Initial Phoneme Research Articles

Evaluation of the Potential of Automatic Naming Latency Detection for Different Initial Phonemes during Picture Naming Task.

Naming latency (NL) represents the speech onset time after the presentation of an image. We recently developed an extended threshold-based algorithm for automatic NL (aNL) detection considering the envelope of the speech wave. The present study aims at exploring the influence of different manners (e.g., "m" and "p") and positions (e.g., "t" and "p") of articulation on the differences between manual NL (mNL) and aNL detection.Speech samples were collected from 123 healthy participants. They named 118 pictures in German, including different initial phonemes. NLs were manually (Praat, waveform and spectrogram) and automatically (developed algorithm) determined. To investigate the accuracy of automatic detections, correlations between mNLs and aNLs were analyzed for different initial phonemes.ANLs and mNLs showed a strong positive correlation and similar tendencies in initial phoneme groups. ANL mean values were shorter than the ones of mNLs. Nasal sounds (e.g., /m/) showed the largest and those for fricatives (e.g., /s/) the smallest difference. However, in fricatives, 39% of NLs were detected later by automatic detections than by manual detections, which led to a reduced mean difference with mNLs. The signal energy of the initial phonemes, i.e., if they are voiced or voiceless, influences the form of the speech envelope: initial high signal energy is often responsible for an early detection by the algorithm.Our study provides evidence of a similar tendency in mNL and aNL according to different positions of articulation in each initial phoneme group. ANLs are highly sensitive to detection of speech onsets across different initial phonemes. The dependency of the NL differences on the initial phonemes will lose importance during progress evaluations in aphasia patients if the relative changes for each picture are considered separately. Nevertheless, the algorithm will be further optimized by adapting its parameters for each initial phoneme group individually.Clinical Relevance- This underlines the feasibility to use automatic naming latency detection for the evaluation of patients with aphasia in a clinical setting as well as for practices at home during picture naming.

The Processing of the Second Syllable in Recognizing Chinese Disyllabic Spoken Words: Evidence From Eye Tracking.

In the current study, two experiments were conducted to investigate the processing of the second syllable (which was considered as the rhyme at the word level) during Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition using a printed-word paradigm. In Experiment 1, participants heard a spoken target word and were simultaneously presented with a visual display of four printed words: a target word, a phonological competitor, and two unrelated distractors. The phonological competitors were manipulated to share either full phonemic overlap of the second syllable with targets (the syllabic overlap condition; e.g., 小篆, xiao3zhuan4, “calligraphy” vs. 公转, gong1zhuan4, “revolution”) or the initial phonemic overlap of the second syllable (the sub-syllabic overlap condition; e.g., 圆柱, yuan2zhu4, “cylinder” vs. 公转, gong1zhuan4, “revolution”) with targets. Participants were asked to select the target words and their eye movements were simultaneously recorded. The results did not show any phonological competition effect in either the syllabic overlap condition or the sub-syllabic overlap condition. In Experiment 2, to maximize the likelihood of observing the phonological competition effect, a target-absent version of the printed-word paradigm was adopted, in which target words were removed from the visual display. The results of Experiment 2 showed significant phonological competition effects in both conditions, i.e., more fixations were made to the phonological competitors than to the distractors. Moreover, the phonological competition effect was found to be larger in the syllabic overlap condition than in the sub-syllabic overlap condition. These findings shed light on the effect of the second syllable competition at the word level during spoken word recognition and, more importantly, showed that the initial phonemes of the second syllable at the syllabic level are also accessed during Chinese disyllabic spoken word recognition.

