism. Significance: The findings provide novel insights for the understanding of language conversion mechanism and may benefit the training of professional interpreters.

Phonetic Transfer of Mandarin and English Vowels: Advantages and Challenges for Second-Language Learners

This paper discusses the phonological migration of the Mandarin vowel system to the American vowel system during second language acquisition. To this end, six Mandarin-speaking Chinese students who received English certificates are selected for analysis in this paper. In addition, experimental results from previous studies are utilized for further phonological comparisons, and a perception task and an articulation task are used to compare similar vowel combinations in the Chinese and English vowel systems. The perception task is designed to assess the participants' ability to distinguish similar vowels in different vowel systems, while the articulation task utilized Praat software to acoustically analyze the participants' vowel and word pronunciation, standard English pronunciation, and Chinese vowel pronunciation. The pronunciation values are compared with the standard pronunciation values, and the relationship between similarity and learning difficulty is established to test the hypotheses. The results shows that Chinese students are influenced by the Chinese vowel system and are unable to distinguish similar vowel combinations. Therefore, the higher the similarity between English vowels and Chinese vowels, the better the acquisition effect.

Phonetic Transfer of Mandarin and English Vowels: Advantages and Challenges for Second-Language Learners

This paper discusses the phonological migration of the Mandarin vowel system to the American vowel system during second language acquisition. To this end, six Mandarin-speaking Chinese students who received English certificates are selected for analysis in this paper. In addition, experimental results from previous studies are utilized for further phonological comparisons, and a perception task and an articulation task are used to compare similar vowel combinations in the Chinese and English vowel systems. The perception task is designed to assess the participants' ability to distinguish similar vowels in different vowel systems, while the articulation task utilized Praat software to acoustically analyze the participants' vowel and word pronunciation, standard English pronunciation, and Chinese vowel pronunciation. The pronunciation values are compared with the standard pronunciation values, and the relationship between similarity and learning difficulty is established to test the hypotheses. The results shows that Chinese students are influenced by the Chinese vowel system and are unable to distinguish similar vowel combinations. Therefore, the higher the similarity between English vowels and Chinese vowels, the better the acquisition effect.

Sound symbolism in manual and vocal responses: phoneme-response interactions associated with grasping as well as vertical and size dimensions of keypresses

It has been shown that reading the vowel [i] and consonant [t] facilitates precision grip responses, while [ɑ] and [k] are associated with faster power grip responses. A similar effect has been observed when participants perform responses with small or large response keys. The present study investigated whether the vowels and consonants could produce different effects with the grip responses and keypresses when the speech units are read aloud (Experiment 1) or silently (Experiment 2). As a second objective, the study investigated whether the recently observed effect, in which the upper position of a visual stimulus is associated with faster vocalizations of the high vowel and the lower position is associated with the low vowel, can be observed in manual responses linking, for example, the [i] with responses of the upper key and [ɑ] with lower responses. Firstly, the study showed that when the consonants are overtly articulated, the interaction effect can be observed only with the grip responses, while the vowel production was shown to systematically influence small/large keypresses, as well as precision/power grip responses. Secondly, the vowel [i] and consonant [t] were associated with the upper responses, while [ɑ] and [k] were associated with the lower responses, particularly in the overt articulation task. The paper delves into the potential sound-symbolic implications of these phonetic elements, suggesting that their acoustic and articulatory characteristics might implicitly align them with specific response magnitudes, vertical positions, and grip types.

Exploring the acoustic and prosodic features of a lung-function-sensitive repeated-word speech articulation test.

Speech breathing is a term usually used to refer to the manner in which expired air and lung mechanics are utilized for the production of the airflow necessary for phonation. Neurologically, speech breathing overrides the normal rhythms of alveolar ventilation. Speech breathing is generated using the diaphragm, glottis, and tongue. The glottis is the opening between the vocal folds in the larynx; it is the primary valve between the lungs and the mouth, and by varying its degree of opening, the sound can be varied. The use of voice as an indicator of health has been widely reported. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is the most common long-term respiratory disease. The main symptoms of COPD are increasing breathlessness, a persistent chesty cough with phlegm, frequent chest infections, and persistent wheezing. There is no cure for COPD, and it is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. The principal cause of COPD is tobacco smoking, and estimates indicate that COPD will become the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2030. The long-term aim of this research program is to understand how speech generation, breathing, and lung function are linked in people with chronic respiratory diseases such as COPD. This pilot study was designed to test an articulatory speech task that uses a single word ("helicopter"), repeated multiple times, to challenge speech-generated breathing and breathlessness. Specifically, a single-word articulation task was used to challenge respiratory system endurance in people with healthy lungs by asking participants to rapidly repeat the word "helicopter" for three 20-s runs interspersed with two 20-s rest periods of silent relaxed breathing. Acoustic and prosodic features were then extracted from the audio recordings of each adult participant. The pause ratio increased from the first run to the third, representing an increasing demand for breath. These data show that the repeated articulation task challenges speech articulation in a quantifiable manner, which may prove useful in defining respiratory ill-health.

