Increasing Presentation Rate Research Articles

Gender and rate effects on speech intelligibility

Older adults seeking hearing help often complain of particular difficulty understanding female voices. This contrasts with studies using young listeners with normal hearing in which female talkers have been found to be generally more intelligible than male talkers (e.g., Bradlow et al., 1996). Could some factor in addition to talker gender be causing older adults to have increased difficulty understanding female voices? Speech that has been time-compressed has been shown to be less intelligible than unprocessed speech (e.g., Gordon-Salant and Friedman, 2011), but few data exist to show whether an increased presentation rate causes an equal loss of intelligibility for male and female talkers. The present study will explore whether an increased playback rate has a greater negative effect on the intelligibility of speech produced by female versus male talkers. Subjects will listen to sentences produced by two female and two male speakers from the Utah Speaking Style Corpus presented at either their original rate or at an increased rate (1.5 times faster) and type out what they heard. The resulting data will show whether, for young normal-hearing listeners, an increased rate of speech affects the intelligibility of female talkers more than it affects the intelligibility of male talkers.

The epidemiology of self-harm in a UK-wide primary care patient cohort, 2001-2013.

BackgroundMost of the research conducted on people who harm themselves has been undertaken in secondary healthcare settings. Little is known about the frequency of self-harm in primary care patient populations. This is the first study to describe the epidemiology of self-harm presentations to primary care using broadly representative national data from across the United Kingdom (UK).MethodsUsing the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), we calculated directly standardised rates of incidence and annual presentation during 2001–2013. Rates were compared by gender and age and across the nations of the UK, and also by degree of socioeconomic deprivation measured ecologically at general practice level.ResultsWe found significantly elevated rates in females vs. males for incidence (rate ratio - RR, 1.45, 95 % confidence interval - CI, 1.42-1.47) and for annual presentation (RR 1.56, CI 1.54–1.58). An increasing trend over time in incidence was apparent for males (P < 0.001) but not females (P = 0.08), and both genders exhibited rising temporal trends in presentation rates (P < 0.001). We observed a decreasing gradient of risk with increasing age and markedly elevated risk for females in the youngest age group (aged 15–24 years vs. all other females: RR 3.75, CI 3.67–3.83). Increasing presentation rates over time were observed for males across all age bands (P < 0.001). We found higher rates when comparing Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales with England, and increasing rates of presentation over time for all four nations. We also observed higher rates with increasing levels of deprivation - most vs. least deprived male patients: RR 2.17, CI 2.10–2.25.ConclusionsIncorporating data from primary care yields a more comprehensive quantification of the health burden of self-harm. These novel findings may be useful in informing public health programmes and the targeting of high-risk groups toward the ultimate goal of lowering risk of self-harm repetition and premature death in this population.

Locating the cortical bottleneck for slow reading in peripheral vision.

Yu, Legge, Park, Gage, and Chung (2010) suggested that the neural bottleneck for slow peripheral reading is located in nonretinotopic areas. We investigated the potential rate-limiting neural site for peripheral reading using fMRI, and contrasted peripheral reading with recognition of peripherally presented line drawings of common objects. We measured the BOLD responses to both text (three-letter words/nonwords) and line-drawing objects presented either in foveal or peripheral vision (10° lower right visual field) at three presentation rates (2, 4, and 8/second). The statistically significant interaction effect of visual field × presentation rate on the BOLD response for text but not for line drawings provides evidence for distinctive processing of peripheral text. This pattern of results was obtained in all five regions of interest (ROIs). At the early retinotopic cortical areas, the BOLD signal slightly increased with increasing presentation rate for foveal text, and remained fairly constant for peripheral text. In the Occipital Word-Responsive Area (OWRA), Visual Word Form Area (VWFA), and object sensitive areas (LO and PHA), the BOLD responses to text decreased with increasing presentation rate for peripheral but not foveal presentation. In contrast, there was no rate-dependent reduction in BOLD response for line-drawing objects in all the ROIs for either foveal or peripheral presentation. Only peripherally presented text showed a distinctive rate-dependence pattern. Although it is possible that the differentiation starts to emerge at the early retinotopic cortical representation, the neural bottleneck for slower reading of peripherally presented text may be a special property of peripheral text processing in object category selective cortex.

