Prosody Assessment Research Articles

The ProA Online Tool for Prosody Assessment and Its Use for the Definition of Acoustic Models for Prosodic Evaluation of L2 Spanish Learners

Assessment of prosody is not usually included in the evaluation of oral expression skills of L2 Spanish learners. Some of the factors that probably explain this fact are the lack of adequate materials, correctness models and tools to carry out this assessment. This paper describes one of the results of the ProA (Prosody Assessment) project, a web tool for the online assessment of Spanish prosody. The tool allows the online development of evaluation tests and rubrics, the completion of these tests and their remote scoring. An example of use of this tool for research purposes is also presented: three prosodic parameters (global energy, speech rate, F0 range) of a set of oral productions of two L2 Spanish learners, collected using the tests developed in the project, were evaluated by three L2 Spanish teachers using the web tool and the rubrics developed also in the ProA project, and the obtained ratings were compared with the results of the acoustic analysis of these parameters in the material to determine to what extent there was a correlation between evaluators’ judgements and prosodic parameters. The results obtained may be of interest, for example, for the development of future automatic prosody assessment systems.

Multilingual Implications for Reading Prosody Assessment

We believe that reading prosody assessment is culturally situated. In this conceptual article, we problematize some of the phrasing used for prosody indicators and explore how three of the most spoken languages in the United States (other than English) enact aspects of prosody when reading. We probe potential linguistic and sociocultural implications and contribute to the discussion of equitable assessment practices in reading education. Using a multilingual and sociocultural lens, we identify elements of prosody in other languages that could impact how prosody in English is produced. We discuss extratextual features that impact prosody and implications for the rubrics used by assessors. We end by providing recommendations for the field related to increasing our understanding of multilingual fluency and promoting multilingual mindsets in fluency classroom assessment.

Fluency-related Temporal Features and Syllable Prominence as Prosodic Proficiency Predictors for Learners of English with Different Language Backgrounds.

Prosodic features are important in achieving intelligibility, comprehensibility, and fluency in a second or foreign language (L2). However, research on the assessment of prosody as part of oral proficiency remains scarce. Moreover, the acoustic analysis of L2 prosody has often focused on fluency-related temporal measures, neglecting language-dependent stress features that can be quantified in terms of syllable prominence. Introducing the evaluation of prominence-related measures can be of use in developing both teaching and assessment of L2 speaking skills. In this study we compare temporal measures and syllable prominence estimates as predictors of prosodic proficiency in non-native speakers of English with respect to the speaker’s native language (L1).The predictive power of temporal and prominence measures was evaluated for utterance-sized samples produced by language learners from four different L1 backgrounds: Czech, Slovak, Polish, and Hungarian. Firstly, the speech samples were assessed using the revised Common European Framework of Reference scale for prosodic features. The assessed speech samples were then analyzed to derive articulation rate and three fluency measures. Syllable-level prominence was estimated by a continuous wavelet transform analysis using combinations of F0, energy, and syllable duration.The results show that the temporal measures serve as reliable predictors of prosodic proficiency in the L2, with prominence measures providing a small but significant improvement to prosodic proficiency predictions. The predictive power of the individual measures varies both quantitatively and qualitatively depending on the L1 of the speaker. We conclude that the possible effects of the speaker’s L1 on the production of L2 prosody in terms of temporal features as well as syllable prominence deserve more attention in applied research and developing teaching and assessment methods for spoken L2.

Outcomes of a Readers´ Theatre Program on Oral Reading Prosody: An Exploratory Study in Different Environments

Readers theatre is a teaching strategy that consists of the interpretative reading of theatrical texts in which readers use their voices to give life to the characters. This strategy promotes the development of various skills related to fluency, among which there is prosody. The aims of this research were to check the efficacy of a reader’s theatre program on the prosody of oral reading. Eleven dyslexic students from third and fourth grade of primary school participated in this study, and who were distributed in two groups. To check the program effectiveness, a program evaluation method was used following the CIIP model and a pre-experimental pre-test post-test design. As a dependent variable, prosody and the prosodic characteristics were used and measured through the Prosody Assessment Scale. Findings showed a significant prosody improvement as well as the prosodic features. In addition, the results obtained by the program were similar in both groups of students. These findings suggest the readers theatre is an effective strategy for improving the prosody of reading in schoolchildren of those ages and confirm that this strategy can be used as a part of an integral program for fluency development.

