Spoken Name Research Articles

Modulating social learning-induced evaluation updating during human sleep

People often change their evaluations upon learning about their peers’ evaluations, i.e., social learning. Given sleep’s vital role in consolidating daytime experiences, sleep may facilitate social learning, thereby further changing people’s evaluations. Combining a social learning task and the sleep-based targeted memory reactivation technique, we asked whether social learning-induced evaluation updating can be modulated during sleep. After participants had indicated their initial evaluation of snacks, they learned about their peers’ evaluations while hearing the snacks’ spoken names. During the post-learning non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, we re-played half of the snack names (i.e., cued snack) to reactivate the associated peers’ evaluations. Upon waking up, we found that the social learning-induced evaluation updating further enlarged for both cued and uncued snacks. Examining sleep electroencephalogram (EEG) activity revealed that cue-elicited delta-theta EEG power and the overnight N2 sleep spindle density predicted post-sleep evaluation updating for cued but not for uncued snacks. These findings underscore the role of sleep-mediated memory reactivation and the associated neural activity in supporting social learning-induced evaluation updating.

Who said it? Native and non-native listeners' source memory for object-speaker associations

Memory for who said what can help native and non-native listeners identify critical information for use in conversations. In two experiments, source memory for object-speaker associations was tested for listeners varying in language proficiency. Native and non-native participants of English first heard speakers name objects with prototypical color (e.g., broccoli) before they had to indicate who had previously named each object. Speakers either consistently named objects of one color, or they randomly named objects of different colors. While both listener groups associated objects with speakers successfully, in Experiment 1, with black and white images, native listeners showed an advantage in source memory in the color consistent condition over the random condition, while non-native listeners had no such advantage. The finding for non-native listeners was replicated in Experiment 2 with color images. The results confirm the role of source memory representations in communication, but also suggest that encoding object-speaker association in L2 may be less sensitive to consistent patterns in the input.

Nomeação Unidirecional de Falante em Crianças Bem Pequenas: Efeitos do Ensino por Múltiplos Exemplares

Abstract: Toddlers (children aged 1 to 3 years) may have difficulties responding as a speaker to objects/events for which they have been taught to respond as a listener. This study aimed to perform a methodologically robust evaluation of the effectiveness of a Multiple Exemplar Instruction teaching (MEI) consisting only of listener (auditory-visual matching-to-sample) and speaker tasks (intraverbal tact), in inducing Unidirectional Speaker Naming in toddlers with typical development. Thus, three toddlers aged between 28 and 29 months were exposed to: listener and speaker pre-tests with auditory stimuli and two-dimensional visual stimuli; listener teaching; listener and speaker post-test 1; MEI; and listener and speaker post-test 2. In post-test 2, one toddler showed emergence of Unidirectional Speaker Naming. The findings of this study may help to refine language teaching procedures for toddlers.

Vibe - With people with hearing impairment

Hearing loss significantly impacts daily life, leading to communication difficulties, social isolation, and increased risk of accidents. This can cause frustration, anxiety, and depression. The use of sound indication devices improve the quality of life for individuals with hearing impairment by providing them with a means to detect sounds in their environment. We have developed Vibe, a device that alerts a user to specific sounds (a baby's cry, an alarm, a door knock, a vehicle horn, or a spoken name) in their environment. Our device uses EdgeML, a form of machine learning, to perform tasks locally on the device rather than relying on cloud-based services. This approach has the advantage of reduced latency and improved privacy. The EdgeML model was trained on a locally collected dataset, for better applicability to the Indian environment. Devices such as Vibe will help individuals with hearing impairment navigate their surroundings safely and confidently, leading to increased independence and improved mental health.