Avaliação da linguagem oral e escrita no pré-escolar e nos primeiros anos de escolaridade

In this article, we present an assessment instrument aimed at diagnosing oral language and reading and writing skills in children attending pre-school (5 years) and the early years of primary school. The instrument was mainly designed for the school context, and it was developed in collaboration with kindergarten educators and primary teachers who participated in PIPALE - Preventive Intervention Project for Reading and Writing, a project which is integrated in the National Program for the Promotion of School Success. The instrument covers the assessment of phonological and syntactic awareness, comprehension of syntactic structures, early literacy, and reading and writing skills (word reading, word and sentence writing, text comprehension, and text production). Besides offering a detailed description of the structure and tasks of the instrument, the present study includes the results of the first implementation of this tool to a total of 495 students in pre-school, first grade and second grade. The results show significant differences between the three groups (pre-school, first grade and second grade) in phonological awareness (identification of initial syllable, initial phoneme and final rhyme) and between the younger groups and the second graders in syntactic awareness (acceptability judgement task) and early literacy skills. As for reading and writing skills, the results show better performance in reading tasks than in writing tasks, a strong significant correlation between phonological awareness and word reading and word writing, and between literacy skills and word reading and writing. We also found a milder correlation between syntactic awareness and reading comprehension, as well as text writing. These results suggest that the instrument is effective for an early diagnosis and early intervention of reading and writing skills.

He Initial Phoneme /j/ in Russian Language in the Forms of Personal Pronouns im, imi, ikh (‘them’)

he Initial Phoneme /j/ in Russian Language in the Forms of Personal Pronouns im, imi, ikh (‘them’)

The prosodic accent advantage in phoneme detection: Importance of local context.

Previous research (e.g., Cutler, Perception & Psychophysics, 20, 55-60, 1976) has shown that detection of the initial phoneme of a word is speeded when the word is pronounced with a focal accent. This "accent advantage" is also observed when the accented word is replaced by a neutrally accented one. The present two experiments were designed to identify what aspect of the context preceding the target word is the source of this advantage. Both indicated that the advantage can be ascribed to the syllable immediately preceding the target word, rather than some possibly global but more distal attribute of the context. The first experiment used the recordings that had been used by Cutler Perception & Psychophysics, 20, 55-60, (1976) with the addition of a between-subjects manipulation of the local context. In one condition, the syllable immediately before the target word was the one that had been recorded in the sentence context (preceding an accented or an unaccented target word). In the other, cross-spliced, condition, the preceding syllable was exchanged between accented and unaccented contexts. The second (pre-registered) experiment used new recordings and a within-subject manipulation of the pre-target syllable. The studies confirmed and extended the observation that the pre-target syllable rather than some other prosodic aspect of the preceding context is the source of the faster phoneme detections.

Biscriptal bilingualism differentially affects segmentation of cross-language homophones: Evidence from Hindi and English users

Aims and objectives: Few previous studies of bilingual cognition have theorized the impact of being literate in distinct orthographies. This study examined: (1) How do differences in the way writing systems represent sound affect biscriptal bilinguals’ segmentation of spoken words in each language? and (2) What is the impact of the first learned orthography? These questions were addressed in native and non-native readers of Hindi and English. The primary unit of writing in Hindi is the akshara, which corresponds to a syllable in most cases, whereas for English the unit of writing corresponds to a phoneme. Method: Hindi-English users listened to cross-language homophones in Hindi and English. Participants were instructed to take away “the first sound” of each word and say aloud what remained. Data analysis: Percent deletion of the initial phoneme was examined. Exp. 1 included 44 bilinguals. Exp. 2 tested 13 bilinguals. Findings/conclusions: For native English readers the first phoneme was deleted regardless of language. For native readers of Hindi, performance differed by language: the “first sound” was a phoneme for English words but a syllable for Hindi words (except for vowel-initial words). Originality: Using a novel paradigm, this study demonstrates that biscriptal bilinguals’ conceptions of speech sounds are differentially shaped by their knowledge of the written forms of those sounds: deleting “the first sound” in /sʌfʌr/ resulted in /fʌr/ when it was presented as a Hindi word but as /ʌfʌr/ when presented as English. Thus, the very same spoken word can yield different conceptions depending on whether it is heard as a word belonging to one language or another. Significance/implications: The findings indicate that language-specific orthographic knowledge influences biscriptal bilinguals’ conceptualization of speech sounds in their respective languages. More generally, our study argues for more research on biscriptal bilinguals in the study of bilingual cognition.

Phonological Preparation in Korean: Phoneme, or Syllable or Another Unit?

