Speaker's Frequency Research Articles

Factors affecting the documentation of spoken safety-netting advice in routine GP consultations: a cross-sectional study.

BackgroundPrevious studies have reported how often safety-netting is documented in medical records, but it is not known how this compares with what is verbalised and what factors might influence the consistency of documentation.AimTo compare spoken and documented safety-netting advice and to explore factors associated with documentation.Design and settingA cross-sectional study, using an existing GP consultations archive.MethodObservational coding involving classifying and quantifying medical record entries and comparison with spoken safety-netting advice in 295 video-/audio-recorded consultations. Associations were tested using logistic regression.ResultsTwo-thirds of consultations (192/295) contained spoken safety-netting advice that applied to less than half of the problems assessed (242/516). Only one-third of consultations (94/295) had documented safety-netting advice, which covered 20.3% of problems (105/516). The practice of GPs varied widely, from those that did not document their safety-netting advice to those that nearly always did so (86.7%). GPs were more likely to document their safety-netting advice for new problems (P = 0.030), when only a single problem was discussed in a consultation (P = 0.040), and when they gave specific rather than generic safety-netting advice (P = 0.007). In consultations where multiple problems were assessed (n = 139), the frequency of spoken and documented safety-netting advice decreased the later a problem was assessed.ConclusionGPs frequently do not document the safety-netting advice they have given to patients, which may have medicolegal implications in the event of an untoward incident. GPs should consider how safely they can assess and document more than one problem in a single consultation and this risk should be shared with patients to help manage expectations.

Japanese Verba Analysis on The Use of Duration, Intensity, and Frequency by Indonesian and Malaysia Teachers

This research is focused on case studies involving six speakers, native and non-native, in pronouncing Japanese verbs. This research includes an acoustic phonetic study with the help of the PRAAT application which is used to calculate the duration, intensity, and frequency of speech. The subject of discussion in this study were eight Japanese verbs. The research is focused on looking at the similarities and differences of teachers from Indonesia and Malaysia in terms of duration, intensity, and frequency compared with native speech. The research method for obtaining a comparison of the duration, intensity, and frequency of speakers is descriptive-analysis by presenting data in the form of numeric tables and graphs. This study involved two native speakers and six non-native speakers, namely four speakers from Indonesia and two from Malaysia. The data collection method uses PRAAT with audio files as the main data source. The results of this study indicate that the eight target verbs [au], [iku], [isogu], [demasu], [dekakeru], [orinai], [hairimasu], and [norikaemasu] occur variations in terms of duration, intensity, and frequencies spoken by non-natively. For non-native women, the tendency is not too far different from native, both non-native from Indonesia and from Malaysia. However, there was a significant variation for non-native males. Non-native speakers from Malaysia tended to be the same for minimum measures of intensity and frequency, while those from Indonesia tended to be the same for maximum measures of intensity and frequency. For the duration of non-native speakers from Malaysia, the percentage is closer to the native duration. Meanwhile, there were variations in intensity and frequency between non-natives from Indonesia and Malaysia.

Density Estimation System of Space Users Using High Frequencies of Speaker

In this paper, we propose a density estimation system of user density at the closed space using high frequencies of speaker and microphone of smart device. High frequencies are sent to the closed space by the server speaker of the density estimation system, and smart devices located at the space detect the high frequencies via the microphone of each device. The smart devices detecting the high frequencies send data to the server system, and the system calculates data from the smart devices. To evaluate performance of the proposed system, we did some experiments with the density estimation system and 20 smart devices. According to the test results, the proposed system showed 96.5% accuracy, and we confirm that the system is very useful for density estimation. Therefore, this system can precisely estimate user density at the closed space, and it could be useful technology for the density estimation of space users and measurement of space using state at indoor space.

On the Acceptance of the Null That by Bilingual Catalan/Spanish L2 Learners of English

The research presented in this article aims at providing new data on L2 learner knowledge and recognition of the null that in complement clauses. The speech of English native speakers reveals a kind of variation which implies that where that may be present or absent in clauses selected by many common verbs such as say or think there is no preference for one of the two options. In this article, judgement data of bilingual Catalan/Spanish upper-intermediate and advanced L2 learners of English are analysed bearing in mind two possible factors that, according to previous research, may influence the acceptance of this phenomenon, level of proficiency and absence versus presence of instruction. A relevant issue regarding this construction is that performing like a native does not always imply using one grammatical structure in the target language and gradually doing away with the use of another ungrammatical one; it rather implies being able to detect native speaker frequency in the use of one of the two possible options, overt that usage or the null that. Our results show that learning in this domain depends more on degree in language proficiency than in the specific instruction provided, that both choices do not pose the same difficulty and that advanced L2 learners of English can display a native-like acceptance of the null that option. The option that presents more challenges is the one where there is no L1 facilitation.