Irish English PEPS-C (2015 edition) and Learners of ESL

Introduction: Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C) is a computerised test for assessing the abilities to understand and use speech prosody in communication. It has been used to obtain a profile of strengths and weaknesses in different prosodic forms and functions for different clinical populations (e.g., autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome) and second language learners. The 2015 edition of PEPS-C incorporates four new subtests addressing the understanding and production of lexical stress and phrasal stress, and collapses four form subtests (Intonation/Short-Item Input and Output, Prosody/Long-Item Input and Output) into two (Discrimination, Imitation). However, the suitability of these new tasks has not been reported in any published studies, although they are likely to be relevant for learners of English. Moreover, the present authors update the Irish English (IE) version of PEPS-C to the 2015 edition for another research project on prosodic skills in children with spina bifida. Hence, this paper reports the making of PEPS-C 2015 (IE) and examines the usefulness of this test in assessing a group of non-native speakers of English, as compared to a group of native speakers of IE. Methods: PEPS-C 2015 for Irish English was developed by adapting the test items of the UK English version of the test. The PEPS-C 2015 (IE) was then trialled on 25 native speakers of Irish English and 10 Spanish speakers who speak English as a second language (ESL). Results: All native speakers of Irish English showed competence (scored ≥75% correct) in the comprehension and expression of prosodic form and functions assessed. For the ESL speakers, the test identified two areas of possible difficulty for this group: Phrase Stress Comprehension and Expression, and Contrastive Stress Comprehension. Conclusion: The PEPS-C 2015, with its extra stress tasks, might therefore be useful as a prosody assessment tool for ESL speakers, particularly those with a Romance first language or at an early stage of learning, but further research is needed.

Speech-language pathologists and prosody: Clinical practices and barriers

Prosodic impairments occur in many clinical populations, including those with autism and motor speech disorders. These impairments can negatively impact intelligibility, as well as an individual’s ability to signal and understand linguistic contrasts and emotions. For this study, we surveyed 245 Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs) to assess their clinical practices with regards to prosody and to identify potential barriers to addressing prosody in the clinic. While a majority of respondents agreed that prosody was within their scope of practice, they reported that they rarely assessed or treated prosody when they suspected that a client had a prosodic impairment. Overall, respondents felt they were lacking in knowledge of the nature of prosody, experience with clients who have prosodic impairments, and knowledge of assessment and treatment methods for prosody. Recommendations include increasing training opportunities, encouraging collaboration between researchers and SLPs with expertise in prosody, and the development of a clinically feasible prosody assessment.

Evaluation of temporal and suprasegmental auditory processing in patients with unilateral hearing loss

ObjectivesTo determine the temporal order, resolution, and perception of prosody skills in Single-Sided Deafness (SSD) compared to an age- and sex-matched normal hearing group's same side ear and both ears. MethodsThis was a Case-Control study including 30 subjects with SSD, and age- and sex-matched 30 subjects with bilateral normal hearing (total of 60 subjects- mean age: 38.7 ± 11.6 years). The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Frequency Pattern Test (FPT), Duration Pattern Test (DPT), Random Gap Detection Test (RGDT), Evaluation of Motor Response Time and Emotional Prosody Assessment were performed on the clinically normal ear in the SSD group, the same side ear in the normal hearing group, and both ears of the normal hearing group (the SSD, MNH, and BNH groups, respectively). ResultsIndividuals with SSD had worse results in DPT (p < .001), gap detection at 0.5 kHz (p < .001), gap detection at 4 kHz (p < .001), and composite score (p < .001) than the BNH group. For reaction time measurements, the SSD group had slower performance scores than the BNH group for DPT (p < .001) and FPT (p < .001). ConclusionsPoor temporal processing ability and reduced reaction times may help explain the difficulties in those with SSD in performing daily living activities such as speech understanding in noise and requires more processing efforts. However, there were no significant differences between the groups in frequency pattern performance and emotional prosody skills, supporting the claim that fundamental frequency is one of the most important measures of perception in emotional prosody. We demonstrated that unilateral hearing is adequate to analyze frequency patterns to aid in prosody perception. Analysis of reaction times in temporal processing and emotional prosody could provide different perspectives of auditory processing. Slower reaction time of SSD should be considered for habilitation purposes.

Eficacia de un programa de fluidez lectora con escolares disléxicos

Background and objectiveOne of the most common difficulties for dyslexics is the lack of reading fluency. This difficulty involves a lot of effort in order to read a text, spending an excessive amount of time, and with a lack of expressiveness. For the treatment of this difficulty, several strategies have been considered, repeated reading being the most commonly used. The aims of this study are to determine the effectiveness of an intervention programme aimed at improving reading fluency through theatre scripts, and observe whether the results depend upon students’ sociocultural and economic background. MethodThe sample consisted of 11 third- and fourth-grade students with dyslexia distributed into two groups according to the educational centre of provenance (public or charter school). A pre-experimental design pre-test and post-test study approach was used to prove the effectiveness of the programme. Automation and prosody were evaluated as accuracy-dependent variables through the reading of theatrical texts, the Fundar Reading Proficiency test, and a Scale of Prosody Assessment. ResultsResults indicate that children improved significantly in automation and prosody, but not that much in reading accuracy. Furthermore, the programme obtained similar results in both groups. ConclusionsThese findings match other studies and suggest that the reading of theatrical texts is an effective strategy for improving reading fluency in dyslexic students of this age group.

