Auditory Material Research Articles

Phonemic Discrimination in Callosal Agenesis

Children with callosal genesis have congenital absence of the corpus callosum. Previous analyses of these subjects have shown that they have significant difficulty on rhyming tasks and tasks of explicit sound organisation. This study investigated whether such difficulties were also manifested on simpler tasks requiring the discrimination and repetition of similar sounding linguistic material. None of the acallosal children tested performed. This suggests a possible impairment in the initial registration or analysis of auditory material and possible bases for this deficit are discussed. In cases of callosal agenesis in which impairments in auditory discrimination are more severe there may be a more profound impact upon language development.

Articulatory rehearsal and phonological storage in working memory.

The theoretical distinction between an articulatory control process and a short-term phonological store was supported in five experiments on immediate serial recall. In Experiment 1, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the word length effect but not the phonemic similarity effect. In Experiment 2, the two latter effects were found to be independent with auditory presentation. In Experiment 3, the effects of irrelevant speech and word length were found to be independent with visual presentation. In Experiment 4, articulatory suppression during the presentation and recall of auditory material abolished the phonemic similarity effect with a slow presentation rate. Nevertheless, in Experiment 5, articulatory suppression with a conventional presentation rate did not reduce the effect of phonemic similarity, even when a 10-sec interval was interposed between presentation and recall. These results indicate that the encoding, maintenance, and retrieval of spoken material within the phonological store do not depend on a process of articulatory rehearsal.

Critical Period Effects in Second Language Acquisition: The Effect of Written versus Auditory Materials on the Assessment of Grammatical Competence*

Current research has supported the existence of a critical period for the acquisition of the grammar of a second language. In one study, native speakers of Chinese and Korean, who had arrived in the U.S. at varying ages, were tested on their knowledge of English grammar using an auditory grammaticality judgment task (Johnson & Newport, 1989). Subjects were tested only after having lived in the U.S. for many years as students or academicians. The present study asks whether the poorer performance exhibited by the older arrivals was due to their difficulty with English grammar or merely due to extragrammatical properties associated with an auditory task. The same subjects who participated in the earlier study were tested a year later using an untimed written version of the same test. A strong negative correlation was still observed between age of arrival and performance on the written test: r=‐.54 for subjects of all ages of arrival; r=‐.73 for subjects who arrived to the U.S. before adulthood. Performance was higher on the written version than on the auditory version, but only for the older arrivals. The possibility that earlier formal classroom training boosted the adult arrivals’ performance on the written test is discussed.

Privileged access by irrelevant speech to short-term memory: the role of changing state.

Memory for visually presented items is impaired by speech that is played as an irrelevant background. The paper presents the view that changing state of the auditory material is an important prerequisite for this disruption. Four experiments studied the effects of sounds varying in complexity in an attempt to establish which features of changing state in the auditory signal lead to diminished recall. Simple unvarying or repetitive speech sounds were not sufficient to induce the irrelevant speech effect (Experiment 1): in addition, simple analogues of speech, possessing regular or irregular envelopes and using a range of carriers, failed to imitate the action of speech (Experiment 2). Variability of between-utterance phonology in the irrelevant stream (Experiment 3) emerged as a crucial factor. Moreover, predictability of the syllable sequence did not reduce the degree of disruption (Experiment 4) suggesting that supra-syllabic characteristics of the speech are of little importance. The results broadly support the idea that disruption of short-term memory only occurs when the speech stream changes in state. It is argued that disruption occurs in memory when cues to serial order based on phonological representations of heard material interfere with the phonological codes of visual origin. It is suggested that cues to changing state of the speech input contaminate those associated with items of visual origin, which are already in a phonological store.

