Speech Effort Research Articles

Adult Normative Data for the OMNI-Vocal Effort Scale (VES).

To establish normative values for the OMNI-Vocal Effort Scale (VES) in healthy adults without voice complaints. Secondary objective is to determine if there are differences in perceived vocal effort across age groups and between sexes. Prospective data collection across groups. A nine-item survey was administered by speech-language pathologists with specialization in voice to consenting adults 18 years or older. Participants underwent an auditory perceptual evaluation of voice and answered questions regarding age, history of voice problems, history of voice surgery, smoking history and hearing loss. Participants were instructed to rate their perceived vocal effort in conversational speech using the OMNI-VES. Multivariant analysis was conducted. Two hundred and fifty-one participants were recruited. The majority of adults without voice complaints reported that producing conversational voice was within the "extremely easy" to "easy" range, 0-3 (92.4%). This study provides preliminary data for perceived vocal effort. The OMNI-VES may be a useful tool in understanding changes in perceived vocal effort as a result of treatment for voice disorders. Further normative data are needed between sexes, across the gender spectrum, and older adult populations. Future directions include examining the magnitude of difference between numeric values on the scale and use of the scale with other dysphonic populations. 3 Laryngoscope, 134:3726-3731, 2024.

Relationship between intelligibility, naturalness, and listening effort of source-separated speech

Various signal processing techniques have been proposed for separating a speech signal from an acoustic environment that includes other sound sources. One important measure of success of a source separation method is the intelligibility of the extracted speech signal, determined as the fraction of intended words correctly recognized. However, even for extracted signals with similar intelligibility, listeners may experience different reactions to the result. Speech samples extracted by different techniques may differ in the degree to which they sound pleasant or natural to a listener, and/or the degree of cognitive effort required to understand them. We present results of an experiment in which listeners were presented with context-free spondees recorded in a noisy environment and subsequently processed in various ways to enhance the speech and suppress the noise. Listeners transcribed the speech and also judged the “naturalness” and “listening effort” of the speech. Intentionally, stimulus intelligibility varied widely—as did naturalness and effort. We present and discuss the measured relationship among intelligibility, perceived naturalness, and reported listening effort.

Univerbation is a problematic way of word formation in German language

The article analyzes derivational univerbation as one of the forms of compression functioning in word formation. Univerbation is a merging, pulling together of a free or stable word combination, a sentence or a sentence fragment into one verbal whole. The new word-forming construction in its form corresponds with one word, and in its semantics with the whole word combination. It is not uncommon for a new word to “absorb” the meaning of the context. The activity of universalization is closely connected with the need for “economical” nominations of new concepts, as well as with the need for stylistic variation of the name. This way of word formation allows creating compact, economical, concise and succinct forms of expressing thoughts without special speech efforts. The problematic character of this derivational model is that there is an extended interpretation of the essence of word formation methods.

Effects of an 11-week vibro-tactile stimulation treatment on voice symptoms in laryngeal dystonia.

Laryngeal dystonia is a task-specific focal dystonia of laryngeal muscles that impairs speech and voice production. At present, there is no cure for LD. The most common therapeutic option for patients with LD involves Botulinum neurotoxin injections. Provide empirical evidence that non-invasive vibro-tactile stimulation (VTS) of the skin over the voice box can provide symptom relief to those affected by LD. Single-group 11-week randomized controlled trial with a crossover between two dosages (20 min of VTS once or 3 times per week) self-administered in-home in two 4-week blocks. Acute effects of VTS on voice and speech were assessed in-lab at weeks 1, 6 and 11. Participants were randomized to receive either 40 Hz or 100 Hz VTS. Primary: smoothed cepstral peak prominence (CPPS) of the voice signal to quantify voice and speech abnormalities, and perceived speech effort (PSE) ranked by participants as a measure of voice effort (scale 1-10). Secondary: number of voice breaks during continuous speech, the Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice (CAPE-V) inventory as a measure of overall disease severity and the Voice Handicap Index 30-item self report. Thirty-nine people with a confirmed diagnosis of adductor-type LD (mean [SD] age, 60.3 [11.3] years; 18 women and 21 men) completed the study. A single application of VTS improved voice quality (median CPPS increase: 0.41 dB, 95% CI [0.20, 0.61]) and/or reduced voice effort (PSE) by at least 30% in up to 57% of participants across the three study visits. Effects lasted from less than 30 min to several days. There was no effect of dosage and no evidence that the acute therapeutic effects of VTS increased or decreased longitudinally over the 11-week study period. Both 100 and 40 Hz VTS induced measurable improvements in voice quality and speech effort. VTS induced an additional benefit to those receiving Botulinum toxin. Participants, not receiving Botulinum treatment also responded to VTS. This study provides the first systematic empirical evidence that the prolonged use of laryngeal VTS can induce repeatable acute improvements in voice quality and reductions of voice effort in LD. ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT03746509.