Test-retest reliability of acoustic and linguistic measures of speech tasks

Recent studies suggest that automatic speech analysis is promising for diagnosing movement and cognitive disorders. However, the reliability of acoustic and linguistic measures receives insufficient research efforts. The present study examines the test-retest reliability of commonly used acoustic and linguistic features in a healthy Chinese adult sample. Forty healthy young adults participated in the study and received seven frequently used speech tests twice, separated by 2–3 days. Fifty-six acoustic and linguistic features were extracted for each participant. The test-retest reliabilities of those features were then estimated using the intra-class correlation (ICC) method. The frequency-related, spectral, diadochokinetic (diadochokinetic rate, voice onset time), and content length features showed acceptable absolute agreement between the two test sessions. Articulation tasks (sustained vowel pronunciation, diadochokinetic rate) provided more reliable features than cognitive tasks such as picture descriptions. However, approximately half of those features failed to reach a moderate reliability requirement. There were no gender differences in the reliability estimates. We suggest increasing trial numbers or using multiple tests to increase the reliability of automated speech tests.

Phoneme Representation and Articulatory Impairment: Insights from Adults with Comorbid Motor Coordination Disorder and Dyslexia.

Phonemic processing skills are impaired both in children and adults with dyslexia. Since phoneme representation development is based on articulatory gestures, it is likely that these gestures influence oral reading-related skills as assessed through phonemic awareness tasks. In our study, fifty-two young dyslexic adults, with and without motor impairment, and fifty-nine skilled readers performed reading, phonemic awareness, and articulatory tasks. The two dyslexic groups exhibited slower articulatory rates than skilled readers and the comorbid dyslexic group presenting with an additional difficulty in respiratory control (reduced speech proportion and increased pause duration). Two versions of the phoneme awareness task (PAT) with pseudoword strings were administered: a classical version under time pressure and a delayed version in which access to phonemic representations and articulatory programs was facilitated. The two groups with dyslexia were outperformed by the control group in both versions. Although the two groups with dyslexia performed equally well on the classical PAT, the comorbid group performed significantly less efficiently on the delayed PAT, suggesting an additional contribution of articulatory impairment in the task for this group. Overall, our results suggest that impaired phoneme representations in dyslexia may be explained, at least partially, by articulatory deficits affecting access to them.

Samuel Barber’s chamber and vocal lyrics in the mirror of performance interpretation (on the example of «Three songs», op. 10 to the words by J. Joyce)

Samuel Barber’s chamber and vocal lyrics in the mirror of performance interpretation (on the example of «Three songs», op. 10 to the words by J. Joyce)

Vocal and articulatory performance fluctuates across the menstrual cycle: Acoustic analysis of daily single participant speech data over three months

The impact of sex hormones on voice and speech has been observed across the menstrual cycle; however, the evidence remains mixed. Here, we investigated voice and articulatory performance as a function of the menstrual cycle over three months via an intensive longterm single case experimental design. A 17-yearold naturally cycling female who did not use oral/hormonal contraceptives gave a written consent to participate in the study over a period of three cycles (i.e., 90 days). Daily urine sample test strips were utilized to identify the onset of ovulation (via luteinizing hormone, LH). Daily voice and articulation tasks including a Maximum Phonation Time (MPT) task, a diadochokinesis (DDK) task were completed. A harmonic regression analysis showed a linear learning effect for DDK rate (p<.00001) with a fluctuation of values as a function of the menstrual cycle (p = 0.024). MPT showed a cyclic fluctuation (p = 0.028) but no linear learning effect. Linear and harmonic terms for fundamental frequency (measured from MPT recordings) showed no significant patterns. Understanding hormone driven variability in speech and voice helps to inform remediation strategies that aim to minimize the impact of speech motor and voice disorders across the lifespan.

Verbal Training Induces Enhanced Functional Connectivity in Japanese Healthy Elderly Population.

