Interrupted Speech Research Articles

Phonemic restoration of interrupted locally time-reversed speech

Intelligibility of temporally degraded speech was investigated with locally time-reversed speech (LTR) and its interrupted version (ILTR). Control stimuli comprising interrupted speech (I) were also included. Speech stimuli consisted of 200 Japanese meaningful sentences. In interrupted stimuli, speech segments were alternated with either silent gaps or pink noise bursts. The noise bursts had a level of − 10, 0 or + 10 dB relative to the speech level. Segment duration varied from 20 to 160 ms for ILTR sentences, but was fixed at 160 ms for I sentences. At segment durations between 40 and 80 ms, severe reductions in intelligibility were observed for ILTR sentences, compared with LTR sentences. A substantial improvement in intelligibility (30–33%) was observed when 40-ms silent gaps in ILTR were replaced with 0- and + 10-dB noise. Noise with a level of − 10 dB had no effect on the intelligibility. These findings show that the combined effects of interruptions and temporal reversal of speech segments on intelligibility are greater than the sum of each individual effect. The results also support the idea that illusory continuity induced by high-level noise bursts improves the intelligibility of ILTR and I sentences.

The Role of Eye Gaze in Regulating Turn Taking in Conversations: A Systematized Review of Methods and Findings.

Eye gaze plays an important role in communication but understanding of its actual function or functions and the methods used to elucidate this have varied considerably. This systematized review was undertaken to summarize both the proposed functions of eye gaze in conversations of healthy adults and the methodological approaches employed. The eligibility criteria were restricted to a healthy adult population and excluded studies that manipulated eye gaze behavior. A total of 29 articles—quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods were returned, with a wide range of methodological designs. The main areas of variability related to number of conversants, their familiarity and status, conversation topic, data collection tools—video and eye tracking—and definitions of eye gaze. The findings confirm that eye gaze facilitates turn yielding, plays a role in speech monitoring, prevents and repairs conversation breakdowns and facilitates intentional and unintentional speech interruptions. These findings were remarkably consistent given the variability in methods across the 29 articles. However, in relation to turn initiation, the results were less consistent, requiring further investigation. This review provides a starting point for future studies to make informed decisions about study methods for examining eye gaze and selecting variables of interest.

Access to semantic cues does not lead to perceptual restoration of interrupted speech in cochlear-implant users.

Cochlear-implant (CI) users experience less success in understanding speech in noisy, real-world listening environments than normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Perceptual restoration is one method NH listeners use to repair noise-interrupted speech. Whereas previous work has reported that CI users can use perceptual restoration in certain cases, they failed to do so under listening conditions in which NH listeners can successfully restore. Providing increased opportunities to use top-down linguistic knowledge is one possible method to increase perceptual restoration use in CI users. This work tested perceptual restoration abilities in 18 CI users and varied whether a semantic cue (presented visually) was available prior to the target sentence (presented auditorily). Results showed that whereas access to a semantic cue generally improved performance with interrupted speech, CI users failed to perceptually restore speech regardless of the semantic cue availability. The lack of restoration in this population directly contradicts previous work in this field and raises questions of whether restoration is possible in CI users. One reason for speech-in-noise understanding difficulty in CI users could be that they are unable to use tools like restoration to process noise-interrupted speech effectively.

Comprehensive Review of Factors Influencing the Use of Telepractice in Stuttering Treatment.

ObjectivesStuttering is a speech disorder characterized by the repetition of sounds, syllables, or words; prolongation of sounds; and interruptions in speech. Telepractice allows speech services to be delivered to patients regardless of their location. This review investigated factors influencing the use of telepractice in stuttering treatment.MethodsArticles related to the application of telepractice in stuttering were searched using the Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, Cochrane, and Pro-Quest databases without consideration of any time limit. Initially, 79 articles were found and after application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 15 articles were selected for the review study. Data were analyzed by using the content analysis method and synthesized narratively.ResultsFactors influencing the use of telepractice in stuttering treatment were categorized into individual, technical, clinical, and economic factors. Providing access to healthcare services, maintaining personal privacy, and allowing flexibility in arranging appointments were among individual factors. In terms of the technical factors, technical problems and Internet speed were addressed. Clinical factors were divided into positive and negative outcomes, and economic factors were mainly related to time and cost savings.ConclusionsAlthough patients may benefit from using telepractice, the widespread adoption of this technology can be hindered by some technical and non-technical factors. Because telepractice can be employed as a complementary method to treat stuttering, more attention should be paid to the required infrastructure and factors that may negatively impact the use of this technology.