With three experiments, the present study investigated the primary phonological preparation (PP) unit in spoken word production in Korean. Adopting the form preparation paradigm, 23 native Korean speakers named pictures in homogenous or heterogenous lists. In homogenous lists, the names of the pictures shared the same initial phoneme (Experiment 1), initial consonant + vowel (i.e., CV) body (Experiment 2), or initial consonant + vowel + consonant (CVC) syllable (Experiment 3); and in heterogenous lists, the names did not share any phonological components systematically. Compared to naming pictures in heterogenous lists, participants' naming speed was significantly faster when the initial body or the initial syllable of target names was shared. However, this form preparation effect was not shown in Experiment 1, when only the initial phoneme was shared. These results suggested that the body serves as the primary PP unit in Korean, that is, native Korean speakers tend to plan spoken words in a body-coda fashion, probably due to a joint contribution from the strong prevalence of the CV structure and early literacy instructional approach.

Phonological Awareness as the Foundation of Reading Acquisition in Students Reading in Transparent Orthography.

Phonological skills have been found to be strongly related to early reading and writing development. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to examine the extent to which the development of phonological awareness facilitates reading acquisition in students learning to read a transparent orthography. Our research included 689 primary school students in first through third grade (Mean age 101.59 months, SD = 12,690). The assessment tools used to conduct this research include the Phonological Awareness Test and the Gray Oral Reading Test. According to the results from the present study, 13.7% of students have reading difficulties. Students with reading difficulties obtained low scores in phonological awareness within each subscale compared to students who do not have reading difficulties (p < 0.01). Components of phonological awareness which did not singled out as strongly related to early reading success include Phoneme Segmentation, Initial Phoneme Identification, and Syllable Merging. Thus, understanding the nature of the relationship between phonological awareness and reading should help effective program design that will be aimed at eliminating delayed development in children’s phonological awareness while they are still in preschool.

Robust Lexically Mediated Compensation for Coarticulation: Christmash Time Is Here Again.

A long‐standing question in cognitive science is how high‐level knowledge is integrated with sensory input. For example, listeners can leverage lexical knowledge to interpret an ambiguous speech sound, but do such effects reflect direct top‐down influences on perception or merely postperceptual biases? A critical test case in the domain of spoken word recognition is lexically mediated compensation for coarticulation (LCfC). Previous LCfC studies have shown that a lexically restored context phoneme (e.g., /s/ in Christma#) can alter the perceived place of articulation of a subsequent target phoneme (e.g., the initial phoneme of a stimulus from a tapes‐capes continuum), consistent with the influence of an unambiguous context phoneme in the same position. Because this phoneme‐to‐phoneme compensation for coarticulation is considered sublexical, scientists agree that evidence for LCfC would constitute strong support for top–down interaction. However, results from previous LCfC studies have been inconsistent, and positive effects have often been small. Here, we conducted extensive piloting of stimuli prior to testing for LCfC. Specifically, we ensured that context items elicited robust phoneme restoration (e.g., that the final phoneme of Christma# was reliably identified as /s/) and that unambiguous context‐final segments (e.g., a clear /s/ at the end of Christmas) drove reliable compensation for coarticulation for a subsequent target phoneme. We observed robust LCfC in a well‐powered, preregistered experiment with these pretested items (N = 40) as well as in a direct replication study (N = 40). These results provide strong evidence in favor of computational models of spoken word recognition that include top–down feedback.

Speech production factors and verbal working memory in children and adults with developmental language disorder.

Verbal working memory (VWM) deficits are common in individuals with developmental language disorder (DLD) but are not well understood. This study evaluated how both memory and language production factors influence VWM performance in children and adults with DLD, focusing on the influence of serial position, phonological activation (PA), and lexical frequency. Participants were 30 children with DLD and 26 with typical language (TL), and 21 adults with DLD and 23 with TL. The participants completed a listening span task in which they were asked to recall the final words of sentences in sets of increasing size. Responses (dependent variable) were coded as correct, incorrect, or no response. Final words were coded for frequency, serial position within the set, and PA (number of occurrences of the initial phoneme, vowel, and whole word in the task). These variables, along with age and language status, were entered as predictors in mixed-effects multinomial regression models. Extreme serial position, greater PA, and higher frequency reduced incorrect and no responses. These effects were attenuated for the DLD group, and the effect of greater PA varied with set size. The findings suggest that for individuals with DLD, VWM performance is affected by more limited effective language experience and by the dynamic task demands.