Cortical DC potential shifts accompanying auditory and visual short-term memory

Negative DC potential shifts appeared over the scalp during the performance of verbal and non-verbal short-term memory tasks. Three items were successively presented (presentation of memory items) and then had to be retained in memory for 3 sec (memory retention) before being compared to a probe which was either a member (in set) or not a member (out of set) of the memory set. Verbal items (the digits “1” through “9”) were tested in the auditory and visual modality and non-verbal items (musical notes) were tested in the auditory modality. Stimulus modality had a significant effect on DC potential shifts during both presentation of memory items and memory retention. There was a sustained negative shift during these periods which was larger over frontal regions with auditory than with visual material whereas the negative shift was larger over posterior temporal regions with visual than with auditory material. Out of 21 subjects who participated in the study, 9 reported the use of visual images in the auditory task, 5 used subvocal auditory rehearsal in the visual task and 7 used imagery concordant with the stimulus modality being memorized. These different strategies had a significant effect on the amplitudes and distribution of the DC potential shifts. The speed of response affected the amplitude of the DC potential shifts in the frontal regions, being larger with fast RTs than with slow RTs but only when verbal items were being processed. These results indicate that stimulus modality, modality of mental imagery, and speed of scanning of the memory store affect DC potential shifts during a 3 sec period of memory retention.

Temporal coding in rhythm tasks revealed by modality effects

Temporal coding has been studied by examining the perception and reproduction of rhythms and by examining memory for the order of events in a list. We attempt to link these research programs both empirically and theoretically. Glenberg and Swanson (1986) proposed that the superior recall of auditory material, compared with visual material, reflects more accurate temporal coding for the auditory material. In this paper, we demonstrate that a similar modality effect can be produced in a rhythm task. Auditory rhythms composed of stimuli of two durations are reproduced more accurately than are visual rhythms. Furthermore, it appears that the auditory superiority reflects enhanced chunking of the auditory material rather than better identification of durations.

Auditory and reading comprehension in hyperlexia: Semantic and syntactic skills

In contrast to dyslexia, in hyperlexia, there is precocious development of reading in the absence of other precocious skills, thus reading is significantly above expectation on the basis of prediction from age and intelligence. A psycholinguistic investigation is reported, of a 10 year old, non-autistic hyperlexic, on tasks of both written and auditory presentation of single words, sentences and text. M.S. shows good development of both phonological and lexical reading mechanisms. He does not display a pattern of reading performance which resembles any selective reading disorder and there is no evidence that the nature of his reading development, in relation to accuracy, is abnormal in style. However, reading accuracy is significantly better than both reading comprehension and auditory comprehension. The comprehension deficit does not affect language in an undifferentiated way. Semantic comprehension is normal for age but syntactic comprehension is significantly impaired. Thus, although there are no unusual dissociations in relation to reading accuracy, there is a significant dissociation between reading accuracy and reading comprehension, and also between semantic and syntactic comprehension of both written and auditory material which argues for modularity in the development of these subsystems.

Facilitating Listening Comprehension Through Rate-Control

Rate-controlled recorded text can not only be used to facilitate listen ing comprehension through reducing speech rate but it can also help language learners become accustomed to increasingly rapid deliveries. Auditory material of this kind can be produced by speech compressors, temporal spacing or multi-recording of texts. This paper, therefore, briefly describes L1 and L2 research on temporal variables relevant to facilitating listening comprehension. This is followed by a consideration of practical applications of this research to L2 listening comprehension in preparing recorded materials, in teacher-talk and in testing.

短期記憶における視覚記憶と聴覚記憶の差異

In order to clarify the differences between the visual and the auditory memories and the interference effect between them, a paired presentation method was developed. In this method, the subject under the experimental condition memorized two independent sequences of random digits, which were presented simultaneously digit by digit, the digits of the one sequence being presented visually and the digits of the other auditorily. After the presentation, subjects were asked to recall first either the visual or the auditory digit sequence, and then the other sequence. The subject under the control condition, on the other hand, memorized one sequence of random digits which were presented either visually or auditorily, and after recalling them memorized another sequence of random digits presented in the other modality. The results can be summarized as follows. (1) Under the experimental as well as under the control conditions, the recency effect appeared in the auditory memory task, but it did not in the visual memory task. (2) The performance for visual by presented digits under the experimental condition was lower than that under the control condition, whereas the performance for auditorily presented digits under the former was equal to that under the latter. The results presented might suggest that: (1) there are independent visual and auditory memories in the short-term memory; and (2) the memorizing of the auditory materials interferes with the memorizing of the visual one, but the latter does not interfere with the former.

