Familiar Voices Research Articles

In a Familiar Voice: The Dominant Role of Women in Shaping Canadian Policy on Medical Assistance in Dying

Among the many remarkable aspects of the June 2016 introduction of legislation to permit medical assistance in dying (MAiD) in Canada, is the central and even dominant role that women have played in moving this legislation forward, and their ongoing influence as the law continues to be reviewed and revised. The index medical cases on which the higher courts have deliberated concern women patients, and the legal decisions in the various courts have been presided over by women justices. Since the legislation has become law in Canada, women have been among the most vocal and enthusiastic proponents for expanding the criteria to ensure MAiD is more accessible to more Canadians. In this paper, I discuss how the voice of women in this debate is not the ‘different voice’ of second wave feminism first articulated by Carol Gilligan and then adapted and expanded in the ethics of care and relational ethics literature. Instead it is the very familiar voice of the ethics of personal autonomy, individual rights and justice which feminist critics have long decried as inadequate to the task of articulating a comprehensive social morality. I argue for the need to reassert the different voice of relational ethics and the ethics of care into our ongoing discussion of MAiD.

Introduction: Autotheory Theory

Introduction:Autotheory Theory Robyn Wiegman (bio) since its publication in 2015, much attention has been given to the genre-bending conventions of Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts, a book that experiments with the protocols of traditional autobiography by conjoining descriptions of daily life with philosophical reflection and debates in both art criticism and critical theory. Celebrated on its back cover as writing of a new kind, called "autotheory," The Argonauts introduces readers to its hybridity at the outset, juxtaposing love and anal sex with Wittgenstein and a meditation on the limits of language on its very first page. The book's title is drawn from Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, that well-known anti-autobiography crafted by the author whose manifesto, "The Death of the Author," is required reading for students tracing the history of the humanities as it was reshaped by the trans-Atlantic influence of critical theory last century. Whether figured as the "linguistic turn," the "cultural turn," or simply "poststructuralism," the ongoing implications of the broad critique of humanism's epistemological and aesthetic legacies are clearly written into The Argonauts's citational universe, while its personal narrative combines elements of the traditional marriage plot (sex, love, and baby, but not divorce) with the familiar confessional voice of the autobiographer. When read as paradigmatic for the new genre it is said to found, The Argonauts stages autotheory as an encounter between first person narration and theory as an established body of contemporary academic thought. Other experiments in self-narration that now travel under the moniker of autotheory have significantly different aesthetic approaches and theoretical dimensions, making it important to resist the lure to position The Argonauts as the genre's north star. Even Nelson points out that autotheory as the name for a contemporary mode of textual performance was not her invention. "I flat out stole this term from Paul [End Page 1] Preciado's amazing Testo Junkie," she says in an interview with Micha McCrary. "I'm always looking for terms that are not 'memoir' to describe autobiographical writing that exceeds the boundaries of the 'personal.'" But while Preciado opens his book with the declaration, "This is not a memoir" before defining its practice as "a somato-political fiction, a theory of the self, or self-theory," Testo Junkie's scope includes an extensive and intensively academic foray into the intertwined histories of sexuality, pharmaceuticals, and pornography—an emphasis underscored by the academic enunciation of the subtitle, Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (11). Reading self-theory in the context of its academic commitments positions Preciado's use of the first person less as a rendering of critical theory as part of the worlding of everyday life, a la Nelson, than as a virtuoso intrusion of autobiographical confession into the conventions of academic writing itself. To be sure, there is a deep kinship between these works, especially their interest in gender's queer compositions, but the differences they evoke in critical intervention and aesthetic form demonstrate the need not for a standardizing taxonomy of a new genre (an impossible task anyway) but for collective curiosity about the many ways that an autotheoretical impulse can be found not only in contemporary literature and academic criticism but in the traditions of writing and thinking that pollinate each. This special issue of Arizona Quarterly seeks to orient the conversation about autotheory around this pollination, which entails both disentangling and engaging the concept's combination of two highly embattled terms: autobiography and theory. Thought to be a distinct genre of writing since the eighteenth century, autobiography conventionally refers to practices of self-narration that nurture and celebrate the individual life story through the confessional modality of first person address. Linda Anderson traces its literary genealogy to Augustine's Confessions in which the mastery of the self has a religious import whereas its later flourishing is indebted to the secular humanist priority given to the individual in modernity. In its modern self-centered posture, autobiography has a decidedly contentious reputation. On the one hand, its claims to truthfulness and facticity have been sullied by the imprecision that accompanies human memory and by the psychoanalytically inflected suspicion that its devotees are...

