Spoken Name Research Articles

Distinguishing response to names in Rett and MECP2 Duplication syndrome: An ERP study of auditory social information processing

Despite significant advances at the level of basic research, the characterization of higher-level processes in Rett and MECP2 Duplication syndrome remains understudied. In this pilot study, we assessed social-emotional information processing by testing whether children (ages 4–12years) with Rett (n=9) and MECP2 Duplication syndrome (n=7) distinguished their own spoken name from other names. We hypothesized that own and familiar names would elicit more positive parietal P300 responses than unknown names, and that the groups would have different neural responses to these stimuli. The MECP2 Duplication group partially mirrored the parietal responses to own name observed in typically developing participants, and better name discrimination correlated with more adaptive behaviors. Conversely, participants with RTT did not resemble the typical group, and showed greater responses to close other names at frontal/central regions. These results may reflect the different consequences of too much (MECP2 Duplication) vs. too little (RTT) MeCP2 protein.

A joint investigation of semantic facilitation and semantic interference in continuous naming.

When speakers name multiple semantically related items, opposing effects can be found. Semantic facilitation is found when naming 2 semantically related items in a row. In contrast, semantic interference is found when speakers name semantically related items separated by 1 or more intervening unrelated items. This latter form of interference is cumulative, as it increases as a function of the number of related items that have been named beforehand. Semantic facilitation has therefore been envisaged as a product of transient and fast-decaying activation of related representations, whereas semantic interference has been linked to longer-lasting changes in the connections between semantic and lexical representations. In this work we attempted to explore and compare the 2 phenomena jointly, by means of contrasting naming sequences with noncontiguous semantically related items and sequences with contiguous semantically related items. Results provide evidence that mechanisms responsible for semantic facilitation and interference may jointly occur in parallel, producing opposing influences on behavior. Importantly, semantic facilitation may exhibit cumulative features too, though these are immediately disrupted when unrelated items intervene. (PsycINFO Database Record

Bilingualism affects 9-month-old infants' expectations about how words refer to kinds.

Infants are precocious word learners, and seem to possess systematic expectations about how words refer to object kinds. For example, while monolingual infants show a one-to-one mapping bias (e.g. mutual exclusivity), expecting each object to have only one basic level label, previous research has shown that this is less robust in bi- and multilinguals aged 1.5years and older. This study examined the early origins of such one-to-one mapping biases by comparing monolingual and bilingual 9-10-month-olds' expectations about the relationship between labels and object kinds. In a violation of expectation paradigm, infants heard a speaker name hidden objects with either one label ('I see a mouba! I see a mouba!') or two labels ('I see a camo! I see a tenda!'). An occluder moved to reveal two objects that were either identical or of different kinds. Monolingual infants looked longest when two labels were associated with identical objects, and when one label was associated with objects of different kinds, showing that they found these outcomes unexpected. This replicated previous findings showing that monolinguals expect that distinct words label distinct object kinds (Dewar & Xu, ). Bilinguals looked equally to the outcomes regardless of the number of labels, showing no such expectations. This finding indicates that bilingualism influences young infants' expectations about how words refer to kinds, and more broadly supports the position that language experience contributes to the development of word learning heuristics.

Unsupervised Speaker Identification for TV News

Identifying the speakers in TV news would help listeners analyze and understand news content, but doing so in news videos is challenging because new faces often appear. Previous research has identified speakers on pretrained faces for TV shows and movies. Using an unsupervised method, this article proposes labeling speakers using just the available information in the news video without external information. The proposed framework segments the audio by speaker, parses closed captions for speaker names, identifies who is speaking, and performs optical character recognition for speaker names. The framework uses face recognition, face clustering, face landmarking, natural language processing tools, and speaker diarization. Results indicate 63.6 percent accuracy for identifying speakers for CNN News.

MP020: Do real-time Twitter metrics correlate with traditional emergency medicine post-conference speaker evaluations?