The diagnosis of esophageal eosinophilia is not increased in the summer months.

Smaller studies have suggested seasonal variation of the diagnosis of eosinophilic esophagitis with more patients being diagnosed in the aeroallergen season. We evaluated a large group of adult patients for a seasonal variation of the diagnosis of symptomatic eosinophilic esophageal infiltration. We performed a retrospective review of adult patients from a large Eosinophilic esophagitis database at the Mayo Clinic Rochester. We only included patients from three states in the upper Midwest, who had 15 or more eosinophils per high-power field on esophageal biopsy, symptomatic dysphagia, and were seen, in our Gastroenterology Clinic between 2000 and 2008. Clinical data were abstracted and the month of diagnosis was determined. The Rayleigh circular test and the Chi-square goodness-of-fit test were used to detect seasonality of symptomatic esophageal eosinophilia diagnosis and seasonality corrected for esophagogastroduodenoscopy monthly volume. The diagnosis of symptomatic eosinophilic esophageal infiltration was made in 372 patients. The mean number of eosinophils was 39.6 per high-power field. The December/January and May/June periods seem to have an increased presentation rate (p=0.014). Of those tested, reactions to any aeroallergen was present in 69% (48/70), reactions to >4 aeroallergens in 47% (33/70) and reactions to any food allergen in 63% (50/80) of patients. There was no evidence of monthly concentration of symptomatic esophageal eosinophilia diagnosis in the subgroups of patients with any positive aeroallergen, >4 positive aeroallergens, or history of atopy. The diagnosis of symptomatic esophageal eosinophilia is not made more frequently in the summer months.

Vowel intelligibility and the second-language learner

Diane Kewley-Port’s work has contributed to our understanding of vowel perception and production in a wide variety of ways, from mapping the discriminability of vowel formants in conditions of minimal uncertainty to vowel processing in challenging conditions, such as increased presentation rate and noise. From the results of these studies, we have learned much about the limits of vowel perception for normal-hearing listeners and the robustness of vowels in speech perception. Continuously intertwined with this basic research has been its application to our understanding of vowel perception and vowel acoustics across various challenges, such as hearing impairment and second-language learning. Diane’s work on vowel perception and production by second-language learners and ongoing research stemming from her influence will be considered in light of several factors affecting communicative success and challenge for second-language learners. In particular, we will compare the influence of speaking style, noise, and syllable disruption on the intelligibility of vowels perceived and produced by native and non-native English-speaking listeners.

Neural Strategies for Selective Attention Distinguish Fast-Action Video Game Players

We investigated the psychophysical and neurophysiological differences between fast-action video game players (specifically first person shooter players, FPS) and non-action players (role-playing game players, RPG) in a visual search task. We measured both successful detections (hit rates) and steady-state visually evoked EEG potentials (SSVEPs). Search difficulty was varied along two dimensions: number of adjacent attended and ignored regions (1, 2 and 4), and presentation rate of novel search arrays (3, 8.6 and 20 Hz). Hit rates decreased with increasing presentation rates and number of regions, with the FPS players performing on average better than the RPG players. The largest differences in hit rate, between groups, occurred when four regions were simultaneously attended. We computed signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of SSVEPs and used partial least squares regression to model hit rates, SNRs and their relationship at 3 Hz and 8.6 Hz. The following are the most significant results: RPG players’ parietal responses to the attended 8.6 Hz flicker were predictive of hit rate and were positively correlated with it, indicating attentional signal enhancement. FPS players’ parietal responses to the ignored 3 Hz flicker were predictive of hit rate and were positively correlated with it, indicating distractor suppression. Consistent with these parietal responses, RPG players’ frontal responses to the attended 8.6 Hz flicker, increased as task difficulty increased with number of regions; FPS players’ frontal responses to the ignored 3 Hz flicker increased with number of regions. Thus the FPS players appear to employ an active suppression mechanism to deploy selective attention simultaneously to multiple interleaved regions, while RPG primarily use signal enhancement. These results suggest that fast-action gaming can affect neural strategies and the corresponding networks underlying attention, presumably by training mechanisms of distractor suppression.