Generalization of visual matching by a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Evidence for invariance of cognitive performance with visual and auditory materials.

Generalization of visual matching by a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Evidence for invariance of cognitive performance with visual and auditory materials.

The fallacy of the cross-modal Stroop effect: A rejoinder to Cowan (1989)

An Attempt at Further Replication of Cowan and Barron (1987) Cowan (1989) pointed to a number of methodological differences between Cowan and Barron's (1987) study and the attempted replications reported by Miles et al. (1989). In particular, the studies differed in (1) the rate of presentation of auditory stimuli (1.66 words/sec and 1 word/sec, respectively), and (2) the size of the potential response set (five items and four items, respectively). It is acknowledged that these methodological differences may plausibly account for the observed discrepancy in the data. Because of this possibility, the experiment reported here adopted a procedure identical in all respects to that of Cowan and Barron (1987), with the exception that the 30 subjects (19 women and 11 men) completed the task in only two auditory conditions: silence and spoken color words. Auditory material (a male voice) was presented in digitized form over headphones at a rate of 1.6 words/sec and at an intensity of 75 dBA. This intensity level is some 10 dBA below Cowan and Barron's reported intensity of 85 dBA (see Cowan, 1989, Note 2). However, as Cowan argued, if the comparison is with silence, then intensity is unimportant. For details of the visual materials, see Cowan and Barron (1987). Both reading times and error rates were recorded. A 2 x 2 analysis of variance (ANDVA) was performed on the reading times with visual condition (color words and Xs) and auditory condition (spoken color words and silence) as within-subjects factors. The main effect of visual materials [F(I,29) = 496.07,p .89, sign test). With respect to reading errors, a 2 x 2 ANDVA revealed a main effect of visual materials [F(I,29) = 37.33, p < .001]. Again, neither the main effect of auditory condition [F(1,29) = 0.22] nor the interaction effect approached significance [F(1,29) = 0.09; see Table IJ. Clearly, these data unequivocally failed to confirm the results presented by Cowan and Barron (1987). Reading times in this study for the spoken color-word condition are comparable across visual materials to those reported by Cowan and Barron; however, the error rate reported here is below that reported by Cowan and Barron (1987; see Figure 2). In the present study, the subjects encountered spoken color-word interference on two out offour trials (50%), compared with 2 out of 10 trials (20%) in Cowan and Barron. However, in absolute terms, subjects in both studies received the same number of spoken color-word trials. Therefore, Cowan's (1989) suggestion that the crossmodal Stroop interference effect might attenuate with increased experience cannot account for our failure to replicate Cowan and Barron's original findings. In sum, the present study, with only minor procedural differences from Cowan and Barron's study, produced data completely consistent with our earlier findings, and in direct contradiction to the data of those authors.

Generalization of visual matching by a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Evidence for invariance of cognitive performance with visual and auditory materials.

Generalization of visual matching by a bottlenosed dolphin (Tursiops truncatus): Evidence for invariance of cognitive performance with visual and auditory materials.

Right-hemisphere responses from preschool children to temporal cues to speech and nonspeech materials: Electrophysiological correlates

Auditory-evoked responses (AERs) were recorded from scalp electrodes placed over the left and right temporal hemisphere regions of 12 preschool children while they listened to a series of velar stop consonants which varied in voice onset time (VOT) and to two-formant tone stimuli with temporal lags comparable to the speech materials. A late occurring negative peak (N400) in the right hemisphere AERs discriminated between both the speech and nonspeech materials in a categorical-like manner. Sex-related hemisphere differences were also noted in response to the two different stimulus types. These results replicate earlier work with speech materials and suggest that temporal delays for both speech and nonspeech auditory materials are processed in the right hemisphere.