“In the Hunter's Footsteps: Chérif Keïta—Griot, Scholar, Teacher”

"In the Hunter's Footsteps:Chérif Keïta—Griot, Scholar, Teacher" Joseph Hellweg (bio) KEYWORDS Chérif Keïta, Massa Makan Diabaté, Mande, hermeneutics, multi-modality, orality, dozos, Manding MOTS-CLÉS Chérif Keïta, Massa Makan Diabaté, Mandé, herméneutique, multimodalité, oralité, dozos, mandingue Re-Encountering Chérif In October of 2010, standing outside a conference center (Point Sud) in Bamako, Mali, with other participants, I heard a familiar voice from across the grounds. It was full of joy and intensity. I knew it well. Sure enough, I saw Chérif Keïta speaking to a group of students he had brought from Carleton College to Bamako. It was no surprise to find him introducing them to life in Mali. He had once done the same for me—though from far away and through books—in Northfield, Minnesota, two and a half decades before. Not surprisingly, Chérif's friendship, mentoring, and scholarship have proven as important to me since graduating from Carleton in 1988 as when I was studying there. I cannot conceive of my life or research without him. His boundless generosity, brilliance, and enthusiasm have repeatedly inspired me and given me hope.1 I therefore begin this tribute to Chérif by explaining what his scholarship means to me as an anthropologist and scholar of religion, as well as its broader significance to anyone interested in Mande Studies. For me, though, learning from Chérif began with his introductory course on African Francophone [End Page 181] literature. But his influence extended far beyond Carleton, as I discovered during my first research stay in Côte d'Ivoire. Even now his presence deepens my understanding of my ethnographic research, and his writing on Mande aesthetics has paved the way for my own future work. I am therefore deeply grateful to belong to a network of scholars who trace their interest in West Africa to Chérif, and I am pleased to share this testimony to Chérif's wisdom and collegiality. Keïta: Griot? Chérif's innovative scholarship places the field of Mande Studies at the heart of the contemporary humanities and social sciences. Outstanding among his many publications, two of his books, Massa Makan Diabaté : Un griot mandingue à la rencontre de l'écriture (1995a) and Outcast to Ambassador: The Musical Odyssey of Salif Keïta (2011; see also Keïta 2001, 2009a), highlight the contributions of Malian Manding performance to the study of textual interpretation and world music. In Chérif's (1995a) study of the writing of Massa Makan Diabaté, he develops a literary hermeneutic grounded in African orature. In doing so, he complements the work of scholars such as Paul Connerton (1989), Ruth Finnegan (2007), and Karin Barber (2000, 2007) who question sharp distinctions between orality and literacy such as those made by Jack Goody (1977, 2010) and Walter Ong (1982). For Finnegan, even unwritten verbal production in Africa—or elsewhere—far from being purely "oral," is "multi-modal," relying on "sonic patternings, visual gestures, facial expressions, interactions with audience and in many cases singing and sometimes dancing or dance-evoking movements," in addition to spoken words (Finnegan 2007: 51). Writing, for Finnegan, is just another "mode" of communication among many, lying along a vast continuum of embodied and material manifestations that verbal creativity may take. The genius of Chérif's approach to the work of Massa Makan Diabaté lies in Cherif's use of the supposedly "oral" aesthetics of Mande griots—jaliw or jeliw in the Bamanankan of Mali—as a hermeneutic with which to interpret Diabaté's writing. Chérif grounds his analytical frame, beyond both orality and literacy, in the dynamics of Mande social life, in which griots play definitive roles (Keïta 1995a: 9-10, 37-38). According to Chérif, Diabaté's writing amounts to more than a transcription, translation, or literary projection of Mande praise songs, or fasa. Rather, it became Diabaté's way of doing a griot's work—jaliya. "Massa Makan Diabaté saw in writing, first and foremost, a way to make a distinct place for himself . . . in the shining line of his fathers and place of origin" (Keïta 1995a: 55...