This study employs fMRI to examine the neural substrates of response to cognitive training in healthy old adults. Twenty Japanese healthy elders participated in a 4-week program and practiced a verbal articulation task on a daily basis. Functional connectivity analysis revealed that in comparison to age- and education-matched controls, elders who received the cognitive training demonstrated increased connectivity in the frontotemporal regions related with language and memory functions and showed significant correlations between the behavioral change in a linguistic task and connectivity in regions for goal-oriented persistence and lexical processing. The increased hippocampal connectivity was consistent with previous research showing efficacious memory improvement and change in hippocampal functioning. Moreover, the increased intra-network connectivity following cognitive training suggested an improved neural differentiation, in contrast to the inter-network activation pattern typical in the aging brain. This research not only validates the relationship of functional change in the frontal and temporal lobes to age-associated cognitive decline but also shows promise in turning neural change toward the right direction by cognitive training.

Sensorimotor and interoceptive dimensions in concrete and abstract concepts.

Recent theories propose that abstract concepts, compared to concrete ones, might activate to a larger extent interoceptive, social and linguistic experiences. At the same time, recent research has underlined the importance of investigating how different sub-kinds of abstract concepts are represented. We report a pre-registered experiment, preceded by a pilot study, in which we asked participants to evaluate the difficulty of 3 kinds of concrete concepts (natural objects, tools, and food concepts) and abstract concepts (Philosophical and Spiritual concepts, PS, Physical Space Time and Quantity concepts, PSTQ, and Emotional, Mental State and Social concepts, EMSS). While rating the words, participants were assigned to different conditions designed to interfere with conceptual processing: they were required to squeeze a ball (hand motor system activation), to chew gum (mouth motor system activation), to self-estimate their heartbeats (interoception), and to perform a motor articulatory task (inner speech involvement). In a control condition they simply rated the difficulty of words. A possible interference should result in the increase of the difficulty ratings. Bayesian analyses reveal that, compared to concrete ones, abstract concepts are more grounded in interoceptive experience and concrete concepts less in linguistic experience (mouth motor system involvement), and that the experience on which different kinds of abstract and concrete concepts differs widely. For example, within abstract concepts interoception plays a major role for EMSS and PS concepts, while the ball squeezing condition interferes more for PSTQ concepts, confirming that PSTQ are the most concrete among abstract concepts, and tap into sensorimotor manual experience. Implications of the results for current theories of conceptual representation are discussed.

The dynamic and task-dependent representational transformation between the motor and sensory systems during speech production

ABSTRACT The motor and sensory systems work collaboratively to fulfill cognitive tasks, such as speech. For example, it has been hypothesized that neural signals generated in the motor system can transfer directly to the sensory system along a neural pathway (termed as motor-to-sensory transformation). Previous studies have demonstrated that the motor-to-sensory transformation is crucial for speech production. However, it is still unclear how neural representation dynamically evolves among distinct neural systems and how such representational transformation depends on task demand and the degrees of motor involvement. Using three speech tasks – overt articulation, silent articulation, and imagined articulation, the present fMRI study systematically investigated the representational formats and their dynamics in the motor-to-sensory transformation. Frontal-parietal-temporal neural pathways were observed in all three speech tasks in univariate analyses. The extent of the motor-to-sensory transformation network differed when the degrees of motor engagement varied among tasks. The representational similarity analysis (RSA) revealed that articulatory and acoustic information was represented in motor and auditory regions, respectively, in all three tasks. Moreover, articulatory information was cross-represented in the somatosensory and auditory regions in overt and silent articulation tasks. These results provided evidence for the dynamics and task-dependent transformation between representational formats in the motor-to-sensory transformation.

Error Patterns of Dorsal Rhotics: Evidence from Hebrew-Speaking Children

Objective: The aim of this paper was to describe the error patterns of the dorsal rhotic /ʁ̞/ in the speech of typically developing Hebrew-speaking children and to examine the prosodic effect (i.e., position in the word and stress pattern) of its production. Method and Participants: The participants included 50 monolingual Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;6–3;3 years. The children performed an articulation task in which they were asked to articulate 18 disyllabic words composed of vowel-adjacent rhotics in initial, medial, and final word positions in both stressed and unstressed syllables. Results: The results revealed that dorsal rhotics were produced correctly in 78.7% of the target words. The main error patterns were rhotic deletion and devoicing. There were fewer correct productions in initial word positions than in both medial and final word positions. No stress effect was found. In addition, 76% of the children produced the consonant correctly in over half of their productions. Conclusions: The result demonstrating a higher rate of errors in initial word positions may be due to the relatively late acquisition of the initial onset position in multisyllabic Hebrew words. Alternatively, this finding may result from the greater degree of allophonic variation found in this position. The finding that languages with dorsal rhotics have unique error patterns compared to other rhotics strengthens the evidence that rhotic error patterns are dependent on the rhotics’ phonetic characteristics.