Gender disparity of invited speakers at the American Association of Orthodontists Annual Session: A cross-sectional analysis 2015-2023

The American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) Annual Session aims to educate members using expert speakers in the field. Selection to speak is an honor and can help further an orthodontist's career and credibility. A European study found a significant gender discrepancy in selected speakers at their orthodontic meeting. This has not been investigated in the United States. Speaker names from the 2015-2023 AAO Annual Sessions were obtained and analyzed for gender and then compared with active membership and orthodontic faculty percentages. In addition, the gender of each General Chair and Doctors' Program Chair was analyzed and then compared with the female speaker and membership percentages. Because AAO research award winners are selected blindly, show expertise in the field, and are provided an opportunity to speak at the Annual Session, their gender was also confirmed and compared with membership percentage and female speaker percentage. Two-way chi-square tests were used, and P values of<0.05 were considered statistically significant. Mann-Kendall trend tests analyzed any potential changes in gender representation among AAO active memberships and AAO Annual Session speakers. Female doctors were underrepresented as speakers (P values ranged from<0.001 to<0.05) in every year studied except 2020 compared with active membership and female faculty percentages. Female doctors were also significantly underrepresented as Annual Session General Chairs and Doctors' Program Chairs (P<0.01). The difference in female doctor representation among research awards winners (63%) compared with the Annual Session speakers (19%) was highly significant. Female representation in AAO active membership shows a significant increase from 2015 to 2023. The ratio of female-to-male speakers appears to be increasing but did not reach statistical significance. Female doctors are underrepresented as selected speakers at the AAO Annual Session but comprise the majority of research award recipients. Efforts to provide opportunities for women to showcase their knowledge should be implemented.

Gender and Racial Representation of Invited Speakers From The Aesthetic Society Annual Meetings Over a 5-Year Period.

Increased representation from both women and non-White ethnicities remains a topic of discussion in plastic surgery. Speakers at academic conferences are a form of visual representation of diversity within the field. This study determined the current demographic landscape of aesthetic plastic surgery and evaluated whether underrepresented populations receive equal opportunities to be invited speakers at The Aesthetic Society meetings. Invited speaker's names, roles, and allotted time for presentation were extracted from the 2017 to 2021 meeting programs. Perceived gender and ethnicity were determined by visual analysis of photographs, whereas parameters of academic productivity and professorship were collected from Doximity, LinkedIn, Scopus, and institutional profiles. Differences in opportunities to present and academic credentials were compared between groups. Of the 1447 invited speakers between 2017 and 2021, 20% (n = 294) were women and 23% (n = 316) belonged to a non-White ethnicity. Representation from women significantly increased between 2017 and 2021 (14% vs 30%, P < 0.001), whereas the proportion of non-White speakers did not (25% vs 25%, P > 0.050) despite comparable h-indexes (15.3 vs 17.2) and publications (54.9 vs 75.9) to White speakers. Non-White speakers oftentimes had more academic titles, significant in 2019 ( P < 0.020). The proportion of female invited speakers has increased, with room for further improvement. Representation from non-White speakers has not changed. However, significantly more non-White speakers holding assistant professor titles may indicate increased ethnicity diversity in years to come. Future efforts should focus on improving diversity in positions of leadership while promoting functions that target young minority career individuals.

“Into the Widest Imagination”

“Into the Widest Imagination”

Representation of Female Speakers at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons Annual Meetings Over Time.

In the United States, women comprise 16% of orthopaedic surgery residents, 4% of fellows, and 6% of practicing orthopaedic surgeons. The underrepresentation of women in surgical subspecialties may be because of lack of early exposure to female mentors. Conference speaker roles are important for visibility. This study aims to evaluate the representation of women in speaker roles and responsibilities at the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) meetings over time. The names of speakers and session titles at the annual AAOS meetings were obtained from conference programs for the years 2009, 2014, and 2019. Each speaker was classified based on sex and role. Sessions discussing scientific or surgical topics were classified as technical and those that did not were classified as nontechnical. Descriptive statistics are provided, as well as individual-year odds ratios (ORs) and confidence intervals (CIs) examining sex versus technical session status and sex versus speaker role; combined results controlling for year are calculated using the Cochran-Mantel-Haenszel method. Overall, 3,980 speaking sessions were analyzed; 6.8% of speaking sessions were assigned to women. Women were more likely than men to participate in nontechnical speaking roles (OR 3.85; 95% CI, 2.79 to 4.78). Among talks given by women, the percentage that were nontechnical increased (25.5% in 2009, 24.3% in 2014, and 44.1% in 2019). Among moderator roles, the percentage assigned to women increased (4.5% in 2009, 6.0% in 2014, 14.5% in 2019). Our findings demonstrate an increase in female speakers at AAOS meetings from 2009 to 2019. The percentage of female moderators and nontechnical sessions given by women increased since 2009. A need for a shift in the distribution of speaker role exists, which promotes inclusivity and prevents professional marginalization. Representation of women as role models increases visibility and may address the leaky pipeline phenomenon and paucity of women in orthopaedics.