Can Salient Stimuli Enhance Responses in Disorders of Consciousness? A Systematic Review.

Diagnostic classification of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) is based on clinician's observation of volitional behaviours. However, patients' caregivers often report higher levels of responsiveness with respect to those observed during the clinical assessment. Thus, increasing efforts have been aimed at comprehending the effects of self-referential and emotional stimuli on patients' responsiveness. Here we systematically reviewed the original experimental studies that compared behavioural and electrophysiological responses with salient vs. neutral material in patients in vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome or in minimally conscious state. Most of the reviewed studies showed that salient stimuli (i.e. patient's own or familiar faces, patient's own name, and familiar voices) seem to elicit a higher amount of behavioural or electrophysiological responses with respect to neutral pictures or sounds. Importantly, a quite high percentage of patients seem to respond to salient stimuli only. The present review could foster use of personally salient stimuli in assessing DoC. However, the low overall quality of evidence and some limitations in the general reviewing process might induce caution in transferring these suggestions into clinical practice.

Reading Elizabeth Bishop: An Edinburgh Companion. Edited by Jonathan Ellis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Pp. xii+346.

<i>Reading Elizabeth Bishop: An Edinburgh Companion</i>. Edited by Jonathan Ellis. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019. Pp. xii+346.

Using spatial release from masking to estimate the magnitude of the familiar-voice intelligibility benefit.

The ability to segregate simultaneous speech streams is crucial for successful communication. Recent studies have demonstrated that participants can report 10%-20% more words spoken by naturally familiar (e.g., friends or spouses) than unfamiliar talkers in two-voice mixtures. This benefit is commensurate with one of the largest benefits to speech intelligibility currently known-that which is gained by spatially separating two talkers. However, because of differences in the methods of these previous studies, the relative benefits of spatial separation and voice familiarity are unclear. Here, the familiar-voice benefit and spatial release from masking are directly compared, and it is examined if and how these two cues interact with one another. Talkers were recorded while speaking sentences from a published closed-set "matrix" task, and then listeners were presented with three different sentences played simultaneously. Each target sentence was played at 0° azimuth, and two masker sentences were symmetrically separated about the target. On average, participants reported 10%-30% more words correctly when the target sentence was spoken in a familiar than unfamiliar voice (collapsed over spatial separation conditions); it was found that participants gain a similar benefit from a familiar target as when an unfamiliar voice is separated from two symmetrical maskers by approximately 15° azimuth.

Emotionally expressed voices are retained in memory following a single exposure.

Studies of voice recognition in biology suggest that long exposure may not satisfactorily represent the voice acquisition process. The current study proposes that humans can acquire a newly familiar voice from brief exposure to spontaneous speech, given a personally engaging context. Studies have shown that arousing and emotionally engaging experiences are more likely to be recorded and consolidated in memory. Yet it remains undemonstrated whether this advantage holds for voices. The present study examined the role of emotionally expressive context in the acquisition of voices following a single, 1-minute exposure by comparing recognition of voices experienced in engaging and neutral contexts at two retention intervals. Listeners were exposed to a series of emotionally nuanced and neutral videotaped narratives produced by performers, and tested on the recognition of excerpted voice samples, by indicating whether they had heard the voice before, immediately and after a one-week delay. Excerpts were voices from exposed videotaped narratives, but utilized verbal material taken from a second (nonexposed) narrative provided by the same performer. Overall, participants were consistently able to distinguish between voices that were exposed during the video session and voices that were not exposed. Voices experienced in emotional, engaging contexts were significantly better recognized than those in neutral ones both immediately and after a one-week delay. Our findings provide the first evidence that new voices can be acquired rapidly from one-time exposure and that nuanced context facilitates initially inducting new voices into a repertory of personally familiar voices in long-term memory. The results converge with neurological evidence to suggest that cerebral processes differ for familiar and unfamiliar voices.