Introduction: Traditional post-conference speaker evaluations are inconsistently completed; meanwhile, real time social media tools such as Twitter are increasingly used in conferences. We sought to determine whether a correlation exists between traditional conference evaluation for a speaker and the number of real-time tweets it generated using data from a CAEP conference. Methods: This study utilized a retrospective design. The hashtag #CAEP14 was prospectively registered with Symplur, an online Twitter management tool, so that all tweets related to CAEP conference 2014 were stored. A tweet was associated with a session if it mentioned the speaker name, or if the tweet content and timing closely matched that of the session in the schedule. A tweet classification system was developed to differentiate original tweets from retweets, and quotes from comments generating further discussion. Two authors assessed and coded the first 200 tweets together to ensure a uniform approach to coding, and then independently coded the remaining tweets. Discrepancies were resolved by consensus. One author reviewed post-conference speaker evaluation, and abstracted the value corresponding to the question “The speaker was an effective communicator”. We present descriptive statistics and correlation analyses. Results: A total of 3,804 tweets were collected, with 2,218 (58.3%) associated with a session. Forty-eight (48%) (131 out of 274) of sessions receiving at least one tweet, with a mean of 11.7 tweets per session (95% CI of 0 to 57.5). In comparison, only 31% (85 out of 274) of sessions received a formal post conference speaker evaluation (p<0.005). For sessions that received at least one traditional post-conference evaluation, there was no significant correlation between the number of tweets and evaluation scores (R=0.087). This can be attributed to the fact that there was minimal variation between evaluation scores (median = 3.6 out of 5, IQR of 3.4 to 3.7). Conclusion: There was no correlation between the number of real-time tweets and traditional post-conference speaker evaluation. However, many sessions which received no formal speaker evaluation generated tweets, and the number of tweets was highly variable between sessions. Thus, Twitter metrics might be useful for conference organizers to supplement formal speaker evaluations.

Maintenance of Treatment Effects in Anomia Rehabilitation

Maintenance of Treatment Effects in Anomia Rehabilitation

Electrophysiology of cross-language interference and facilitation in picture naming

Disagreement exists about how bilingual speakers select words, in particular, whether words in another language compete, or competition is restricted to a target language, or no competition occurs. Evidence that competition occurs but is restricted to a target language comes from response time (RT) effects obtained when speakers name pictures in one language while trying to ignore distractor words in another language. Compared to unrelated distractor words, RT is longer when the picture name and distractor are semantically related, but RT is shorter when the distractor is the translation of the name of the picture in the other language. These effects suggest that distractor words from another language do not compete themselves but activate their counterparts in the target language, thereby yielding the semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Here, we report an event-related brain potential (ERP) study testing the prediction that priming underlies both of these effects. The RTs showed semantic interference and translation facilitation effects. Moreover, the picture-word stimuli yielded an N400 response, whose amplitude was smaller on semantic and translation trials than on unrelated trials, providing evidence that interference and facilitation priming underlie the RT effects. We present the results of computer simulations showing the utility of a within-language competition account of our findings.

Vocal Identity Recognition in Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Voices can convey information about a speaker. When forming an abstract representation of a speaker, it is important to extract relevant features from acoustic signals that are invariant to the modulation of these signals. This study investigated the way in which individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) recognize and memorize vocal identity. The ASD group and control group performed similarly in a task when asked to choose the name of the newly-learned speaker based on his or her voice, and the ASD group outperformed the control group in a subsequent familiarity test when asked to discriminate the previously trained voices and untrained voices. These findings suggest that individuals with ASD recognized and memorized voices as well as the neurotypical individuals did, but they categorized voices in a different way: individuals with ASD categorized voices quantitatively based on the exact acoustic features, while neurotypical individuals categorized voices qualitatively based on the acoustic patterns correlated to the speakers' physical and mental properties.

Learning by Playing: Echo and Tact in Expanding the Verbal Repertoire of Infants

To refer to an object or event by providing its corresponding name is an important acquisition in the learning of verbal behavior. The relationship between the spoken name and its referent, called tact, is considered essential in the expansion of verbal repertoires in children. This study aimed to teach tact to four institutionalized children, aged between 26 and 29 months, with reduced exposure to verbal stimulation. The procedure introduced playful characteristics into the teaching of tact and the required repertoire, which was the emission of echoic responses, through procedures typically used to teach verbal repertoire for children with language delay. All children learned to tact (and echo). The procedure was effective in increasing the echoic repertoire and promoting the acquisition of the tact repertoire. These results confirm the literature that considers learning echoic repertoire to be a requirement for the acquisition of tact.