Physicians’ Speech Complexity and Interrupting Behavior in Pediatric Consultations

ABSTRACT Pediatricians’ communication behavior affects a variety of outcomes in both children and their parents. This study analyzes how speech complexity and interruptions as indicators of accommodative behaviors relate to parental recall of medical information and to their satisfaction with the medical encounter. We recruited 19 pediatricians and 68 parents at pediatric inpatient and outpatient consultations in two Swiss clinics. All medical interactions were videotaped and transcripts were analyzed to assess pediatricians’ speech complexity and interrupting behavior was coded from the videos. At the end of the encounter, parents rated their satisfaction with the medical encounter and were probed regarding their recall of medical information. Our results show recall of medical information to be unrelated to pediatricians’ speech complexity and negatively associated with their interrupting behavior for parents who report low positive mood. We also found less educated parents to report lower satisfaction when pediatricians employed more complex language. Furthermore, parental satisfaction was negatively associated with pediatricians’ interrupting behavior, especially when displayed by male pediatricians. Overall, these findings suggest that pediatricians’ speech complexity and interruptions indicate a nonaccommodative stance reducing advantageous parent outcomes.

ORA FROM TEMPORALITY TO TEXTUALITY: A CASE OF GRAMMATICALIZATION

ORA FROM TEMPORALITY TO TEXTUALITY: A CASE OF GRAMMATICALIZATION

Speech Intelligibility Prediction using Spectro-Temporal Modulation Analysis.

Spectro-temporal modulations are believed to mediate the analysis of speech sounds in the human primary auditory cortex. Inspired by humans' robustness in comprehending speech in challenging acoustic environments, we propose an intrusive speech intelligibility prediction (SIP) algorithm, wSTMI, for normal-hearing listeners based on spectro-temporal modulation analysis (STMA) of the clean and degraded speech signals. In the STMA, each of 55 modulation frequency channels contributes an intermediate intelligibility measure. A sparse linear model with parameters optimized using Lasso regression results in combining the intermediate measures of 8 of the most salient channels for SIP. In comparison with a suite of 10 SIP algorithms, wSTMI performs consistently well across 13 datasets, which together cover degradation conditions including modulated noise, noise reduction processing, reverberation, near-end listening enhancement, and speech interruption. We show that the optimized parameters of wSTMI may be interpreted in terms of modulation transfer functions of the human auditory system. Thus, the proposed approach offers evidence affirming previous studies of the perceptual characteristics underlying speech signal intelligibility.

Relationship between Speech Perception in Noise and Phonemic Restoration of Speech in Noise in Individuals with Normal Hearing

Background and ObjectivesTop-down restoration of distorted speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of speech in noise, maybe a useful tool to understand robustness of perception in adverse listening situations. However, the relationship between phonemic restoration and speech perception in noise is not empirically clear.Subjects and Methods20 adults (40-55 years) with normal audiometric findings were part of the study. Sentence perception in noise performance was studied with various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) to estimate the SNR with 50% score. Performance was also measured for sentences interrupted with silence and for those interrupted by speech noise at -10, -5, 0, and 5 dB SNRs. The performance score in the noise interruption condition was subtracted by quiet interruption condition to determine the phonemic restoration magnitude.ResultsFairly robust improvements in speech intelligibility was found when the sentences were interrupted with speech noise instead of silence. Improvement with increasing noise levels was non-monotonic and reached a maximum at -10 dB SNR. Significant correlation between speech perception in noise performance and phonemic restoration of sentences interrupted with -10 dB SNR speech noise was found.ConclusionsIt is possible that perception of speech in noise is associated with top-down processing of speech, tapped as phonemic restoration of interrupted speech. More research with a larger sample size is indicated since the restoration is affected by the type of speech material and noise used, age, working memory, and linguistic proficiency, and has a large individual variability.