Using digitized auditory stimuli on the Macintosh computer

Hardware/software packages that digitize sound on the Apple Macintosh can help researchers prepare and present auditory materials needed for their experiments. Common features and benefits of commercially available sound digitizing packages are discussed in terms of some possible applications to cognitive psychology experiments.

Articulation and verbal short-term memory: Evidence from anarthria

Abstract The role of articulation in verbal short-term memory was investigated in two patients suffering from a selective and total impairment of overt articulation. Case GF was totally speechless due to a ventral pontine lesion and case MDC due to bilateral anterior opercular softenings. Both patients had normal auditory comprehension, a digit span performance within the normal range, and displayed the standard effect of phonological similarity in immediate memory performance with auditory material. This pattern of results suggests that a total impairment of overt articulation, occurring in adult age, does not disrupt the function of the phonological short-term store component of working memory. These conclusions are consistent with the view that a phonological nonarticulatory input short-term storage system is a main functional component involved in auditory span performance. Finally, while GF's phonological processing of visual material was unaffected, in MDC's case a defective phonological recoding of...

Ordering and reordering in the auditory and visual modalities.

This study investigates the hypothesis that the modality effect (i.e., the often-found recall advantage of the last few items presented in the auditory- rather than visual-input modality) is attributable to a directional auditory trace. Such a directional trace should help performance of forward item-to-item recall, but should hurt performance if mental reordering is required. However, it was found in our Experiment 1 that mental item-to-item reordering of the materials did not affect the modality effect. In Experiment 2, strict control was exercised over the order of recall of chunks of items, as well as over the order of recall within chunks. It was found that the item-to-item reordering of the materials had little effect on the modality effect. However, the larger scale order of recall of the chunks had a large effect on the modality effect. If recall was in a forward order (i.e., first chunk, second chunk, third chunk), there was a dramatic superiority of the auditory materials on the last chunk. If the recall order was backward (third chunk, second chunk, first chunk), the modality effect was inconsequential. These results suggest that the modality effect is related to access to large memorial units rather than to item-to-item associations.

Asymmetries in Musical Aesthetic Judgments

Musicians and non-musicians, male and females, were presented with different selections of classical music, both mono- and poly-instrumental, under stereophonic conditions which allowed them to reverse the left-right distribution of the auditory material. The musicians preferred the leading (usually the high) voice to be heard by the left ear; the effect was noted with both sexes but it was significant only with the males. The results are examined in relation to other laterality patterns and an analogy to orchestral arrangements in both the West and the East is noted.

Role of temporal overlap of visual and auditory material in forming dual media associations.

Abstract : This paper contains some results about forming associations between the visuals and spoken material in a dual media presentation such as film or television. In particular, it reports the role played by the overlap in time of visual and auditory linguistic material. Fourteen groups of college students were shown a 30 min film which introduces an assembly kit, its pieces, their names, and some of their uses. The film's visuals and narration could be presented in synchrony or one could be shifted relative to the other up to 21 sec. Subjects saw the film in one of seven versions: visuals moved relative to narration by -21, -14, -7, 0 (synchrony), 7, 14, or 21 sec. They were tested immediately or after a week for recall of the names, given the pieces. Scores were highest at zero- and 7-day delay for two groups: synchrony, and visuals 7 sec before narration. At 0-delay, each of the other five groups scored about 80% of the highest groups. At 7-day delay, the other five groups scored differently: the 3 narration first groups were about 30% less than the two visuals first groups. The temporal order in which visual and auditory elements are presented differentially influences the formation of dual media associations. When auditory precedes visuals, much of the auditory component is lost. Two possible theoretical interpretations are given, and practical applications are discussed. (Author)

Role of temporal overlap of visual and auditory material in forming dual media associations.

Role of temporal overlap of visual and auditory material in forming dual media associations.

Left-ear superiority in children for processing auditory emotional material.

Left-ear superiority in children for processing auditory emotional material.