Arabic Culture and Disagreements in Political TV Conversation

In intercultural studies, Arabic society has been described as high-context culture that rely more on indirect message and little room is provided within verbalized articulations. This study attempts to prove out this basic insight relating to communication pattern of a culture in other settings, by analyzing Arabic disagreements in TV interaction. Little investigation about disagreements have been done in Arabic context. The current study will fill this gap and seeks to explore the realization of speech act of disagreement within the context of televised political discourse by analyzing and comparing direct and mitigated disagreement strategies in Arabic political TV talks. In order to achieve these research objectives, a total of twelve Arabic recorded TV programs were transcribed and analyzed through qualitative and quantitative methods. Disagreement responses in the corpus were classified and adjusted based on application framework suggested by some previous studies. The procedures for conducting this study involve data collection, transcription and analysis, using Conversation Analysis (CA) technique. This study reveales that the general percentage of direct disagreements were obviously higher and preferred to that of alleviated disagreements (64.9%-35.0%) which challenges the generalizations about cultural distinctions. Arabic disagreement features such as negation particle, explicit oppositional phrases and disagreement with apology were identified. When the Arab interactants engage in conflict, employing vocative particle with calling the name of the other speaker is one of the unique features found in this research. For future studies, researchers should be mindful of integrating polite and conflict framework for more comprehensive interpretation of human communication.

What is the interference in “verbal interference”?

Research on the interrelation between language and other components of cognition makes frequent use of verbal interference paradigms. In this, participants are engaged in a primary nonverbal task, while simultaneously repeating non-sense syllables from memory or playback to occupy their articulatory buffer, which is assumed to block internal language use. However, language production involves different subprocesses and levels of representation, and no previous study has explicitly investigated which of these are affected by an occupied articulatory buffer. Thus, the current study addresses the question whether an occupied articulatory buffer significantly interferes with conceptualization. In Experiment 1, speakers name simple objects as fast and as accurately as they can under three conditions. In an interference condition, the verbalization task runs in parallel to a secondary, syllable memorization/recall task, which was expected to induce a situation in which the articulatory buffer temporarily holds phonological information while speakers engage in conceptualization. The articulatory buffer was not occupied in two control conditions. In Experiment 2, speakers performed a similar but more complex task. They verbally responded to visual depictions of actions, again under an interference condition and two control conditions. Results obtained in both experiments suggested no interference. Taken together, the findings suggest that an occupied articulatory buffer does not significantly affect conceptualization.

“Well; I think…”, the Dominant Hedges Uttered by Males in Daily Communication: A Sociolinguistic Study

Hedges are linguistics features that were previously considered by some researchers as the characterization of women's speech to show hesitation and uncertainty of the speech regarding the character of discussion and the sensitivity of the questions. However, this claim was remain debatable by another researcher since the use of hedges cannot be correlated to any specific gender. This study was conducted to reveal the use of hedges can also be employed by males in an informal daily conversation, discussing lights topic and questions that often appear. The conducted study was supported by the transcription from the recorded online meeting with males native and non-native English speakers. The transcribed recorded online meeting was useful to examine the hedges as the participants' expressions in the discussion. The results of the study showed that males also utilized hedges in an informal discussion, and the most frequent one is verbal filler will. The hedges uttered by both males native and non-native were various such as to give them chance to think, to reduce the impact delivered, self-disclosure, and appraise someone's idea. The findings also found that the use of hedges by males in casual daily conversation is normal, in regard to saving the speaker's name toward the interlocutor when discussing a sensitive topic or answering a sensitive question.