A familiar voice in the lab

When voice-activated assistants first appeared on the market, they were perceived as a high-tech frill. Science fiction enthusiasts, reminded of the HAL 9000 computer in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, amused their friends by stumping Amazon’s Alexa with commands to open the pod bay doors. Meanwhile, Apple had to prime its Siri iPhone voice assistant with searing comebacks to the question: What are you wearing? But pretty soon, consumers got serious about voice-activated devices, routinely asking the ever-ready, ever-listening vocal presence in their living space for a check on the weather or to cue up the latest from Taylor Swift. Voice activation is now becoming an even more serious technology, completing its journey from science fiction to fact-based science tool with the emergence of voice-activated laboratory assistants. The trick will be upgrading the natural language processing (NLP) programs underpinning home voice systems to recognize chemical names, technical jargon, full

Overlapped Speech Detection and Competing Speaker Counting–‐Humans Versus Deep Learning

A natural evolution of applications that analyze speech is to improve their robustness to multi-speaker environments. Humans use selective auditory attention and can easily switch focus from one source to another even when listening to a single channel recording with overlapped speech. The same brain feature allows us to detect the number of simultaneously active sources. In order to quantify human level performance for this task we have designed a perception study that evaluates participants’ ability to accurately count multiple speakers in a single channel audio file. We also analyzed the influence of listening time and of hearing familiar voices. The study was carried in 3 sessions, with the help of 31, 38, and 80 volunteers and significantly extends the findings in existing literature. Using the conclusions from the perception analysis, several convolutional neural networks were trained to estimate the number of competing speakers on speech timeframes ranging from 25 ms to 1 s. The same models were instructed to tag overlapped speech and we observed F-score values up to 0.91. For both tasks, the proposed methods lead to lower error than existing approaches and require smaller timeframes. Compared with human listeners, the neural networks can count speakers more accurately by analyzing a considerably shorter recording.

Effect of family reorientation messages on delirium prevention among critically ill patients

Background: About 50%-80% of critically ill patients develop delirium during their intensive care unit (ICU) stay. Adverse events associated with delirium can range from functional disability, cognitive and psychological impairment, dementia and even death. Removal of invasive lines, self-extubation, prolonged sedation and ventilation therapies which delay the ICU liberation, and increase the overall hospital length of stay are also negative squeals of delirium. Delirium has series of adverse events that are not limited to the associated morbidies and mortality, but also extended to include the burden placed on caregivers, families and healthcare services, in addition to increasing the cost of care. Using auditory stimulation as a non-pharmacological intervention can stimulate the affected neural networks, accelerate brain plasticity and avoid sensory deprivation that could induce pain, agitation, and delirium and slow down the patients' recovery. It is evident that familiar auditory stimuli by a familiar voice is eliciting more responses to auditory tones as it can grasp patients' attention without much effort and disrupts ongoing cognitive activities. Accordingly, multicomponent family reorientation strategy has recently been proposed to achieve better outcomes.Methods: A quasi experimental research design was used in this study in which one tool was used for data collection: “Confusion Assessment Method-intensive care unit (CAM-ICU)”. Results: During the five-day intervention period, the delirium free days was all the days in the family voice group, four days in the unfamiliar voice group and no free days in the control group which indicates a significant difference among groups on number of delirium free days (MCp &lt; .001*).Conclusion: Reorienting critically ill patients through recorded messages is an effective strategy to reduce the incidence of delirium. Furthermore, using a familiar family sound is more effective in reducing delirium as proved by the number of delirium free days. During the five-day intervention period, the family voice group shows more delirium free days than the unfamiliar voice group. The intervention used in this study is easy, costless and effective strategy in prevention of delirium among critically ill patients.