High Frequency Predicates for Preschoolers Basedon the Frequency of Speakers

배경 및 목적: 이 연구는 사용 화자 수를 중심으로 학령전기 아동이 자발화에서 산출하는 고빈도 용언 목록을 제시하고, 그 특성을 분석하는 것을 목적으로 한다. 사용 빈도 중심의 어휘 빈도 자료는 단어의 총 사용량을 보여줄 수는 있지만, 얼마나 많은 화자가 그 단어를 사용하고 있는지에 대한 정보는 보여주지 못한다. 어휘 빈도는 대화자나 대화 주제에 의해...

Lexico-semantic effects on word naming in Persian: does age of acquisition have an effect?

The age of acquisition (AoA) of a word has an effect on skilled reading performance. According to the arbitrary-mapping (AM) hypothesis, AoA effects on word naming are a consequence of arbitrary mappings between input and output in the lexical network. The AM hypothesis predicts that effects of AoA will be observed when words have unpredictable orthography-to-phonology (OP) mappings. The Persian writing system is characterized by a degree of consistency between OP mappings, making words transparent. However, the omission of vowels in the script used by skilled readers makes the OP mappings of many words unpredictable or opaque. In this study, we used factor analysis to test which lexico-semantic variables, including AoA, predict the reading aloud of monosyllabic Persian words with different spelling transparencies (transparent or opaque). Linear mixed-effect regression analysis revealed that a Lexical factor (loading on word familiarity, spoken frequency, and written frequency) and a Semantic factor (loading on AoA, imageability, and familiarity) significantly predict word-naming latencies in Persian. Further analysis revealed a significant interaction between AoA and transparency, with larger effects of AoA for opaque than for transparent words and a significant interaction between imageability and AoA on reading opaque words; that is, AoA effects are more pronounced for low-imageability opaque words than for high-imageability opaque words. Interactions between these factors and spelling transparency suggest that late-acquired opaque words receive greater input from the semantic reading route. Implications for understanding the AoA effects on word naming in Persian are discussed.

Nonuniform speaker normalization using affine transformation

In this paper, a well-motivated nonuniform speaker normalization model that affinely relates the formant frequencies of speakers enunciating the same sound is proposed. Using the proposed affine model, the corresponding universal-warping function that is required for normalization is shown to have the same parametric form as the mel scale formula. The parameters of this universal-warping function are estimated from the vowel formant data and are shown to be close to the commonly used formula for the mel scale. This shows an interesting connection between nonuniform speaker normalization and the psychoacoustics based mel scale. In addition, the affine model fits the vowel formant data better than commonly used ad hoc normalization models. This work is motivated by a desire to improve the performance of speaker-independent speech recognition systems, where speaker normalization is conventionally done by assuming a linear-scaling relationship between spectra of speakers. The proposed affine relation is extended to describe the relationship between spectra of speakers enunciating the same sound. On a telephone-based connected digit recognition task, the proposed model provides improved recognition performance over the linear-scaling model.

Object and action picture naming in three- and five-year-old children

The objectives were to explore the often reported noun advantage in children's language acquisition using a picture naming paradigm and to explore the variables that affect picture naming performance. Participants in Experiment 1 were aged three and five years, and in Experiment 2, five years. The stimuli were action and object pictures. In Experiment 1, action pictures produced more errors than object pictures for the three-year-olds, but not the five-year-olds. A qualitative analysis of the errors revealed a somewhat different pattern of errors across age groups. In Experiment 2 there was no robust difference in accuracy for the actions and objects but naming times were longer for actions. Across both experiments, imageability was a robust predictor of object naming performance, while spoken frequency was the most important predictor of action naming. The results are discussed in terms of possible differences in the manner in which nouns and verbs are acquired.