Cortical reinstatement and the confidence and accuracy of source memory

Cortical reinstatement refers to the overlap between neural activity elicited during the encoding and the subsequent retrieval of an episode, and is held to reflect retrieved mnemonic content. Previous findings have demonstrated that reinstatement effects reflect the quality of retrieved episodic information as this is operationalized by the accuracy of source memory judgments. The present functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study investigated whether reinstatement-related activity also co-varies with the confidence of accurate source judgments. Participants studied pictures of objects along with their visual or spoken names. At test, they first discriminated between studied and unstudied pictures and then, for each picture judged as studied, they also judged whether it had been paired with a visual or auditory name, using a three-point confidence scale. Accuracy of source memory judgments – and hence the quality of the source-specifying information – was greater for high than for low confidence judgments. Modality-selective retrieval-related activity (reinstatement effects) also co-varied with the confidence of the corresponding source memory judgment. The findings indicate that the quality of the information supporting accurate judgments of source memory is indexed by the relative magnitude of content-selective, retrieval-related neural activity.

Functional neuroanatomy of auditory scene analysis in Alzheimer's disease.

Auditory scene analysis is a demanding computational process that is performed automatically and efficiently by the healthy brain but vulnerable to the neurodegenerative pathology of Alzheimer's disease. Here we assessed the functional neuroanatomy of auditory scene analysis in Alzheimer's disease using the well-known ‘cocktail party effect’ as a model paradigm whereby stored templates for auditory objects (e.g., hearing one's spoken name) are used to segregate auditory ‘foreground’ and ‘background’. Patients with typical amnestic Alzheimer's disease (n = 13) and age-matched healthy individuals (n = 17) underwent functional 3T-MRI using a sparse acquisition protocol with passive listening to auditory stimulus conditions comprising the participant's own name interleaved with or superimposed on multi-talker babble, and spectrally rotated (unrecognisable) analogues of these conditions. Name identification (conditions containing the participant's own name contrasted with spectrally rotated analogues) produced extensive bilateral activation involving superior temporal cortex in both the AD and healthy control groups, with no significant differences between groups. Auditory object segregation (conditions with interleaved name sounds contrasted with superimposed name sounds) produced activation of right posterior superior temporal cortex in both groups, again with no differences between groups. However, the cocktail party effect (interaction of own name identification with auditory object segregation processing) produced activation of right supramarginal gyrus in the AD group that was significantly enhanced compared with the healthy control group. The findings delineate an altered functional neuroanatomical profile of auditory scene analysis in Alzheimer's disease that may constitute a novel computational signature of this neurodegenerative pathology.

The influence of partner-specific memory associations on picture naming: a failure to replicate Horton (2007).

The results of two experiments by Horton (2007) show that speakers name a pictured object faster when in the presence of another person with whom the speaker has previously associated that object name. The first of those two experiments (Horton, 2007, Experiment 1) is the focus of the present research. This paper presents the results of three experiments designed to replicate and extend Horton's (2007) Experiment 1. The original findings were not replicated. These findings do not support the hypothesis that partner-specific memory associations facilitate object naming.

Words, shape, visual search and visual working memory in 3‐year‐old children

Do words cue children's visual attention, and if so, what are the relevant mechanisms? Across four experiments, 3-year-old children (N = 163) were tested in visual search tasks in which targets were cued with only a visual preview versus a visual preview and a spoken name. The experiments were designed to determine whether labels facilitated search times and to examine one route through which labels could have their effect: By influencing the visual working memory representation of the target. The targets and distractors were pictures of instances of basic-level known categories and the labels were the common name for the target category. We predicted that the label would enhance the visual working memory representation of the target object, guiding attention to objects that better matched the target representation. Experiments 1 and 2 used conjunctive search tasks, and Experiment 3 varied shape discriminability between targets and distractors. Experiment 4 compared the effects of labels to repeated presentations of the visual target, which should also influence the working memory representation of the target. The overall pattern fits contemporary theories of how the contents of visual working memory interact with visual search and attention, and shows that even in very young children heard words affect the processing of visual information.