Wer spricht? Die Redeeinleitungen im Thomasevangelium

AbstractThe Gospel of Thomas (GThom) is a collection of sayings, most of which come with the stereotypical introduction ‘Jesus said: …’ The GThom thus looks like a loose collection of disparate material. However, several sayings in the collection are introduced by ‘He said: …’, thus omitting explicit reference to Jesus as the speaker. This points to greater (narrative) coherence: when the speaker's name is missing in a logion, the logion depends on the surrounding context and ceases to be a self-contained unit. This article views the GThom as a sayings collection on the way to becoming a literary composition titled ‘The Gospel according to Thomas’.

Female representation in oncology leadership in Africa: Analysis of trends in the African organization for cancer research and training in cancer (AORTIC).

11052 Background: Board membership in oncology organizations and invitation to speak at major oncology conferences is an established indicator of gender disparities in oncology leadership. Recent studies note an upward trend in female board membership and female speakers at oncology conferences in European and American contexts. However, little is known about trends of female representation in board membership and at oncology conferences in Africa. AORTIC is the premier African cancer organization and hosts a biennial conference, during which its council members are elected for a two-year term. The conference hosts over 1000 participants and is highly regarded internationally. As the largest gathering of African oncologists, the conference presents a unique opportunity for insight into workforce disparities and trends. This study presents an analysis of female council membership and speaker participation at the 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 AORTIC conferences. Methods: AORTIC conference programmes and AORTIC elections for council membership in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2021 were analyzed for gender representation. Speakers were divided into categories including keynote speakers, facilitators, session speakers, panelists, and oral abstract presenters. For each AORTIC session, data was collected on speaker name, gender, and affiliated country. Participants who presented multiple times were counted multiple times, as their role often varied between sessions. Personal data and country affiliation was determined through online biographies of speakers and/or visual confirmation of professional photographs. A simple descriptive analysis of the data and trends is presented here. Results: Since 2015, the proportion of female speakers and council members at AORTIC has increased. In 2015, females accounted for 44% of speakers, in contrast to 55% in 2021. In 2021, females made up over 50% of all speaker categories except keynote. The proportion of female council members also increased, from 42% in 2015 to 69% in 2021. Trends in geographic representation of speakers were also analyzed for gender, revealing an increase in female speakers residing in Africa. (Table) Conclusions: The proportion of female speakers and council members at Africa’s largest cancer conference has increased significantly since 2015. Female speaker participation was higher than in North America and Europe in 2017 and surpassed 50 % in 2021. In addition, female council membership in AORTIC has surpassed 50%, up to 69% in 2021. These trends suggest a rise in female leadership in cancer research and training on the continent, indicating that strengthening local platforms in LMIC may be associated with improved gender assimilation. [Table: see text]

Hearing "Birch" Hampers Saying "Duck"-An Event-Related Potential Study on Phonological Interference in Immediate and Delayed Word Production.

When speakers name a picture (e.g., "duck"), a distractor word phonologically related to an alternative name (e.g., "birch" related to "bird") slows down naming responses compared with an unrelated distractor word. This interference effect obtained with the picture-word interference task is assumed to reflect the phonological coactivation of close semantic competitors and is critical for evaluating contemporary models of word production. In this study, we determined the ERP signature of this effect in immediate and delayed versions of the picture-word interference task. ERPs revealed a differential processing of related and unrelated distractors: an early (305-436 msec) and a late (537-713 msec) negativity for related as compared with unrelated distractors. In the behavioral data, the interference effect was only found in immediate naming, whereas its ERP signature was also present in delayed naming. The time window of the earlier ERP effect suggests that the behavioral interference effect indeed emerges at a phonological processing level, whereas the functional significance of the later ERP effect is as yet not clear. The finding of a robust ERP correlate of phonological coactivation might facilitate future research on lexical processing in word production.

Cyril I. Paton’s Diaries and the Manx Language (1910–1949)

Cyril I. Paton (1874–1949) was an English botanist who visited the Isle of Man each summer, having family links with the Island. He was also an enthusiast for the Manx language. His diaries are extant from 1905–1949, and there are numerous entries in passing concerned with Manx. As such, they are a singular source for Manx in the first half of the twentieth century. Paton was interested in finding native speakers of Manx and as a keen walker and naturalist he covered most of the Island. Whilst he was not engaged in a systematic search for speakers, nevertheless, there are names of speakers recorded as well as comments on Manx in the Island.