Stimulus onset asynchrony and the timeline of word recognition: Event-related potentials during sentence reading

Three ERP experiments examined the effect of word presentation rate (i.e., stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA) on the time course of word frequency and predictability effects in sentence reading. In Experiments 1 and 2, sentences were presented word-by-word in the screen center at an SOA of 700 and 490ms, respectively. While these rates are typical for psycholinguistic ERP research, natural reading happens at a considerably faster pace. Accordingly, Experiment 3 employed a near-normal SOA of 280ms, which approximated the rate of normal reading. Main results can be summarized as follows: (1) The onset latency of early frequency effects decreases gradually with increasing presentation rates. (2) An early interaction between top-down and bottom-up processing is observed only under a near-normal SOA. (3) N400 predictability effects occur later and are smaller at a near-normal (i.e., high) presentation rate than at the lower rates commonly used in ERP experiments. (4) ERP morphology is different at the shortest compared to longer SOAs. Together, the results point to a special role of a near-normal presentation rate for visual word recognition and therefore suggest that SOA should be taken into account in research of natural reading.

Short term memory bowing effect is consistent with presentation rate dependent decay

I reanalyze the free recall data of Murdock, J Exp Psychol 64(5):482-488 (1962) and Murdock and Okada, J Verbal Learn and Verbal Behav 86:263-267 (1970) which show the famous bowing effect in which initial and recent items are recalled better than intermediate items (primacy and recency effects). Recent item recall probabilities follow a logarithmic decay with time of recall consistent with the tagging/retagging theory. The slope of the decay increases with increasing presentation rate. The initial items, with an effectively low presentation rate, decay with the slowest logarithmic slope, explaining the primacy effect. The finding that presentation rate limits the duration of short term memory suggests a basis for memory loss in busy adults, for the importance of slow music practice, for long term memory deficiencies for people with attention deficits who may be artificially increasing the presentation rates of their surroundings. A well-defined, quantitative measure of the primacy effect is introduced.

Contribution of the anterior insula to temporal auditory processing deficits in adolescents and adults with developmental dyslexia