Neural Network based Classification for Speaker Identification

Speaker Recognition is a challenging task and is widely used in many speech aided applications. This study proposes a new Neural Network (NN) model for identifying the speaker, based on the acoustic features of a given speech sample extracted by applying wavelet transform on raw signals. Wrapper based feature selection applies dimensionality reduction by kernel PCA and ranking by Info gain. Only top ranked features are selected and used for neural network classifier. The proposed neural network classifier is trained to assign a speaker name as label to the test voice data. Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) is implemented for classification, and the performance is compared with the proposed NN model.

Cumulative and Non-Cumulative Semantic Interference in Object Naming: Evidence from Blocked and Continuous Manipulations of Semantic Context

Experiments involving blocked and continuous manipulations of the semantic naming context demonstrate that, when speakers name several taxonomically related objects in close succession, they display persistent interference effects. A review of studies using the blocked paradigm shows that, unlike the continuous paradigm, it typically does not induce cumulative interference effects in healthy speakers. This contrasts with the simulation results obtained from a model of semantic context effects recently put forward by Oppenheim and colleagues [Oppenheim, G. M., Dell, G. S., & Schwartz, M. F. (2010). The dark side of incremental learning: A model of cumulative semantic interference during lexical access in speech production. Cognition, 114, 227--262], which generates cumulative effects in both paradigms. We propose that the effects are non-cumulative in the blocked paradigm, because it allows participants to bias top-down the levels of activation of lexical-semantic representations, thereby curtailing the accumulating interference. Indeed, prior research has shown that the interference effects in the blocked paradigm are exacerbated when participants carry out a concurrent digit-retention task, loading on working memory and reducing their capacity to exert a top-down bias. In Experiment 1, combining the continuous paradigm with a digit-retention task, we demonstrate that this does not exacerbate cumulative context effects, corroborating the selective role of working memory and the associated top-down biasing mechanism in the blocked paradigm. A review of neuropsychological and neuroimaging studies demonstrates that left inferior frontal regions may play a critical role in controlling semantic interference top-down. We discuss the implications of these findings for language production research and for models of lexical-semantic encoding.

Res Medica

The business of the Society has once again been successfully completed. Our thanks are due to the outside speakers who so readily agreed to give addresses and talks, particularly to those who travelled considerable distances to do so. Members themselves, however, continued to contribute most of the Society’s public and private business. The dissertations maintained their usual high standard, three of them are published in this issue of Res Medica. A full programme of outside visits and social functions has been held, the Guest of Honour at the annual dinner being Professor Emeritus Norman M. Dott. The agenda for next session is currently in preparation, and already includes the names of several prominent outside speakers. With Mr Robin Ewart as Senior President, the session promises to be a most successful one.

Transparent Ceramics for Photonic Applications

AbstractThe International Symposium on Transparent Ceramics for Photonic Applications is an annual international conference since 2005. The previous LCS events were held in Poland (2005), Japan (2006), France (2007), China (2008), Spain (2009), Germany (2010), and Singapore (2011). The 8th LCS was held in Russia in the city of Nizhny Novgorod on December 4–7, 2012. The aim of the symposium was to provide a forum for material scientists, chemists and physicists, to discuss the state of the art of optical transparent ceramics, including basic aspects and promising applications, and to give an insight into future advances and research possibilities in this field.The symposium program included invited talks as well as contributed presentations. This year the main focuses of the symposium were:– Synthesis of high purity powders and transparent ceramics– Optical spectroscopy and characterization of physical properties– New materials and novel fabrication methods– Ceramic lasers and amplifiers– Composite structured laser ceramics.The International Program Committee had 24 members from 16 countries worldwide (http://www.8lcs.iapras.ru/committees.html). The OSA representative in the International Program Committee was academician S. N. Bagayev. After revision, the symposium program consisted of 42 reports, including 13 invited talks (invited speaker names can be found on the webpage: http://www.8lcs.iapras.ru/invited.html). Among the 67 participants of the LSC 2012, 44 were from Russia, 9 from P.R. China, 6 from Japan, 3 from Ukraine, 2 from South Korea, 1 from UK, 1 from Germany, and 1 from Singapore. The oral presentations were given in English.The symposium took four days and was divided into three sessions: “Ceramics fabrication ”, “Ceramics characterization ” and “Ceramic lasers ”.As representatives of the industry, Dr. Hideki Yagi from Konoshima Chemical Co. Ltd. (Japan) gave the interesting review “Transparent ceramics for photonic applications ” and Dr. Ken‐ichi Ueda from Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (Japan) told about important applications of laser ceramics in his lecture “Thermal lens free ceramic laser ”.The fellow of the Optical Society of America, director of the Institute of Extreme Light (France), Gerard Mourou, has visited the technical sessions and a subsequent discussion of the Laser Ceramics Symposium.The LCS has brought together leading experts from around the world, stimulated active discussions and contacts between the scholars and gave a brilliant opportunity for the participants to start further fruitful research collaborations.The four‐days LCS 2012 was attended by 67 scientists and engineers from around the world. Pictures could be found in the gallery at: http://www.8lcs.iapras.ru/photoshots.html.The next, the 9th Laser Ceramics Symposium will be held in Seoul, South Korea in 2013.

