Pronounced Words Research Articles

Speech and gesture share the same communication system

Humans speak and produce symbolic gestures. Do these two forms of communication interact, and how? First, we tested whether the two communication signals influenced each other when emitted simultaneously. Participants either pronounced words, or executed symbolic gestures, or emitted the two communication signals simultaneously. Relative to the unimodal conditions, multimodal voice spectra were enhanced by gestures, whereas multimodal gesture parameters were reduced by words. In other words, gesture reinforced word, whereas word inhibited gesture. In contrast, aimless arm movements and pseudo-words had no comparable effects. Next, we tested whether observing word pronunciation during gesture execution affected verbal responses in the same way as emitting the two signals. Participants responded verbally to either spoken words, or to gestures, or to the simultaneous presentation of the two signals. We observed the same reinforcement in the voice spectra as during simultaneous emission. These results suggest that spoken word and symbolic gesture are coded as single signal by a unique communication system. This signal represents the intention to engage a closer interaction with a hypothetical interlocutor and it may have a meaning different from when word and gesture are encoded singly.

Allophonic variation of Japanese /z/

According to impressionistic descriptions, the Japanese phoneme /z/ is pronounced sometimes as a fricative [z] and sometimes as an affricate [dz]. There is no consensus about how the two allophones are distributed, but one claim is that they are in complementary distribution: [dz] word initially or after a nasal and [z] intervocalically. Native speakers of ‘‘standard’’ Japanese pronounced words containing /z/ in a carrier sentence. Using spectrograms and waveforms, two (necessarily approximate) measurements were taken for each token of /z/: total duration and closure duration. The results did not show a categorical affricate/fricative distinction. Some word-initial and post-nasal tokens had no measurable closure, while many intervocalic tokens had clear closure. Nonetheless, the average closure duration was significantly longer for word-initial and post-nasal tokens of /z/ than for intervocalic tokens, and a much higher proportion of intervocalic tokens had zero closure. These results partially support the distributional claim above but make it clear that the allophonic variation involves two statistically different ranges of realizations rather than a categorical distinction between two discrete alternatives.

Adult age differences in long-term semantic priming

Young and older adults were first asked to decide if a list of individually presented words were “living” (e.g., “tree”) or “nonliving” (e.g., “store”). This was termed the “orienting task.” Next, subjects performed a pronunciation task. Semantic priming for young and older adults was indexed by determining if semantic congruence between words in the orienting task and words in the pronunciation task improved performance on the pronunciation task relative to pronounced words from semantic categories not primed in the orienting task. The present data, from two different experiments, revealed that subjects pronounced high-dominance exemplars of the “living” words primed in the orienting task faster than words not primed in the orienting task. These data indicated that semantic priming for relatively long prime-target stimulus onset asynchronies can occur, and that such priming is at least as robust for older adults as for young adults. The results are discussed in terms of four current models of semantic priming.

Computer enhanced assessment of case-notes in studies of psychopathology: The example of an autistic subject

Case report notes on encounters and exchanges between a clinician and a patient are a rich and irreplaceable source of information in studies of psychopathology. The analysis and exploitation of these notes may be considerably enhanced by transcribing the original notes to computer text files, and subsequently submitting these files to computerized “reading.” This makes it possible to take account both of qualitative and quantitative features of the behaviour and events described in the notes. Notes taken during encounters with an autistic subject were analyzed in this way. The subject's verbal and gestural repertoires were identified, together with their relative frequencies, their principal associations, and their trends over successive encounters for the items described. The method also made it possible to specify the way in which the Observer was involved in encounters, and his role in them. Major conclusions were that the autistic subject distinctly avoided triadic situations, preferentially pronounced words and phonemes similar to those of his own name, and did not distinguish between the representations he had of persons, objects, places, gestures and words. He also failed to distinguish between the representation he had of himself and of his own name.

Dahma Āfriti and some related problems

The Yazata of the benediction known as the Dahma Āfriti is a figure whose importance in the Zoroastrian pantheon has been obscured, it seems for two main reasons. One is that, although she was apparently originally accorded a place among the thirty ‘calendar’ divinities, she subsequently lost this, probably in an Achaemenian calendar reform. The other is that later still her identity became confused through her name acquiring several Middle Persian forms: Dahm Yazad, Dahmān Āfrīn, Dahmān, the last, since it is a formal plural, causing some misunderstandings in her veneration locally.The Avestan adjective dahma is understood to have meant originally ‘instructed’, that is, in the Zoroastrian faith; but, to judge from its use in context, it developed the sense of ‘pious, devout’, occurring frequently with ašavan as a term for a good Zoroastrian. The name of the benediction is accordingly generally rendered as the ‘Pious Blessing’. Much power was attributed by Zoroastrians to solemnly pronounced words, and the compilers of the extended yasna liturgy set the ‘Pious Good Blessing’, Dahṃa VaohviĀfriti, after the Ahuna Vairya, Ašəm Vohū and Yenhē hātąm as the fourth of the mighty utterances which crush and destroy Anra Mainyu and his hordes (Y.61:l–2). (The other three form a group because together they precede the Gāthās, and together are the subject of the commentary which forms (Y. 19–21.)