Event Abstract Back to Event Contribution of the anterior insula to temporal auditory processing deficits in adolescents and adults with developmental dyslexia Claudia Steinbrink1*, Hermann Ackermann2, Thomas Lachmann1 and Axel Riecker3 1 University of Kaiserslautern, Department of Psychology II, Germany 2 University of Tuebingen, Department of General Neurology, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, Germany 3 University of Ulm, Department of Neurology, Germany Developmental dyslexia may result from general deficits concerning rapid temporal integration of acoustic stimuli. Assuming that the effort of auditory temporal processing of speech and non-speech stimuli increases with presentation rate, fMRI measurements were performed in dyslexics and controls during passive listening to series of syllables and click sounds using a parametric approach. Controls showed a decrease in hemodynamic brain activation in the right and an increase in the left anterior insula as a function of increasing presentation rate of click as well as syllable trains. By contrast, dyslexics exhibited this profile of hemodynamic activation in the click condition only. As concerns syllables, activation in dyslexics did not depend on presentation rate. Moreover, a subtraction analysis of hemodynamic main effects across conditions and groups revealed decreased activation of the left and right anterior insula in dyslexics as compared to controls in both the click and the syllable condition. These results indicate, in line with preceding studies, that in healthy adults the insular cortices are involved in auditory temporal processing of non-linguistic stimuli. Furthermore, they demonstrate that these operations of the intrasylvian cortex extend to the linguistic domain. Crucially, our data suggest that the anterior insula represents an important neural correlate of deficient temporal processing of speech and non-speech sounds in dyslexia. Conference: EARLI SIG22 - Neuroscience and Education, Zurich, Switzerland, 3 Jun - 5 Jun, 2010. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Language and reading Citation: Steinbrink C, Ackermann H, Lachmann T and Riecker A (2010). Contribution of the anterior insula to temporal auditory processing deficits in adolescents and adults with developmental dyslexia. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: EARLI SIG22 - Neuroscience and Education. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2010.11.00029 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 31 May 2010; Published Online: 31 May 2010. * Correspondence: Claudia Steinbrink, University of Kaiserslautern, Department of Psychology II, Kaiserslautern, Germany, steinbrink@sowi.uni-kl.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Claudia Steinbrink Hermann Ackermann Thomas Lachmann Axel Riecker Google Claudia Steinbrink Hermann Ackermann Thomas Lachmann Axel Riecker Google Scholar Claudia Steinbrink Hermann Ackermann Thomas Lachmann Axel Riecker PubMed Claudia Steinbrink Hermann Ackermann Thomas Lachmann Axel Riecker Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Nonsense syllable perception by monolingual and bilingual English speakers

Understanding speech in demanding environments is essential for daily communication. Previous research has shown that even highly proficient bilinguals may experience greater difficulty than monolinguals in understanding speech in noise. In the present study we further address this issue by examining the effects of varying task demand, fatigue, and practice on speech perception by bilinguals. One group of monolingual English listeners and three groups of Spanish–English bilinguals (bilingual since childhood, bilingual since teenager, and bilingual since adulthood) listened to nonsense syllables presented in noise and at increasing presentation rates. Listeners twice completed the two speech perception tasks on two days of testing. On one day the speech tasks were preceded by and on the other day followed by approximately 40 minutes of testing on nonspeech auditory tasks. Monolingual and bilingual listeners’ overall performance, their performance across the two days of testing (practice effect), and their performance across test orders (fatigue effect) will be compared. Preliminary results from two monolingual and two highly proficient bilinguals (bilingual since age 16 or earlier) show similar overall performance on both speech tasks and no effect of fatigue (test order), but suggest a greater practice effect for bilinguals’ perception of syllables in noise.

Splanchnic Nerve Stimulation Modulates Steroid Secretion in Hypophysectomized Dogs

To test whether or not splanchnic neural input to the adrenal gland affects secretion of steroids from the adrenal cortex, the thoracic splanchnic nerve was electrically stimulated in pentobarbital-anesthetized dogs after hypophysectomy and replacement with physiological concentrations of ACTH. An adrenal vein cannula was placed to permit measurement of cortisol, corticosterone, 11-deoxycortisol, epinephrine and norepinephrine secretion rates and adrenal blood flow. Plasma ACTH was measured and the presentation rate of ACTH was calculated as the product of plasma ACTH concentration and adrenal plasma flow. Dogs were infused initially with ACTH for 60 min at 2 ng/min followed by infusion for 60 min at 10 ng/min. Within each infusion period, the distal end of the nerve was stimulated (20 V; 0.5-ms pulse duration) at 4 and at 20 Hz for 10 min each. Nerve stimulation resulted in a frequency-dependent increase in mean arterial pressure, in epinephrine and norepinephrine secretion and in adrenal blood flow. Arterial ACTH remained constant during nerve stimulation; however, increased adrenal blood flow resulted in increased presentation rate of ACTH to the adrenal. Cortisol secretion increased in response to nerve stimulation at 4 and 20 Hz during infusion of 2 and 10 ng/min ACTH and occurred prior to changes in presentation rate of ACTH. Corticosterone secretion also increased after stimulation at both frequencies, but the response was observed only during infusion of 10 ng/min ACTH. In contrast, 11-deoxycortisol decreased after nerve stimulation at 4 Hz but showed no response after stimulation at 20 Hz during infusion of 2 and 10 ng/min ACTH.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Effects of achievement incentive and presentation rate on listening comprehension