Политическое молчание: формы, значение, пути инклюзии в политическую речь

The paper aims to explicate figures of silence in relation to the political signifier in terms of philosophy, rhetoric, psychology and psychiatry. Silence - deliberate interruption of speech - means dissociation of the political. Speech, overcoming political dumbness, forms reciprocal relations, reconciling counteragents’ interests. In politics, speech correlates with complicated interrelatedness of social actors. The state development can be interpreted as triumph of speech over silence. Evolution from the proto-state through different forms of the natural non-transparent state towards the modern ideal of the transparent state justifies the necessity to recognize political silence, to articulate political interests and to find compromises. The author identifies figures of political silence, reveals meaning of political silence as a marker of a break in political continuity, and describes traditional ways to include political silence in political speech. Scientific originality of the study involves a comprehensive analysis of political silence within the framework of the philosophical-anthropological approach and on the basis of terminology, which has not been previously used in this research area. The findings are as follows: the author justifies the necessity to overcome political silence adopting conscious practices of conciliation of social actors’ interests.

Gender and Earnings Conference Calls

Using a large sample of quarterly earnings conference call transcripts, we investigate gender issues in interactions between two high-profile professions—sell-side analysts and public firm executives. We find that women are generally less “visible” on conference calls. Specifically, female analysts have fewer conference call participation opportunities. Conditional on participation, female analysts are allowed fewer opportunities to ask follow-up questions and speak less compared with male counterparts. Female analysts speak with more positive tone, less uncertainty, less numerical content, fewer speech hesitations, and fewer back and forth conversations with firm management. Female executives have shorter discourses and receive more rounds of questions from analysts. However, female executives exhibit more certainty and hesitate less, indicating superior abilities in answering analysts’ questions. Our analysis of speech interruptions finds that female analysts are interrupted less by female, but not male, executives. Female executives receive more interruptions from both male analysts and executives and are more likely to be challenged by male subordinates. The equity market also discounts female analysts’ participation. Overall, our results are consistent with gender-based discrimination.

Management of Patients with Cerebellar Ataxia During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Current Concerns and Future Implications.

The current worldwide severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has brought some medical systems to the brink of collapse. This crisis is also negatively impacting the care of patients with non-COVID-19 conditions, including those with cerebellar ataxia (CA). Older patients with CA and those with immune-mediated ataxias on immunosuppressive medication are potentially at high risk of developing serious complications of the infection, although it is also possible that immunosuppressive agents may provide a defense against cytokine storm. This has implications for even greater attention to preventing contracting the disease through physical distancing and/or isolation. The CA patient population is also at higher risk because of the neurological complexities of their underlying disorder and the comorbid medical illnesses that often accompany the genetic ataxias. As the disruption of social patterns and healthcare delivery in response to the crisis continues, interruption of rehabilitation, speech and language therapy, and face-to-face consultations threatens to have a negative impact on the course and well-being of CA patients. Mental and physical health is also potentially at greater risk because the prevailing uncertainty and anxiety may be superimposed upon cerebellum-specific neuropsychological challenges. We identify and review some of the short- and long-term consequences of this global pandemic for the community of ataxia patients and their families and for the clinical and academic neurologists/ataxiologists caring for these patients. This includes the recognition that telemedicine has emerged as a principle means of caregiver-patient contact and that neurological manifestations of COVID-19 including those specific to cerebellar neurobiology are increasingly recognized and will require close surveillance and monitoring. This COVID-19 Cerebellum Task Force consensus provides some guidance on how we may approach this uncertain time and consider preparing for the new realities we face in CA patient care once this acute crisis has passed.

Semantic influences on the perception of degraded speech by individuals with cochlear implants.