Reinforcing preschoolers’ phonemic awareness through the use of tablets

This study aimed to implement an intervention program to examine whether tablets enhance kindergarten children’s phonemic awareness. Seventy-four (74) kindergarten children (40 boys and 34 girls) aged 4 to 6 years from 4 public kindergarten classrooms participated in the study, from which 38 children formed the experimental group while 36 children formed the control one. During the intervention program, children in the experimental group were trained through tablets in initial phoneme identification, initial phoneme deletion, and phoneme segmentation, while the control group trained in the same tasks without tablets. Results showed statistically significant differences in favor of the experimental group. In conclusion, the present research found that digital media help educational practice, but it is also how teachers use digital tools to facilitate learning.

Orthographic properties of distractors do influence phonological Stroop effects: Evidence from Japanese Romaji distractors.

In attempting to understand mental processes, it is important to use a task that appropriately reflects the underlying processes being investigated. Recently, Verdonschot and Kinoshita (Memory & Cognition, 46, 410-425, 2018) proposed that a variant of the Stroop task-the "phonological Stroop task"-might be a suitable tool for investigating speech production. The major advantage of this task is that the task is apparently not affected by the orthographic properties of the stimuli, unlike other, commonly used, tasks (e.g., associative-cuing and word-reading tasks). The viability of this proposal was examined in the present experiments by manipulating the script types of Japanese distractors. For Romaji distractors (e.g., "kushi"), color-naming responses were faster when the initial phoneme was shared between the color name and the distractor than when the initial phonemes were different, thereby showing a phoneme-based phonological Stroop effect (Experiment 1). In contrast, no such effect was observed when the same distractors were presented in Katakana (e.g., "くし"), replicating Verdonschot and Kinoshita's original results (Experiment 2). A phoneme-based effect was again found when the Katakana distractors used in Verdonschot and Kinoshita's original study were transcribed and presented in Romaji (Experiment 3). Because the observation of a phonemic effect directly depended on the orthographic properties of the distractor stimuli, we conclude that the phonological Stroop task is also susceptible to orthographic influences.

Connected Phonation is More Effective than Segmented Phonation for Teaching Beginning Readers to Decode Unfamiliar Words

ABSTRACT Two methods of decoding instruction were compared. Participants were kindergartners who knew letter sounds but could not decode nonwords, M = 5.6 years. The segmented phonation treatment taught students to convert graphemes to phonemes by breaking the speech stream (“sss – aaa – nnn”) before blending. The connected phonation treatment taught students to pronounce phonemes without breaking the speech stream (“sssaaannn”) before blending. The CVC nonwords contained continuant consonants that could be stretched and connected. Following learning to criterion, students completed a transfer task to decode CVCs with stop consonants that are harder to blend because of intrusion from schwa vowels. Results showed that connected phonation training facilitated learning to decode as well as reading nonwords accurately on the transfer task compared to segmented phonation training. An error analysis suggested that breaking between phonemes caused students to forget initial phonemes during blending. Findings suggest how to teach decoding more effectively.

Predictors of Reading Skills at the First and Second Grade: The Role of Orthography

We investigated the predictive power of cognitive skills and background variables of 769 first and second grade children learning to read two orthographically different languages Finnish and German in three countries Finland, Germany and Italy. Main results from stepwise regression models showed that in all countries word reading at first grade was best predicted by letter-sound-connection, as found in other transparent orthographies. In Italy and Finland also phoneme blending, a demanding phoneme awareness skill, was a good predictor. Surprisingly, in Germany initial phoneme identification which is a basic phone awareness skill, and mother’s occupation predicted first grade reading. At second grade in Finland and Germany the strongest predictors of word reading were rapid naming, in Finland also short-term-memory and in Germany and Italy reading level at the first grade. Results indicate that both orthographical and educational differences in the three countries can account for different predictors in reading.