The Effects of Familiar Voices on the Level of Consciousness among Comatose Patients: A Single-Blind Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Brain injury can reduce consciousness and the ability to respond to environmental stimulation.&#x0D; Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of familiar voices on the level of consciousness (LOC) among comatose patients with a brain injury hospitalized in the intensive care unit.&#x0D; Methods: In this randomized controlled trial, sixty comatose patients with head trauma were conveniently selected from an intensive care unit of a hospital in Rasht, Iran, and randomly allocated to either a control or an intervention group. Participants in the intervention group received auditory stimulation for three consecutive days and the level of consciousness was compared in two groups. The Glasgow Coma Scale was used to assess the patients’ level of consciousness. The data were analyzed through the Chi-square, the paired-samples t, student’s t test, and the repeated-measures analysis of variance. &#x0D; Results: A significant increase was found in the mean LOC in the intervention group after every daily auditory stimulation (P&lt;0.05). However, no significant changes were observed in the control group (P&gt;0.05). The repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed that the time and interaction of time and groups were statistically significant (P&lt;0.001).&#x0D; Conclusion: Auditory stimulation with familiar voice was effective in improving levels of consciousness among comatose patients with a brain injury after three days.

PROCESSING INSTRUCTION AND THE EFFECTS OF INPUT MODALITY AND VOICE FAMILIARITY ON THE ACQUISITION OF THE FRENCH CAUSATIVE CONSTRUCTION

AbstractTwo eye-tracking experiments tested (a) whether L2 learners benefit from the consistency of input modality (auditory instead of written processing instruction [PI] training) and (b) whether they benefit from training using the same voice as the test voice. Results confirmed a robust effect of PI training on picture-selection accuracy, yet the improvement did not differ between training modalities. Eye-tracking data revealed resilient looks to the incorrect (first noun = agent) picture even after training, demonstrating the challenge in tuning to the grammatical forms while processing auditory L2 input. The effect of voice familiarity was larger for the male voice, which had longer duration for the later cue (à Marie/Pierre) than the female voice. Auditory PI training can be as effective as written PI training, but it does not immediately enhance learners’ sensitivity to grammatical cues. However, learners may benefit from hearing a salient grammatical cue toward the end of the sentence.

A New Kind of Beauty

A New Kind of Beauty Sarah White (bio) The Haunt Road Karen Garthe Spuyten Duyvil Press www.spuytenduyvil.net 102 Pages; Print, $15.00 The first line of "flag that saved a tribe," which opens Karen Garthe's The hauntRoad, is "They were in Cairo like tiny cups of tea." Rather than wondering who "they" were, or why Cairo, or just how "they" resembled cups of tea, I recommend inquiring what we can expect language to do in the work under review. We soon have to conclude that, as a poet, Garthe simply does not send words on journalistic errands. Who? What? When? et al. are the wrong questions to ask of her poems. She does not use words to describe things. "They" didn't LOOK like tiny cups of tea or smell or taste or sound like them. "They" simply WERE like them, the same way "they" were in Cairo, which remains unexplained, along with the surprising typography of the poem's title because Explain is another thing this poet does not do with words. Any further information we receive about the cups-of-tea-people will be strictly lyrical and rhythmical: "the lightest part of cloud they were, such powers of everything." The poem diligently, religiously, avoids making a certain kind of sense and, at the same time, offers ways of reading, as well as emphatic hints as to how NOT to read: We demanded trick words STOP explaining ourselves STOP I have taken mybreasts and proffer them. . . We get, not an explication, but an erotic invitation. What more do we want? Perhaps a little additional advice: "STOP laughing STOP / any annoying / Knowingness." I will keep this in mind as I proceed along The hauntRoad. In a poem called "scalloped," I am told that "Poems hang in air boats and grammars of / Mercy," maybe not all poems, but these, certainly. Each one evokes its décor, about which there is much sweetness, sensuality, and, above all, musicality: "some nights lay on the heart / like King David's musician / harping." There is also keen distress in these lush scenarios, for instance, the distress of "misunderstanding poetry, panicked and unconsoled. The persistent defeat you wear in the dream." There are even worse distresses than that; the poems often struggle gorgeously against Love's elusiveness—a ubiquitous theme, of course, in lyric poetry, though here it rarely, if ever, laments predictably on behalf of the poet's own person. It is more likely to complain on behalf of Cleopatra in her "sunk palace," Rebekah at her well, Eurydice in her "Many Caves" or a (Jamesian?) "Little Sinecure governess come face to face with her master." These are some of the legendary literary figures with whom this poet wants to attune our hearts. Somewhere in the mix is a passionate, familiar voice: Garthe's ravishing "sharp Prow," a sailboat-shaped poem, gives us swoon oars stirring delicate night delicate peace and: What we'd do with such a starred clear chance. . . a satin crossing, a long kiss The same contrary-to-fact erotic diction found in Emily Dickinson's Wild Nights-Wild Nights!Were I with theeWild nights should beOur luxury! perhaps the same "Thee" as one that opens Garthe's "Wild gray door." But it's foolish to pretend I recognize the precise origin or emotional engine of these poems. I'm reminded that I have been told to minimize "annoying Knowingness." In most cases, I do not know and cannot trace the poems to a single origin. They seem to spring fully armed—and fully surprising—from a poetic mind like none I've encountered, a mind that seems deeply loyal to the gods of Surprise. I constantly find myself, as a poet, asking (though I tell myself not to), "Where could THAT have come from?" Comfort of pepper dogs joy in the woodsand a moonshine sip handing back the lost understanding of Imposter on the rim of the flavor deal's shakedown I can't be sure exactly why but it matters in the book's thematics whether a poem is located in the woods, or on the ocean, or both...