This study investigated whether speech intelligibility in cochlear implant (CI) users is affected by semantic context. Three groups participated in two experiments: Two groups of listeners with normal hearing (NH) listened to either full spectrum speech or vocoded speech, and one CI group listened to full spectrum speech. Experiment 1 measured participants' sentence recognition as a function of target-to-masker ratio (four-talker babble masker), and experiment 2 measured perception of interrupted speech as a function of duty cycles (long/short uninterrupted speech). Listeners were presented with both semantic congruent/incongruent targets. Results from the two experiments suggested that NH listeners benefitted more from the semantic cues as the listening conditions became more challenging (lower signal-to-noise ratios and interrupted speech with longer silent intervals). However, the CI group received minimal benefit from context, and therefore performed poorly in such conditions. On the contrary, in the conditions that were less challenging, CI users benefitted greatly from the semantic context, and NH listeners did not rely on such cues. The results also confirmed that such differential use of semantic cues appears to originate from the spectro-temporal degradations experienced by CI users, which could be a contributing factor for their poor performance in suboptimal environments.

Retomada do tom médio após intervalos de sonoridade

A análise da média global das locuções é uma estratégia
 para a avaliação da prosódia emocional. Esta pesquisa tem o propósito de
 verificar se o Tom Médio pode ser referência para outras avaliações de
 F0. De gravações de narrativas, extraíram-se o Tom Médio e o Tom Médio
 móvel de F0 de sujeitos agrupados. Compararam-se os valores de
 recuperação de F0 em relação a essas medidas quando ocorriam
 interrupções de sonoridade na fala. A razão esperada seria 1. Ainda que
 houvesse alguma diferenciação entre os grupos, as razões oscilaram entre
 0,98 e 1,04, com desvio-padrão entre 0,04 e 0,05. Esses resultados
 apontaram para o fato de que após interrupções de sonoridade, os
 locutores tendem à recuperação dos valores do Tom Médio que antecediam
 essa interrupção. Os resultados corroboram a hipótese de que o Tom Médio
 é uma medida de referência segura para a avaliação das variações de F0.

ڕەگەز و قسەپێبڕین لە ڕۆمانی گرەوی بەختی هەڵاڵەدا

ڕەگەز و قسەپێبڕین لە ڕۆمانی گرەوی بەختی هەڵاڵەدا

FORMAL AND FUNCTIONAL PECULIARITIES OF THE INTERRUPTION-REPAIRS IN SPEECH INTERACTION

The paper provides the study of the phenomenon of interruption as repair in Мodern English dialogical discourse. The article outlines the analysis of the interruption-repairs from the point of view of their formal and functional characteristics. The serearch presents the complex methodolody, wich consists of the method of text interpretation, methods of deduction and synthesis, contextual, pragmalinguistic and functional methods, semantic method, which is aimed at studying speech realisation of the interruption-repairs by certain verbal means. It was stated that the interruption-repairs may have varied forms: correction, repetitions (full or partial), what-queries, paraphrases, echo questions, explicit recognition of misunderstanding, requests to confirm the correctness of vision of a situation in a certain light, conjectures or beliefs. The paper introduces the following basic types of the interruption-repairs depending on its functional peculiarities: interruption-correction, asking for clarification, explanations and additions / specifications in accordance with the needs of the communicator who interrupts a partner. The results obtained illustrate that the basic model of the interruption-repairs can be depicted in the following way: the emergence of the need for repair – repair – reaction to repair. According to the results of the research, the interruption-repairs are amplified by the phenomenon of the second utterance that depict the reaction of the speech recipient, presupposing the semantics of consent, negation and assumption, disclosure, refutation, justification, or refusal. The conducted research helps to acknowledge that the interruption-repairs contribute to overcoming communicative failures and cognitive dissonance, which is the key to a productive, successful communicative interaction. The prospects for study consist in further investigation of age characteristics, non-verbal means of the interruption, as well as strategies and tactics, which are involved in responding to the speech interruptions, that will allow a more detailed study of an addressee factor.