Reception of Communicative Functions of Prosody in Hypokinetic Dysarthria due to Parkinson's Disease.

Mapping adequacy of receptive prosodic abilities in speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria due to Parkinson's disease (PD) is useful, because therapy of disturbed production of prosody relies on adequate reception of prosody. There is evidence for a deficit of reception of emotional prosody in PD. The present study aims at presenting a comprehensive picture of the reception of various communicative functions of prosody in hypokinetic dysarthria due to PD. We assessed perception (using a discrimination task) and comprehension (using an identification task) of five communicative functions of Dutch prosody (lexical stress, boundary marking, focus, sentence mode, and emotional prosody) in a group of adults with hypokinetic dysarthria due to PD (n = 22) and a gender and age matched group of unimpaired adults (n = 22). We also investigated the relationship between age and global test score, and the effect of perception and comprehension subtest sequence on the global test score. Between groups, no significant differences in receptive prosodic abilities were found. Within both groups, the comprehension subtest was significantly more difficult than the perception subtest, and there was a significant negative correlation between age and global test score. No subtest sequence effect could be demonstrated. Considering that the older speakers with hypokinetic dysarthria due to PD had receptive prosodic skills inferior to those of the younger speakers, notwithstanding apparently intact cognition and hearing, the findings suggest that age is a factor to be reckoned with in prosody assessment and management in this population.

A novel prosody assessment test: Findings in three cases of Landau–Kleffner syndrome

Landau–Kleffner syndrome (LKS) is a rare childhood neurological disorder characterized by subacute aphasia, auditory agnosia and abnormal EEG. Prosody structures utterances, indicates sentence modality (linguistic prosody) and expresses the speaker’s intention, attitude and emotions (affective prosody). It not only functions as (para-) linguistic features but also provides social explanations. It has been shown that infants can perceive, distinguish and use prosodic features for communication. Since patients with LKS have no more means of verbal communication, we suppose they use some “primitive” cues in an attempt to understand what is said to them. Based on the fact that aphasia does not mean loss of social capacity/functionality, and the precociousness and functions of prosody, the present study investigated prosodic capacity outcomes (possible preservation of prosody) in three individuals - two children and one adolescent - with LKS compared with 7–8 yearold healthy children and healthy adults. A set of perceptual tests of linguistic and affective prosody was elaborated and used for this study. Results revealed that affective prosody is better used in a child with LKS than in the control group under the conditions such as relatively late age at onset, short duration of epilepsy/medication and persistent comprehension problems. Given that prosody appears to be helpful for better oral comprehension, prosody should be used in speech therapy for children with LKS.

Assessing prosodic skills in five European languages: Cross-linguistic differences in typical and atypical populations

Following demand for a prosody assessment procedure, the test Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech-Communication (PEPS-C), has been translated from English into Spanish, French, Flemish and Norwegian. This provides scope to examine receptive and expressive prosodic ability in Romance (Spanish and French) as well as Germanic (English and Flemish) languages, and includes the possibility of assessing these skills with regard to lexical tone (Norwegian). Cross-linguistic similarities and differences relevant to the translation are considered. Preliminary findings concerning 8-year-old neurotypical children speaking the five languages are reported. The appropriateness of investigating contrastive stress in Romance as well as Germanic languages is considered: results are reported for assessing this skill in Spanish and English speakers and suggest that in Spanish it is acquired much later than in English. We also examine the feasibility of assessing and comparing prosodic disorder in the five languages, using assessments of prosody in Spanish and English speakers with Williams syndrome as an example. We conclude that, with caveats, the original design of the UK test may indicate comparable stages of prosodic development in neurotypical children and is appropriate for the evaluation of prosodic skills for adults and children, both neurotypical and with impairment, in all five languages.

Automated assessment of prosody production

Assessment of prosody is important for diagnosis and remediation of speech and language disorders, for diagnosis of neurological conditions, and for foreign language instruction. Current assessment is largely auditory-perceptual, which has obvious drawbacks; however, automation of assessment faces numerous obstacles. We propose methods for automatically assessing production of lexical stress, focus, phrasing, pragmatic style, and vocal affect. Speech was analyzed from children in six tasks designed to elicit specific prosodic contrasts. The methods involve dynamic and global features, using spectral, fundamental frequency, and temporal information. The automatically computed scores were validated against mean scores from judges who, in all but one task, listened to “prosodic minimal pairs” of recordings, each pair containing two utterances from the same child with approximately the same phonemic material but differing on a specific prosodic dimension, such as stress. The judges identified the prosodic categories of the two utterances and rated the strength of their contrast. For almost all tasks, we found that the automated scores correlated with the mean scores approximately as well as the judges’ individual scores. Real-time scores assigned during examination – as is fairly typical in speech assessment – correlated substantially less than the automated scores with the mean scores.