The present study investigated the effects of achievement incentive on the comprehension of time‐compressed speech. Results indicated significant differences for motivation and for rate. Increased presentation rate did not significantly attenuate comprehension in the incentive treatments. However, accelerated speech produced a corresponding reduction in recall in the control groups.

Effects of speeded speech presentations on confidence‐weighted and traditional comprehension scores

The two‐process hypothesis suggests that presentation rate can be increased, without a corresponding loss in comprehension, until it reaches and exceeds the receiver's decoding capacity, suggesting a non‐linear rate‐comprehension relationship. In the present study this prediction of non‐linearity was evaluated in light of both confidence‐weighted and traditional comprehension scores. The results indicate that comprehension operationalized by traditional scoring techniques is not significantly affected until presentation rates reach 280 words per minute, a finding consistent with previous research. However, when confidence‐weighted scoring is employed, increased presentation rate is accompanied by linear decreases in comprehension.

Monitoring the effects of increasing resource demands on the clarity of visual images.

This paper examines the changes in the clarity of images over time under conditions varying in resource demands. In the experiments, subjects listened to descriptions of arrays of objects and moved a lever according to their assessment of the clarity of their visual images of the whole array. The position of the lever was sampled every half second by computer. The rated clarity of visual image (Y) increased over time (X) and fitted well to the power function Y = aXb for arrays of one to five objects. The increases in set size produced increasing demands on the resources of the limited capacity visual imagery system leading to an exponential‐like decline in the final rating values across set size. In the first two experiments, increasing presentation rate produced a differentiation in the slopes (a) of the power functions fitted to each set size, because visualization is more difficult at the faster rate. As it is relatively more difficult to visualize larger arrays at the faster rate, a relativity hypothesis suggests that visualizing smaller arrays is relatively easier in the fast condition, producing the differentiation in slopes. The last two experiments further confirmed the relativity hypothesis and correspondingly falsified an alternative hypothesis predicting that images decaying over time produced these findings; for instance, in the last experiment, the slope (a) and exponent (b) of the power function were higher under the slow presentation rate indicating that this condition was easier. This was further confirmed by verbal reports and by the final rating values. The image decay hypothesis predicted the contrary result as the possibility of image decay was reduced in the fast condition. These results also elucidate previous experiments that demonstrated an increase in visualization latencies as a function of set size. In such experiments latencies increase as a function of set size because the clarity of the image is slower to reach criterion as the number of objects to be visualized increases.

Temporal numerosity estimates for word lists

The Ss estimated the number of items seen when sequences of words were presented tachistoscopically at presentation rates from 4 to 16 words/sec. The degree of underestimation increased with increasing rates of presentation, and the maximum average counting rate was between 6 and 7 words/sec. In the second phase of the study, they were asked to recall as many words as possible from short sequences of words presented at rapid rates, as well as to estimate the number of words seen but not available for recall. The total number of words seen, as judged from these two reports, agreed closely with the counting rates. The number of words correctly recalled decreased with increasing presentation rates.

Immediate Memory Span of Deaf and Normally Hearing Children

Immediate recall of sequential and simultaneous presentation of visual stimuli in deaf and hearing children was investigated to determine the effects of rate and method of presentation, stimuli meaningfulness, and number of items per trial. It was found that deaf and hearing children performed the same with simultaneous presentation, while the hearing groups showed superior recall with sequential presentation. Increased items per trial, decreased stimuli meaningfulness, and increased presentation rate adversely affected the immediate recall of both groups. Restrictions on interpretations of remits are noted and classroom implications are discussed.