Capturing multiple interaction effects in L1 and L2 object-naming reaction times in healthy bilinguals: a mixed-effects multiple regression analysis

BackgroundIt is difficult to set up a balanced higher-order full-factorial experiment that can capture multiple intricate interactions between cognitive and psycholinguistic factors underlying bilingual speech production. To capture interactions more fully in one study, we analyzed object-naming reaction times (RTs) by using mixed-effects multiple regression.MethodsTen healthy bilinguals (median age: 23 years, seven females) were asked to name 131 colored pictures of common objects in each of their languages. RTs were analyzed based on language status, proficiency, word choice, word frequency, word duration, initial phoneme, time series, and participant’s gender.ResultsAmong five significant interactions, new findings include a facilitating effect of a cross-language shared initial phoneme (mean RT for shared phoneme: 974 ms vs. mean RT for different phoneme: 1020 ms), which profited males less (mean profit: 10 ms) than females (mean profit: 47 ms).ConclusionsOur data support language-independent phonological activation and a gender difference in inhibitory cognitive language control. Single word production process in healthy adult bilinguals is affected by interactions among cognitive, phonological, and semantic factors.

The sound of branding: An analysis of the initial phonemes of popular brand names

In the marketing literature, the ‘K effect’ refers to the claim that the letter K is overrepresented as the initial letter of brand names. To date, however, most findings have only considered the frequency of the written letters incorporated into brand names. Here, we argue that since letters sometimes sound different when pronounced in different words (e.g., ‘C’ in Cartier vs. Cisco), a phonemic analysis of the initial phonemes is likely to be more insightful than merely a comparison of the written form (as reported by previous researchers). With this in mind, the initial phonemes of top brand names were analyzed and compared with: (1) words in the dictionary; (2) a corpus of contemporary American English; and (3) the most popular current children’s names in the USA. We also analyzed a different list of top brands, including both corporate brand names (e.g., Procter & Gamble) as well as the product-related brand names (e.g., Pantene). We conclude by reporting the most underrepresented [vowels (/aʊ/, /ɜː/, /ɔɪ/, /ɔː/) and consonants (/r/, /ʒ/, /l/, /θ/)] and overrepresented [vowels (/iː/, /əʊ/) and consonants (/j/, /z/, /f/, /dʒ/, /p/, /j/, /t/)] initial phonemes in the brand names vis-à-vis the current linguistic naming conventions.

Skrining Kemampuan Phonological Awareness Anak Pra Sekolah

Background. In the learning process at school, especially in pre-school education, phonological ability is the entrance for children in mastery of language. In Indonesia, research that focuses on phonological abilities in pre-school children is still very limited. Objective. This study aims to determine the profile of pre-school children's phonological awareness abilities. Method. Participants were recruited from the Surakarta ABA Thoyibah Kindergarten with a total of 27 class B children to participate in this study. Screening is given to participants. The screening results will reflect the profile of children's phonological awareness abilities. Results. There are five items that can be used to screen pre-school children's phonological awareness skills: rhyme, syllable blending, initial phoneme identification, medial phoneme identification, and final phoneme identification. The results of the internal validation analysis of phonological awareness subtest were as follows: rhyme 0.684, syllable blending 0.772, initial phoneme identification 0.880, medial phoneme identification 0.862, and final phoneme identification 0.735. Conclusion. The value of internal validity or the correlation between items in phonological awareness screening is good because all items correlated have a correlation with a low probability value.

How the Characteristics of Phonemes and Syllabic Structures can Impact the Phonological Awareness of Kindergarten and First-Grade Arabic-Speaking Children

Phonological awareness may be influenced by differences in the characteristics of the items studied. This hypothesis is considered particularly applicable to Arabic, which is a diglossic language. This study examined the impact of phonemic position and the affiliation of the items between spoken and standard languages on phonemic isolation tasks. The data were obtained from 310 native Arabic-speaking kindergarteners and first graders and revealed that for simple and complex monosyllabic pseudo-words, isolating initial phonemes was more difficult than isolating final phonemes. In addition, the items in the spoken language were easier than the items in the standard language for the children at both grade levels. Thus, certain phonological features of the standard language may not be sufficiently developed even after entrance to school, which may explain certain difficulties in reading development in Arabic. The results are discussed in relation to previous findings.