Developing a test of prosodic ability for speakers of Iberian Spanish

In the absence of a Spanish prosody assessment procedure, an English one (Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems-Children: PEPS-C) has been adapted for use with Iberian Spanish speakers. The paper describes the scope, principles and methods of the test and the modifications other than lexical translation that were required to produce a Spanish procedure. Findings from the first studies of data collected using the Spanish test are briefly considered: these suggest crosslinguistic parallels and English/Spanish differences in adult prosodic ability. Lengthier consideration is given to prosodic data from Spanish children and the use of prefinal contrastive accent in the two languages. We conclude that the test is a feasible and valid instrument for assessing Spanish prosodic ability and indicate possible directions for further research.

Intonation features of the expression of emotions in Spanish: preliminary study for a prosody assessment procedure

This study aimed to find out what intonation features reliably represent the emotions of “liking” as opposed to “disliking” in the Spanish language, with a view to designing a prosody assessment procedure for use with children with speech and language disorders. 18 intonationally different prosodic realisations (tokens) of one word (limón) were recorded by one native Spanish speaker. The tokens were deemed representative of two categories of emotion: liking or disliking of the taste “lemon”. 30 native Spanish speakers assigned them to the two categories and rated their expressiveness on a six‐point scale. For all tokens except two, agreement between judges as to category was highly significant, some tokens attracting 100% agreement. The intonation contours most related to expressiveness levels were: for “liking”, an inverted U form contour with exaggerated pitch peak within the tonic syllable; and for “disliking”, a flat melodic contour with a slight fall.

Receptive and Expressive Prosodic Ability in Children With High-Functioning Autism

This study aimed to identify the nature and extent of receptive and expressive prosodic deficits in children with high-functioning autism (HFA). Thirty-one children with HFA, 72 typically developing controls matched on verbal mental age, and 33 adults with normal speech completed the prosody assessment procedure, Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children. Children with HFA performed significantly less well than controls on 11 of 12 prosody tasks (p < .005). Receptive prosodic skills showed a strong correlation (p < .01) with verbal mental age in both groups, and to a lesser extent with expressive prosodic skills. Receptive prosodic scores also correlated with expressive prosody scores, particularly in grammatical prosodic functions. Prosodic development in the HFA group appeared to be delayed in many aspects of prosody and deviant in some. Adults showed near-ceiling scores in all tasks. The study demonstrates that receptive and expressive prosodic skills are closely associated in HFA. Receptive prosodic skills would be an appropriate focus for clinical intervention, and further investigation of prosody and the relationship between prosody and social skills is warranted.

A global, boundary-centric framework for unit selection text-to-speech synthesis

The level of quality that can be achieved by modern concatenative text-to-speech synthesis heavily depends on the optimization criteria used in the unit selection process. While effective cost functions arise naturally for prosody assessment, the criteria typically selected to quantify discontinuities in the speech signal do not closely reflect users' perception of the resulting acoustic waveform. This paper introduces an alternative feature extraction paradigm, which eschews general purpose Fourier analysis in favor of a modal decomposition separately optimized for each boundary region. The ensuing transform framework preserves, by construction, those properties of the waveform which are globally relevant to each concatenation considered. In addition, it leads to a novel discontinuity measure which jointly, albeit implicitly, accounts for both interframe incoherence and discrepancies in formant frequencies/bandwidths. Experimental evaluations are conducted to characterize the behavior of this new metric, first on a contiguity prediction task, and then via a systematic listening comparison using a conventional metric as baseline. The results underscore the viability of the proposed framework in quantifying the perception of discontinuity between acoustic units.

Assessing prosodic and pragmatic ability in children with high-functioning autism

Children with high-functioning autism are widely reported to show deficits in both prosodic and pragmatic ability. New procedures for assessing both of these are now available and have been used in a study of 31 children with high-functioning autism and 72 controls. Some of the findings from a review of the literature on prosodic skills in individuals with autism are presented, and it is shown how these skills are addressed in a new prosodic assessment procedure, PEPS-C. A case study of a child with high-functioning autism shows how his prosodic skills can be evaluated on the prosody assessment procedure, and how his skills compare with those of controls. He is also assessed for pragmatic ability. Results of both assessments are considered together to show how, in the case of this child, specific prosodic skill-levels can affect pragmatic ability.