Morphological influences on the recognition of monosyllabic monomorphemic words

Balota et al. [Balota, D., Cortese, M., Sergent-Marshall, S., Spieler, D., & Yap, M. (2004). Visual word recognition for single-syllable words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 283–316] studied lexical processing in word naming and lexical decision using hierarchical multiple regression techniques for a large data set of monosyllabic, morphologically simple words. The present study supplements their work by making use of more flexible regression techniques that are better suited for dealing with collinearity and non-linearity, and by documenting the contributions of several variables that they did not take into account. In particular, we included measures of morphological connectivity, as well as a new frequency count, the frequency of a word in speech rather than in writing. The morphological measures emerged as strong predictors in visual lexical decision, but not in naming, providing evidence for the importance of morphological connectivity even for the recognition of morphologically simple words. Spoken frequency was predictive not only for naming but also for visual lexical decision. In addition, it co-determined subjective frequency estimates and norms for age of acquisition. Finally, we show that frequency predominantly reflects conceptual familiarity rather than familiarity with a word’s form.

Fundamental Frequency in Speakers of Portuguese for Different Voice Samples

The purpose of this research was to obtain information on the mean fundamental frequency (Fo) levels of Portuguese speakers and to investigate (1) whether differences exist between two groups with different voice qualities (normal and dysphonia), genders, ages, and speech tasks; and (2) which variables contribute to the variance. To this end, 109 subjects (52 dysphonics and 57 controls) participated in the study. Speech material included three sustained vowels ([u], [i], and [a]), a standard written passage, and a conversation produced at a comfortable conversational pitch and loudness level. Electroglottographic (EGG) data were obtained. Although the results show that, overall, the dysphonics had lower Fo than did controls for all speaking conditions, and that there were differences according to age, these contrasts were not statistically significant. Gender and speech task effects were statistically significant. Additionally, the mean Fo variance is explained by a high prediction model (between 59% and 73%).

Object and action picture naming in English and Greek

Three experiments are reported which investigate the naming of line drawings of actions and objects. In Experiments 1 and 2 participants were adults who had English as their first and main language. In Experiment 1 they named 100 action and 100 object pictures from Druks and Masterson (2000). Participants were asked to use the present participle (-ing) form of the verbs when naming the action pictures. In Experiment 2 participants named the same set of stimuli but using the uninflected verb form for the action pictures. In Experiment 3 a subset of the stimuli were used to carry out a naming study in the Greek language. The results of the three experiments were largely consistent. Naming latencies for both action and object pictures were affected by the variable age of acquisition. In addition, latencies for action pictures were longer than those for object pictures. However, the difference was not significant once the visual complexity of the pictures and the imageability of their names were controlled for. Post hoc analyses indicated that the pattern of results obtained in the three experiments was not due to characteristics of the initial phonemes of the picture names. A series of regression analyses confirmed that naming latencies were significantly affected by age of acquisition, but revealed in addition that spoken frequency had a significant effect on the naming latencies obtained in Experiments 1 and 3. The results are discussed in terms of current models of lexical access.

A preliminary study of subjective frequency estimates of words spoken in Cantonese.

A database is presented of the subjective frequency estimates for a set of 30 Chinese homophones. The estimates are based on analysis of responses from a simple listening task by 120 University students. On the listening task, they are asked to mention the first meaning thought of upon hearing a Chinese homophone by writing down the corresponding Chinese characters. There was correlation of .66 between the frequency of spoken and written words, suggesting distributional information about the lexical representations is generally independent of modality. These subjective frequency counts should be useful in the construction of material sets for research on word recognition using spoken Chinese (Cantonese).

Declination of fundamental frequency in speakers' production of parenthetical and main clauses.

An experimental study was conducted to investigate fundamental frequency (F0) contours in sentences with and without parenthetical clauses. Sentences consisted of a systematically lengthened parenthetical clause inserted between the subject noun phrase and the verb phrase of the main clause. The middle portion of the parenthetical was lengthened incrementally in each sentence to test the effects of sentence length on fundamental frequency contours of seven test sentences. Computer-aided measurements were made for: F0 peaks of key stressed segments; duration of the main clause, parenthetical clause, and clause-final syllables within each; and pauses immediately preceding and following the parenthetical. Mean results demonstrate: (1) a drop in F0 for the parenthetical clause, well below the main clause declination and forming a separate contour of declination; (2) a sharp rise in F0 on return to the main clause; (3) no effect of longer parenthetical length on final segment durations of either the parenthetical or the main clause; and (4) no effect of increased parenthetical length on main clause duration or pause length. These results suggest that parenthetical clauses are mentally programmed as independent constituents, but are subject to some of the same general declination constraints as main clauses.