Cheetahs discriminate familiar and unfamiliar human voices

Domestic species can make the distinction between several human sub-groups, especially between familiar and unfamiliar persons. The Domestication hypothesis assumes that such advanced cognitive skills were driven by domestication itself. However, such capacities have been shown in wild species as well, highlighting the potential role of early experience and proximity with humans. Nevertheless, few studies have been focusing on the use of acoustic cues in wild species and more comparative studies are necessary to better understand this ability. Cheetah is a vocal, semi-social species, often hand raised when captive, making it therefore a good candidate for studying the ability to perceive differences in human voices. In this study, we used playback experiments to investigate whether cheetahs are able to distinguish between the voices of their familiar caretakers and visitors. We found that cheetahs showed a higher visual attention, changed activity more often and faster when the voice was familiar than when it was unfamiliar. This study is the first evidence that wild felids are able to discriminate human voices and could support the idea that early experience and proximity to humans are at least as important as domestication when it comes to the ability to recognize humans.

The role of voice familiarity in bilingual speech processing

Interlocutor context affects proficient bilinguals’ spoken language processing. For instance, bilinguals in a visual-auditory lexical decision task are able to predict the context-appropriate language based on the visual cues of interlocutor context (e.g., Molnar et al., 2015). Because it has been also demonstrated that bilinguals, as compared to monolinguals, process talker-voice information more efficiently (Levi, 2017), in the current study we addressed the question whether bilinguals are able to predict context-appropriate language based on voice information alone. First, in a same-different task, English monolingual and bilingual participants were familiarized with the voices of 4 female speakers who either spoke English (shared language across the monolingual and bilingual participants) or Farsi (unknown to both monolingual and bilingual participants). Then, in a lexical decision task, the participants heard the same 4 voices again, but all of the voices spoke in English this time. We predicted that if the participants established a voice-language link in the first part of the task, then their response times should decrease when they hear an “English-voice” (as opposed to a “Farsi-voice”) uttering an English word in the lexical decision task. Accordingly, our preliminary results suggest that the bilinguals’ performance is facilitated by the established voice-language link.

Familiar Voices Are More Intelligible, Even if They Are Not Recognized as Familiar

We can recognize familiar people by their voices, and familiar talkers are more intelligible than unfamiliar talkers when competing talkers are present. However, whether the acoustic voice characteristics that permit recognition and those that benefit intelligibility are the same or different is unknown. Here, we recruited pairs of participants who had known each other for 6 months or longer and manipulated the acoustic correlates of two voice characteristics (vocal tract length and glottal pulse rate). These had different effects on explicit recognition of and the speech-intelligibility benefit realized from familiar voices. Furthermore, even when explicit recognition of familiar voices was eliminated, they were still more intelligible than unfamiliar voices—demonstrating that familiar voices do not need to be explicitly recognized to benefit intelligibility. Processing familiar-voice information appears therefore to depend on multiple, at least partially independent, systems that are recruited depending on the perceptual goal of the listener.