Dissociated hemispheric and stimulus effects upon affective choice and recognition.

Following lateralized tachistoscopic presentations of faces and pronounceable nonsense words, subjects made two kinds of choices, affective (AFF) and recognition (REC). Subliminal presentations influenced later affective choices for faces (but not for nonsense words), while recognition was not influenced. Liminal presentations produced no effects. Supraliminal presentations influenced later affective choices for nonsense words (but not for faces), while recognition choices showed the expected LVF advantage for faces and a RVF advantage for nonsense words. Affective and recognition judgments appeared to be competing processes since only one or the other but not both differed significantly from chance in a visual field for a given stimulus type and exposure duration.

Processing of short vowels, long vowels, and vowel digraphs by disabled and non-disabled readers.

The speed with which disabled and non-disabled readers process short vowels, long vowels, and vowel digraphs was investigated in this study, an exploration of Morrison's 1984 conceptualization of reading disability as the failure to master the complex irregular system of rules governing sound-symbol correspondence in English. 7 disabled and 7 non-disabled readers, all of average intelligence, were presented pseudoword pairs on slides and asked to identify a pronounced target word by identifying its position ("top" or "bottom"). Reaction time was measured with voice-operated relay and digital millisecond clock counter. The pseudoword pairs were formed such that each pseudoword was paired with another that was identical except for one or two vowels in the medial position. No effects of type of reader (disabled or non-disabled) and type of letters in the medial position (long vowel, short vowel, vowel digraph) on reaction time were noted. Analysis of reaction times for individual words gave significant differences. The need for an empirically supported "complexity scale" is discussed.

Effects of a Taped-Words Treatment Procedure on Learning Disabled Students' Sight-Word Oral Reading

The effects of modeling vocabulary words using a tape recorder on six high-school learning disabled boys' sight-word reading were examined in a multiple-baseline design. Response rates were first scored during the Baseline condition when no tape recorder was used. No teacher modeling was given. Later response rates were measured during the Taped-Words condition after a tape recording only provided a model for correctly pronounced words. Results indicated an increase in correct oral response rates of isolated word lists and a sharp decrease in each student's oral error rates. Implications of the findings are drawn both for practitioners working with learning disabled students and for others involved with reading tasks. The results indicate that the students were able independently to improve their response rates through the use of the tape recorder alone, thus freeing the teacher for other kinds of instruction.

Progressive dysfluency associated with right hemisphere disease

A late onset progressive dysfluency following a right hemisphere stroke occurred in a 62-year-old male. Dysfluency was characterized by pronounced word and phrase reiterations, and sound and syllable reiterations to a lesser degree. Spontaneous speech was significantly more dysfluent than oral reading and repetition. Recitation and singing were minimally dysfluent. Reiterations were accompanied by reduced vocal loudness and increased rate of speech. Reiterations occurred in initial, medial, and final sentence position. Secondary symptoms such as facial grimacing were absent. In contrast to acquired cortical stuttering which is characterized by a preponderance of sound and syllable sentence initial repetitions, dysfluency was more closely characteristic of palilalia. The dysfluency occurred as a symptom of a diffuse nonspecific subcortical projection system defect related to massive infarction in the right middle cerebral artery distribution with associated atrophy.

Incidental Learning of Image-Mediated or Pronounced Words after Right Temporal Lobectomy

The use of visual images in word recall by patients with right temporal lobectomy was studied by testing the incidental learning of 40 (20 abstract, 20 concrete) words that had been either carefully pronounced or the referent visualized. When tested immediately after presentation of the list, the right temporal-lobe group (N = 30) did not differ from a matched normal control group, but in delayed recall 2 hours later the patient group showed impaired recall of concrete words that had been visualized. Recall of visualized abstract words was also poor but not significantly so, while pronounced words, whether abstract or concrete, were recalled normally. Further analysis revealed an impaired recall for visualized concrete words in both immediate and delayed testing in patients having a large right hippocampal removal, indicating an important role of the mesial temporal structures in image recall.

A psycholinguistic study of English stress assignment rules.