Manterrupting in the German Bundestag: Gendered Opposition to Female Members of Parliament?

AbstractThe problem of manterrupting, i.e. men interrupting women to take control of a conversation, claiming superior knowledge, or discrediting women's arguments, has garnered major attention in social and traditional media. Yet scholarly accounts of gendered speech interruption patterns in parliamentary debates are less common. In this article, I argue that manterrupting can be considered a form of resistance against women in politics and, in its worst iteration, prevent female representatives from representing women's interests. This article will analyze the problem of ‘manterrupting’ regarding parliamentary debates in Germany by investigating the nature and extent of male interruptions during parliamentary debates in the 17th legislative period. Drawing on insights from social psychology and masculinity studies, this article finds that in the case of Germany, manterruptions are neither systemic and frequent enough to constitute a form of resistance against women in politics nor do they prevent female representatives from engaging in the substantive representation of women.

Age effects on the contributions of envelope and periodicity cues to recognition of interrupted speech in quiet and with a competing talker.

Envelope and periodicity cues may provide redundant, additive, or synergistic benefits to speech recognition. The contributions of these cues may change under different listening conditions and may differ for younger and older adults. To address these questions, younger and older adults with normal hearing listened to interrupted sentences containing different combinations of envelope and periodicity cues in quiet and with a competing talker. Envelope and periodicity cues improved speech recognition for both groups, and their benefits were additive when both cues were available. Envelope cues were particularly important for older adults and for sentences with a competing talker.

Self-directed speech and self-regulation in childhood neurodevelopmental disorders: Current findings and future directions.

Self-directed speech is considered an important developmental achievement as a self-regulatory mediator of thinking and behavior. Atypical self-directed speech is often implicated in the self-regulatory challenges characteristic of children with neurodevelopmental disorders. A growing body of evidence provides snapshots across age-levels and diagnoses, often presenting conflicting results. This systematic review is undertaken to impose clarity on the nature, extent, and self-regulatory implications of self-directed speech interruption in children with developmental language disorder (DLD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).A rigorous search process of relevant databases (i.e., PsychInfo, PubMed, CINAHL, ERIC) uncovered 19 relevant peer-reviewed articles that investigate self-directed speech in children with neurodevelopmental disorders. Consistent across the research, children with DLD, ASD, and ADHD present with differential development and use of self-directed speech.In its synthesis of findings, this systematic review clearly explicates the differential ontogenesis of self-directed speech in neurodevelopmental disorders and interprets the self-regulatory implications for children with DLD, ASD, and ADHD. Furthermore, the review spotlights important future research directions to better understand the mechanistic relationship between self-directed speech and self-regulation.

Multimodal recognition of interrupted speech: Benefit from text and visual speech cues

Presenting degraded speech with visual cues facilitates speech recognition. This benefit is observed for visual speech cues that are perceptually correlated with the auditory signal, as well as for text cues that delay integration until a later cognitive-linguistic processing stage. However, it is not clear how the benefit compares between these two types of degraded multimodal presentations. The current study examined how listeners integrate visually interrupted text or visual speech cues with acoustically interrupted speech. In Experiment 1, text was periodically interrupted by white space at visual interruption rates that were associated with the auditory interruption rate of speech. In Experiment 2, videos were visually interrupted by grey frames. The synchrony of audio-visual interruption was also manipulated by presenting visual cues in-phase or 180o out-of-phase with speech interruptions. For both experiments, speech was low-pass filtered at 2000 Hz. Preliminary results indicate that listeners obtain a benefit from both visual speech and text cues. In addition, performance is affected by the interruption rate of speech, with minimal performance obtained around an interruption rate of 2 Hz. Supplementing speech with incomplete visual cues can improve sentence intelligibility and compensate for degraded speech in adverse listening conditions. [Work supported, in part, by NIH/NIDCD.]

Perceptual restoration of interrupted speech in typically-developing school-age children: Effect of interruption rate

Perceptual restoration of interrupted speech in typically-developing school-age children: Effect of interruption rate