P300 indicates context-dependent change in speech quality beyond phonological change

Objective. Non-invasive physiological methods like electroencephalography (EEG) are increasingly employed to assess human information processing during exposure to multimedia signals. In the quality engineering field, previous research has promoted the utility of the P300 event-related brain potential (ERP) component for indicating variation in quality perception. The present study provides a starting point to test whether the P300 and its two subcomponents, P3a and P3b, are truly reflective of changes in the perceived quality of transmitted speech signals given the presence of other, quality-unrelated changes in acoustic stimulation. Approach. High-quality and degraded variants of spoken words were presented in a two-feature oddball task, which required participants to actively respond to rarely occurring ‘target’ stimuli within a series of frequent ‘standard’ stimuli, thereby eliciting ERP waveforms. Target presentations involved either single quality changes or concurrent double changes in quality and the initial phoneme. Main results. In case additional phonological change was present, only varying quality of standard stimuli caused significant modulations in P3a and P3b characteristics (N = 32). Thus, the formation of different short-term quality references exerted a persisting influence on the auditory processing of transmitted speech. Significance. The obtained results elucidate the importance of contextual and content-related influencing factors for proving the validity of the P300 as a psychophysiological indicator of speech quality change. Associated questions regarding the transfer of ERP-based quality assessment into more practically relevant measurement contexts are discussed.

A Comparative Study on Phonemes of Gugeupbang Types

이 연구는 전산화된 국어사 자료(구급방류)에 나타나는 음소 표기를 대상으로 통계 처리를 하고, 이를 통하여 선명하고 다양한 방법으로 국어사 자료가 지니는 음소의 분포를 제시하여, 국어사 자료가 가진 정보 속에서 다양한 의미를 찾아낼 수 있는 도구를 마련하고자 한 것이다. 이를 위해 전산화한 3종의 구급방류 - 『구급방』, 『구급간이방』, 『언해구급방』을 대상으로, 『구급방』이라는 개별 문헌이 가진 초성·중성·종성 음소를 다양한 방법으로 통계-수치화하여 특정값을 구하고, 이와 같은 방법으로 『구급간이방』과 『언해구급방』으로 확대(빅데이터화)하여 특정값과의 평균을 산출하였다. 이를 나타내기 위한 방법으로 각 문헌별 전체 음소의 빈도와 빈도율표, 세 문헌 음소 비교표를 바탕으로, ‘스펙트럼 분석’이라는 용어를 사용하여 전체 가운데 개별 음소 빈도율을 시각화하였다. 음소 스펙트럼비교에는 전체 초성·중성·종성 빈도율 비교 스펙트럼, 주요 음소 빈도율비교 스펙트럼, 희소 음소 빈도율 비교 스펙트럼, 산술평균 스펙트럼, 가중평균 스펙트럼, 평균 대비 상관도 스펙트럼 등을 산출하였다.세 문헌의 평균 대비 상관도 비교에서는 가중평균을 기준으로, 초성과 중성에서는 『구급간이방』 > 『언해구급방』 > 『구급방』의 순서로, 종성에서는 『구급간이방』 > 『구급방』 > 『언해구급방』의 순서로 가중평균과의 일치도를 보였다. 그러므로 가중평균에서는 『구급간이방』이 평균 대비 일치도가 가장 높은 문헌임을 확인할 수 있었다.This study aims to present a statistical processing of phonemic notion in the computerized Korean language history data (Gugeupbang types), propose the distribution of phonemes possessed by Korean language history data in various ways, and provide a tool to find out the variety of meanings in the information of Korean language history data. In this regard, three kinds of computerized Gugeupbang types such as 『Gugeupbang&#61440;, 『Gugeupganibang&#61440;, 『Eonhae-Gugeupbang&#61440; were statistically quantified and got a special value of initial phonemes, middle phonemes, and final phonemes from individual documents. In the same way, the study was extended to 『Gugeupganibang&#61440; and『Eonhae-Gugeupbang&#61440; which were changed into a big data and it was obtained an average of the specific value. This study was used the term ‘spectrum analysis’ to visualize the individual phoneme frequency rate among the