Accuracy trumps accent in children's endorsement of object labels.

Past research provides evidence that children use at least 2 potentially competing strategies when choosing informants: they attend to informants' past accuracy and to their social identity (e.g., their status as native- vs. foreign-accented speakers). We explore how children reconcile these 2 strategies when they are put in conflict and whether children's response changes across development. In Experiment 1 (N = 61), 3-, 4-, and 5-year-old children watched a native- and a foreign-accented English speaker label novel objects with novel names. All 3 age groups preferred the names provided by the native speaker. Next, 1 of the 2 speakers named familiar objects accurately, whereas the other speaker named them inaccurately. In a subsequent series of test trials, again with novel objects, 4- and 5-year-olds, but not 3-year-olds, were likely to endorse the names provided by the accurate speaker, regardless of her accent. In Experiment 2 (N = 72) 4-year-olds first watched a native- and a foreign-accented speaker name familiar objects, but the relative accuracy of the 2 speakers varied across conditions (100% vs. 0% correct; 75% vs. 25% correct). Subsequently, the 2 speakers provided novel names for novel objects. In each condition, 4-year-olds endorsed the names provided by the more accurate speaker, regardless of her accent. We propose that during the preschool years, children increasingly rely on past reliability when selecting informants.

単語認識と連続音節認識を併用した音声認識とタッチ入力を利用した姓名音声入力方式

単語認識と連続音節認識を併用した音声認識とタッチ入力を利用した姓名音声入力方式

Event-related potentials and oscillatory brain responses associated with semantic and Stroop-like interference effects in overt naming

Picture–word interference is a widely employed paradigm to investigate lexical access in word production: Speakers name pictures while trying to ignore superimposed distractor words. The distractor can be congruent to the picture (pictured cat, word cat), categorically related (pictured cat, word dog), or unrelated (pictured cat, word pen). Categorically related distractors slow down picture naming relative to unrelated distractors, the so-called semantic interference. Categorically related distractors slow down picture naming relative to congruent distractors, analogous to findings in the colour–word Stroop task. The locus of semantic interference and Stroop-like effects in naming performance has recently become a topic of debate. Whereas some researchers argue for a pre-lexical locus of semantic interference and a lexical locus of Stroop-like effects, others localise both effects at the lexical selection stage. We investigated the time course of semantic and Stroop-like interference effects in overt picture naming by means of event-related potentials (ERP) and time–frequency analyses. Moreover, we employed cluster-based permutation for statistical analyses. Naming latencies showed semantic and Stroop-like interference effects. The ERP waveforms for congruent stimuli started diverging statistically from categorically related stimuli around 250ms. Deflections for the categorically related condition were more negative-going than for the congruent condition (the Stroop-like effect). The time–frequency analysis revealed a power increase in the beta band (12–30Hz) for categorically related relative to unrelated stimuli roughly between 250 and 370ms (the semantic effect). The common time window of these effects suggests that both semantic interference and Stroop-like effects emerged during lexical selection.