Activity associated with speech articulation measured through direct cortical recordings

The insula has been credited with a role in a number of functions, including speech production. Here, we recorded electrocorticography (ECoG) signals from the left insula during pseudoword articulation in two patients undergoing pre-surgical monitoring for the management of medically-intractable epilepsy. Event-related band power (ERBP) activity from electrodes implanted in the superior precentral gyrus of the insula (SPGI) was compared to that of other left hemisphere regions implicated in speech production. Results showed that SPGI contacts demonstrated significantly greater ERBP within the high-gamma frequency range (75–150Hz) during articulation compared to a listening condition. However, frontal and post-central regions demonstrated significantly greater responses to the articulation task compared to the SPGI. Results suggest the SPGI is active during articulation, but frontal and post-central regions demonstrate significantly more robust responses. Given the small sample size, and number of electrodes implanted in the SPGI, further study is warranted to confirm these findings.

Phonological activation of word meanings in grade 5 readers.

Three experiments examined the role of phonology in the activation of word meanings in Grade 5 students. In Experiment 1, homophone and spelling control errors were embedded in a story context and participants performed a proofreading task as they read for meaning. For both good and poor readers, more homophone errors went undetected than spelling control errors. In Experiments 2 and 3, homophone and spelling control errors were in sentence contexts. Experiment 2 used an online sentence verification task, and found that both good and poor readers were less accurate when sentences contained a homophone error than a spelling control error. Furthermore, a difference between the 2 types of sentences was observed even when participants were concurrently performing an articulation task. In Experiment 3, initial reading times were shorter on homophone errors than on spelling controls, and participants were less likely to make a regression from homophone errors than spelling controls. These experiments provide clear evidence that phonology makes an important contribution to the activation of word meanings in Grade 5 readers.

Subliminal repetition primes help detection of phonemes in a picture: Evidence for a phonological level of the priming effects.

In this research, we combine a cross-form word-picture visual masked priming procedure with an internal phoneme monitoring task to examine repetition priming effects. In this paradigm, participants have to respond to pictures whose names begin with a prespecified target phoneme. This task unambiguously requires retrieving the word-form of the target picture's name and implicitly orients participants' attention towards a phonological level of representation. The experiments were conducted within Spanish, whose highly transparent orthography presumably promotes fast and automatic phonological recoding of subliminal, masked visual word primes. Experiments 1 and 2 show that repetition primes speed up internal phoneme monitoring in the target, compared to primes beginning with a different phoneme from the target, or sharing only their first phoneme with the target. This suggests that repetition primes preactivate the phonological code of the entire target picture's name, hereby speeding up internal monitoring, which is necessarily based on such a code. To further qualify the nature of the phonological code underlying internal phoneme monitoring, a concurrent articulation task was used in Experiment 3. This task did not affect the repetition priming effect. We propose that internal phoneme monitoring is based on an abstract phonological code, prior to its translation into articulation.

Translation and articulation in biological motion perception.

Recent models of biological motion processing focus on the articulational aspect of human walking investigated by point-light figures walking in place. However, in real human walking, the change in the position of the limbs relative to each other (referred to as articulation) results in a change of body location in space over time (referred to as translation). In order to examine the role of this translational component on the perception of biological motion we designed three psychophysical experiments of facing (leftward/rightward) and articulation discrimination (forward/backward and leftward/rightward) of a point-light walker viewed from the side, varying translation direction (relative to articulation direction), the amount of local image motion, and trial duration. In a further set of a forward/backward and a leftward/rightward articulation task, we additionally tested the influence of translational speed, including catch trials without articulation. We found a perceptual bias in translation direction in all three discrimination tasks. In the case of facing discrimination the bias was limited to short stimulus presentation. Our results suggest an interaction of articulation analysis with the processing of translational motion leading to best articulation discrimination when translational direction and speed match articulation. Moreover, we conclude that the global motion of the center-of-mass of the dot pattern is more relevant to processing of translation than the local motion of the dots. Our findings highlight that translation is a relevant cue that should be integrated in models of human motion detection.

Learning virtual routes: what does verbal coding do in working memory?