Offering a Familiar Voice After Trauma and Upheaval

Offering a Familiar Voice After Trauma and Upheaval

Infants Discriminate the Affective Expressions of their Peers: The Roles of Age and Familiarization Time.

Research examining infants' discrimination of affect often uses unfamiliar faces and voices of adults. Recently, research has examined infant discrimination of affect in familiar faces and voices. In much of this research, infants were habituated to the affective expressions using a "standard" 50% habituation criterion. We extend this line of research by examining infants' discrimination of unfamiliar peers', that is, 4-month-olds, dynamic, facial, and vocal affective expressions and assessing how discrimination is affected by changing the habituation criterion. In two experiments, using an infant-controlled habituation design, we explored 3- and 5-month-olds' discrimination of their peers' dynamic audiovisual displays of positive and negative expressions of affect. Results of Experiment 1, using a 50% habituation criterion, revealed that 5-month-olds, but not 3-month-olds discriminated the affective expressions of their peers. In Experiment 2, we examined whether 3-month-olds' lack of discrimination in Experiment 1 was a result of insufficient habituation (i.e., familiarization). Specifically, 3-month-olds were habituated using a 70% habituation criterion, providing them with longer familiarization time. Results revealed that using the more stringent habituation criterion, 3-month-olds showed longer habituation times, that is increased familiarization, and discriminated their peers' affective expressions. Results are discussed in terms of infants' discrimination of affect, the role of familiarization time, and limitations of the 50% habituation criterion.

Standing sentinel during human sleep: Continued evaluation of environmental stimuli in the absence of consciousness

While it is a well-established finding that subjects' own names (SON) and familiar voices are salient during wakefulness, we here investigated processing of environmental stimuli during sleep including deep N3 and REM sleep. Besides the effects of sleep depth we investigated how sleep-specific EEG patterns (i.e. sleep spindles and slow oscillations [SOs]) relate to stimulus processing. Using 256-channel EEG we studied processing of auditory stimuli by means of event-related oscillatory responses (de-/synchronisation, ERD/ERS) and potentials (ERPs) in N = 17 healthy sleepers. We varied stimulus salience by manipulating subjective (SON vs. unfamiliar name) and paralinguistic emotional relevance (familiar vs. unfamiliar voice, FV/UFV). Results reveal that evaluation of voice familiarity continues during all NREM sleep stages and even REM sleep suggesting a ‘sentinel processing mode’ of the human brain in the absence of wake-like consciousness. Especially UFV stimuli elicit larger responses in a 1–15 Hz range suggesting they continue being salient. Beyond this, we find that sleep spindles and the negative slope of SOs attenuate information processing. However, unlike previously suggested they do not uniformly inhibit information processing, but inhibition seems to be scaled to stimulus salience.

Does Implicit Voice Learning Improve Spoken Language Processing? Implications for Clinical Practice.

In typical interactions with other speakers, including a clinical environment, listeners become familiar with voices through implicit learning. Previous studies have found evidence for a Familiar Talker Advantage (better speech perception and spoken language processing for familiar voices) following explicit voice learning. The current study examined whether a Familiar Talker Advantage would result from implicit voice learning. Thirty-three adults and 16 second graders were familiarized with 1 of 2 talkers' voices over 2 days through live interactions as 1 of 2 experimenters administered standardized tests and interacted with the listeners. To assess whether this implicit voice learning would generate a Familiar Talker Advantage, listeners completed a baseline sentence recognition task and a post-learning sentence recognition task with both the familiar talker and the unfamiliar talker. No significant effect of voice familiarity was found for either the children or the adults following implicit voice learning. Effect size estimates suggest that familiarity with the voice may benefit some listeners, despite the lack of an overall effect of familiarity. We discuss possible clinical implications of this finding and directions for future research.