Targeted memory reactivation of face-name learning depends on ample and undisturbed slow-wave sleep

Face memory, including the ability to recall a person’s name, is of major importance in social contexts. Like many other memory functions, it may rely on sleep. We investigated whether targeted memory reactivation during sleep could improve associative and perceptual aspects of face memory. Participants studied 80 face-name pairs, and then a subset of spoken names with associated background music was presented unobtrusively during a daytime nap. This manipulation preferentially improved name recall and face recognition for those reactivated face-name pairs, as modulated by two factors related to sleep quality; memory benefits were positively correlated with the duration of stage N3 sleep (slow-wave sleep) and negatively correlated with measures of sleep disruption. We conclude that (a) reactivation of specific face-name memories during sleep can strengthen these associations and the constituent memories, and that (b) the effectiveness of this reactivation depends on uninterrupted N3 sleep.

Speaker Naming in Arabic TV Programs

Automatic speaker identification is the problem of identifying speakers by their real identities. Previous approaches use textual information as a source of naming, try to associate names to neighbouring speaker segments using linguistic rules. However, these approaches have a few limitations that hinder their application on spoken text. Deep learning approaches for natural language processing have recently reached state-of-the-art results. However, deep learning requires a lot of annotated data which is difficult to obtain in the case of speaker identification task. In this paper, we present two contributions towards integrating deep learning for identifying speakers in news broadcasts: first we realise a dataset in which the names of mentioned speakers are related to the previous, next, current or other speaker turns. Moreover, we present our approach to solve the problem of speaker identification using information obtained from the transcription. We use a Long-term Recurrent Convolutional Network for name assignment and integer linear programming for name propagation into the different segments. We evaluate our model on both assignment and propagation tasks on the test part of the Arabic multi-genre broadcast dataset which consists of 17 TV programs from Aljazeera. The performance is analysed using the evaluation metrics, such as Estimated Global Error Rate (EGER) and Diarization Error Rate (DER). The outcome of the proposed method ensures better performance by achieving the lower EGER of 32.3% and DER of 8.3%.

Senior official speech attributes and foreign exchange risk around business cycles

This paper examines the effects of four senior official speech attributes on the Euro-dollar intraday volatility from 2004 to 2015. We show that volatility responds differently to the four attributes - speaker's name, position, institution, and speech content - across economic states. There are more significant effects during the US crisis compared to the European crisis. The majority of speakers decrease volatility except during the US crisis period. Speeches delivered by European Central Bank and Bank of England officials exhibit larger volatility increases compared to the US Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.

The psychological reality of picture name agreement

Picture name agreement is commonly used as both a control variable and independent variable in studies of language production. It describes the proportion of participants who volunteer a picture's modal name in a norming study—a population-level descriptor—but researchers often assume that name agreement also indexes cognitive processes that occur within individuals. For instance, if norms show that 50% of speakers name a picture as couch, then each time a person tries to name the picture, they might have a 50% chance of selecting couch. An alternative, however, is that name agreement may simply reflect population-level sampling of more stable individual preferences (e.g., 50% of speakers prefer the name couch), continually developed through experience. One way to distinguish between these possibilities – and assess the psychological reality of name agreement – is simply to re-norm pictures with the same individuals. In Experiment 1, we therefore collected timed naming norms for a large set of line drawings from the same 25 native British English speakers twice, 1–2 weeks apart. Results show participants' name choices in Session 2 are jointly predicted by population-level name agreement, from our previous norms, and individuals' own productions in Session 1. Experiment 2 replicated this result and further showed that prior selections predicted Session 3 outcomes better than those in Session 2, in line with an incremental learning account. This is the first direct demonstration that picture name agreement has some psychological validity, but also reveals that it does not directly index within-participant lexical competition as previously assumed.

Gender Equity in Pediatric Hospital Medicine: What History Tells Us.

Gender Equity in Pediatric Hospital Medicine: What History Tells Us.