Two experiments were run to complete our understanding of the role of verbal and visuospatial encoding in the construction of a spatial model from visual input. In experiment 1 a dual task paradigm was applied to young adults who learned a route in a virtual environment and then performed a series of nonverbal tasks to assess spatial knowledge. Results indicated that landmark knowledge as asserted by the visual recognition of landmarks was not impaired by any of the concurrent task. Route knowledge, assessed by recognition of directions, was impaired both by a tapping task and a concurrent articulation task. Interestingly, the pattern was modulated when no landmarks were available to perform the direction task. A second experiment was designed to explore the role of verbal coding on the construction of landmark and route knowledge. A lexical-decision task was used as a verbal-semantic dual task, and a tone decision task as a nonsemantic auditory task. Results show that these new concurrent tasks impaired differently landmark knowledge and route knowledge. Results can be interpreted as showing that the coding of route knowledge could be grounded on both a coding of the sequence of events and on a semantic coding of information. These findings also point on some limits of Baddeley's working memory model.

What Does Broca's Area Activation to Sentences Reflect?

There is no doubt that listening to or reading sentences activates the left frontal lobe structures in and around Brocaʼs area. The question is, what process(es) does this activation reflect? In our recent critical review of this literature (Rogalsky & Hickok, 2011) we questioned whether any of this activation reflects processes that are specific to receptive sentence processing. Specifically, we pointed out that sentence activation in the pars opercularis overlaps with activations induced by speech articulation, whereas more anterior (pars triangularis/orbitalis) and dorsal (middle frontal gyrus) sentence-elicited activations overlap with activations induced by cognitive control tasks. Given that sentence processing may be assisted by nonspecific functions such as articulatory rehearsal and cognitive control, this raises serious questions regarding the sentence specificity of activations in Brocaʼs area and vicinity during comprehension. We concluded that the pars opercularis supports sentence comprehension via articulatory rehearsal mechanisms (phonological STM), whereas more anterior and dorsal areas may support sentence processing via some, as yet undetermined, higher-order process such as cognitive control. Additional arguments for this position were also put forward. Federenko and Kanwisher (FK Daneman & Newson, 1992; Slowiaczek & Clifton, 1980; Baddeley, Thomson, & Buchanan, 1975), and an explicit memory probe task may induce articulatory rehearsal. There is little doubt that Brocaʼs area and vicinity play some role in speech production, including sentencerelated processes (e.g., agrammatism is a common correlate of left frontal lesions). Therefore, the differences between sentences and word lists in F&Kʼs data may be a result of covertly producing sentences rather than comprehending them. Our claims specifically target sentence comprehension. A previous study of ours directly assessed the role of production-related processes in driving activations in Brocaʼs area during the performance of a complex sentence comprehension task, semantic plausibility judgment (Rogalsky, Matchin, & Hickok, 2008). We reasoned that sentences that are particularly difficult to understand, such as object-relative clauses, may induce articulatory rehearsal to assist in task performance, compared with simpler sentences, which should rely to a lesser extent on such mechanisms. We found that Brocaʼs area responded more to complex than simple sentences, but that an articulation task, assessed within-subjects, completely overlapped the activation in posterior sectors (pars opercularis) and that the “sentence complexity effect” in this region did not emerge when subjects comprehended sentences during concurrent articulation (articulatory suppression). In other words, articulatory processes explain the Brocaʼs area activation to sentences, at least in the posterior sector. In the anterior sector (pars triangularis), a sentence complexity effect persisted even during concurrent articulation. However, this effect disappeared during a concurrent finger-tapping task, again suggesting that the sentence activations in Brocaʼs area are not sentence specific. University of California-Irvine, University of Southern California

Decoding Motor Signals From the Pediatric Cortex: Implications for Brain-Computer Interfaces in Children

To demonstrate the decodable nature of pediatric brain signals for the purpose of neuroprosthetic control. We hypothesized that children would achieve levels of brain-derived computer control comparable to performance previously reported for adults. Six pediatric patients with intractable epilepsy who were invasively monitored underwent screening for electrocortical control signals associated with specific motor or phoneme articulation tasks. Subsequently, patients received visual feedback as they used these associated electrocortical signals to direct one dimensional cursor movement to a target on a screen. All patients achieved accuracies between 70% and 99% within 9 minutes of training using the same screened motor and articulation tasks. Two subjects went on to achieve maximum accuracies of 73% and 100% using imagined actions alone. Average mean and maximum performance for the 6 pediatric patients was comparable to that of 5 adults. The mean accuracy of the pediatric group was 81% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 71.5-90.5) over a mean training time of 11.6 minutes, whereas the adult group had a mean accuracy of 72% (95% CI: 61.2-84.3) over a mean training time of 12.5 minutes. Maximum performance was also similar between the pediatric and adult groups (89.6% [95% CI: 83-96.3] and 88.5% [95% CI: 77.1-99.8], respectively). Similarly to adult brain signals, pediatric brain signals can be decoded and used for BCI operation. Therefore, BCI systems developed for adults likely hold similar promise for children with motor disabilities.