Two studies of stress assignment rules are reported. In both studies speakers found to base their pronunciations partly on general rules and partly on comparisons with particular English words: word length, syntactic category and position of primary stress all influenced performance. In the second study, the distinctions between pronounced polysyllabic nonsense words, and similarity to real English words, as well as phonemic and syntactic structure, was controlled. In the first study, speakers were lax and tense vowels, and strong and weak clusters, which are central to Chomsky and Halle's (1968) formulation of stress assignment rules, were found to influence performance, but not only in the ways predicted by Chomsky and Halle. A probabilistic performance model is proposed: part of this model incorporates Chomsky and Halle's rules, but other linguistic influences are also taken into account.

Pronounceability and the visual recognition of nonsense words

Additional evidence is presented for the hypothesis that visual word recognition may involve recording into phonemic form. Specifically, the hypothesis that less pronounceable nonsense words are recognized as nonsense faster than more pronounceable nonsense words was confirmed. It is proposed that differences in pronounceability produce their effects during the sequencing of the neural instructions associated with each phoneme.

Pronunciation effects in recognition memory

Two experiments were conducted to examine the prediction from frequency theory that recognition memory should be better for pronounced words than for unpronounced words. The first experiment employed a forced-choice recognition test; an old-new recognition test was used in the second experiment. Pronunciation does not improve recognition memory when performance of a group that pronounces all of the study words is compared to that for a group that studies all the words silently; however, pronounced words are better recognized than unpronounced words in a mixed-list task in which half of the items are pronounced at the time of study and half are not. The observed pronunciation effect seems to be due at least as much to lowered recognition performance for unpronounced words as it is to improved recognition memory for pronounced words.

Illusory changes of distinct speech upon repetition--the verbal transformation effect.

If a loop of tape plays a clearly pronounced word or phrase over and over, sudden shifts seem to occur in what is being said. This ‘verbal transformation effect’ continues at frequent intervals during continued stimulation, sometimes introducing a new form, sometimes returning to a form already reported. The illusion was found for all stimuli used: from a word with two speech sounds to complete sentences. Quantitative measures were obtained of the effect of stimulus complexity, loudness, masking noise, and repetition rate. Transitions frequently involved a very great degree of phonetic distortion and often exhibited semantic consistency.

Kinship and History

DISCUSSION AND CORRESPONDENCE KINSHIP AND HISTORY I hasten to admit the contention of Radcliffe-Brown, made in Kinship Termi­ nologies in California in a recent number of this journal,! that I claimed too much in stating that the time for an attack on the problem of the relation of kin terminologies to coexistent institutions was on the whole after some insight into their history had been attained rather than before. Actually, of course, the factual problem of what the correlation is, especially in the norm or average, is not intrinsically affected by historical considerations. Brown is quite within his rights in attempting to solve the problem as he sees it, which is unhistorically, without reference to complicating antecedents. If one seeks to isolate constants, simplification of the issue and its extrication from the chaos of apparent phenomena are important, and anterior stages may be irrelevant. What I should have expressed was my conviction that the factors at work in the phenomena in question are numerous and variable enough to make it seem highly questionable whether determinations of constants other than of narrow range or vague nature can be made, or at any rate have yet been made, while historical considerations are omitted. I cheerfully make this correction. That I was not trying to say that probabilities or inferences or hypotheses should be allowed to supersede facts, will probably be believed without explicit reaffirmation. Among historical considerations in this connection I reckon language, of which kin terminologies are part. Hupa and Tolowa are Athabascan, and this fact therefore must enter ultimately into the problem of terminological-institutional correlation in northwest California. One can of course refrain from ultimates and limit the problem to the question of whether or not correlation exists in these par­ ticular tribes. This is perfectly legitimate, but seems rather narrow, and I do not believe Brown would wish to draw such a limit. In fact I admit without hesitation that there must expectably be some correlation: both because speech is not an in­ dependent universe, and because in other cases hitherto we have always found some accord between terminologies and institutions. A much more real problem is how much correlation there is, and what factors have made it stronger at some points and weaker at others. Here I believe language cannot be left out, in the sense that Hupa being Athabascan, and Yurok being if not Algonkin at least non-Athabascan, the speakers of the two languages must at one time have come into contact and into acquisition of a highly similar culture, not only with differently pronounced words, but-if all precedent holds-with kinship words of somewhat or considerably dif­ ferent meaning. The situation, in short, is characterized by the impingement on each other of a set of social institutions and usages at least highly uniform in the area and of several languages which are thoroughly different-so different that their contained terminologies still remain extremely diverse in plan or system of concepts. I do not doubt that detailed investigation will also reveal a number of differences of Vol. 37, 1935, pp. 530-35.