Contributions of listening effort and intelligibility to cortical tracking of speech in adverse listening conditions

Cortical tracking of speech is vital for speech segmentation and is linked to speech intelligibility. However, there is no clear consensus as to whether reduced intelligibility leads to a decrease or an increase in cortical speech tracking, warranting further investigation of the factors influencing this relationship. One such factor is listening effort, defined as the cognitive resources necessary for speech comprehension, and reported to have a strong negative correlation with speech intelligibility. Yet, no studies have examined the relationship between speech intelligibility, listening effort, and cortical tracking of speech. The aim of the present study was thus to examine these factors in quiet and distinct adverse listening conditions. Forty-nine normal hearing adults listened to sentences produced casually, presented in quiet and two adverse listening conditions: cafeteria noise and reverberant speech. Electrophysiological responses were registered with electroencephalogram, and listening effort was estimated subjectively using self-reported scores and objectively using pupillometry. Results indicated varying impacts of adverse conditions on intelligibility, listening effort, and cortical tracking of speech, depending on the preservation of the speech temporal envelope. The more distorted envelope in the reverberant condition led to higher listening effort, as reflected in higher subjective scores, increased pupil diameter, and stronger cortical tracking of speech in the delta band. These findings suggest that using measures of listening effort in addition to those of intelligibility is useful for interpreting cortical tracking of speech results. Moreover, reading and phonological skills of participants were positively correlated with listening effort in the cafeteria condition, suggesting a special role of expert language skills in processing speech in this noisy condition. Implications for future research and theories linking atypical cortical tracking of speech and reading disorders are further discussed.

Articulatory working space in first and second languages

Articulatory working space (acoustic and kinematic) is often studied to understand the overall size (limits) of a speaker’s articulatory behaviors. For example, prior research has shown that the magnitude of articulators’ movement (e.g., maximum tongue advancement, lip aperture) changes as a function of speech effort (loud, clear, and slow speech). To better understand second language acquisition in adults (i.e., articulatory working space determined by the language or anatomical differences), we compare both acoustic and kinematic working space of adult learners of English between their first language (L1) and second language (L2), which is also compared with that of native speakers of English. Specifically, the articulatory convex hull is measured during passage reading for both acoustic (F1 and F2 trajectories) and kinematic (tongue trajectories on x- and y-dimensions) data. Participants include 11 adult learners of English (four men and seven women) with a Korean language background and 10 adult L1 speakers of English (six men and four women). In the presentation, the findings will be discussed to address whether articulatory space is (1) different between native and nonnative languages (determined by linguistic needs) or (2) rather a constant articulatory characteristic of speakers between the languages, regardless of the speaker’s English proficiency.

The Influence of Multisensory Input On Voice Perception and Production Using Immersive Virtual Reality

The purpose was to examine the influence of auditory vs visual vs combined audiovisual input on perception and production of one's own voice, using immersive virtual reality technology. Thirty-one vocally healthy men and women were investigated under 18 sensory input conditions, using immersive virtual reality technology. Conditions included two auditory rooms with varying reverberation times, two visual rooms with varying volumes, and the combination of audiovisual conditions. All conditions were repeated with and without background noise. Speech tasks included counting, sustained vowel phonation, an all-voiced sentence from the Consensus Auditory-Perceptual Evaluation of Voice, and the first sentence from the Rainbow Passage, randomly ordered. Perception outcome measures were participants' self-reported perceptions of their vocal loudness, vocal effort, and vocal comfort in speech. Production outcome measures were sound pressure level (SPL) and spectral moments (spectral mean and standard deviation in Hz, skewness, and kurtosis). Statistical analyses used self-reported vocal effort, vocal loudness, and vocal comfort in percent (0 = "not at all," 100 = extremely), SPL in dB, and spectral moments in Hz. The reference level was a baseline audiovisual deprivation condition. Results suggested (i) increased self-perceived vocal loudness and effort, and decreased comfort, with increasing room volume, speaker-to-listener distance, audiovisual input, and background noise, and (ii) increased SPL and fluctuations in spectral moments across conditions. Not only auditory, but also visual and audiovisual input influenced voice perception and production in ways that have not been previously documented. Findings contribute to the basic science understanding the role of visual, audiovisual and auditory input in voice perception and production, and also to models of voice training and therapy. The findings also set the foundation for the use of virtual reality in voice and speech training, as a potentially power solution to the generalization problem.

Отклонения от языковой нормы: лингвоэкологический аспект (на материале немецкоязычного микроблога)

The aim of the study is an analytical review of deviations from the language norm in German-language Internet communication based on the texts of the Twitter microblog. The rapid exchange of information with the simultaneous minimization of speech efforts, as well as the self-expression of communicants through the author’s word creation often entail deviations from the language norm. In the course of the study, the author identifies the main types of deviations at various language levels: phonographic, morphophonemic, orthographic, grammatical-syntactic and lexical. The article analyses the causes of deviant phenomena, as well as the features of their functioning. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the fact that for the first time it uses a linguo-ecological approach to the study of language deviations in Internet communication, which allows us to assess the nature and extent of their impact on language development. The obtained results showed that the German microblog is dominated by a tendency to simplify the language, save speech efforts, intentional and unintentional violation of the language norm, which indicates the analytical vector of the German language development at the present stage.

Verevochnaya or Covidnaya Istoriya: Desemantization of the Word Istoria in Different Discourse Types

The article is devoted to the description of the communicative behavior of the word istoria, which, as a result of the process of resemantization, is used in the “non-dictionary” meaning: ‘a thing/something’ and widely functions in modern everyday Russian speech in various types of discourse. The study was carried out on the material of 3 sources: the oral subcorpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language, the corpus of Russian everyday speech “One Speech Day” and separate recordings of the surrounding speech (from everyday conversations, interviews, lectures, etc.). The problem of the functioning of the bleached word istoria is considered in several aspects: the dependence of such usages on the type of discourse and the characteristics of the speaker (age, professional activity, level of speech competence–LSC), as well as the ability of the resemantized word istoria to characterize an idiolect. It turned out that the word istoria with “empty” semantics plays a role of a multifunctional tool serving various types of discourse in modern Russian speech, and its active use is a result of saving speech efforts and does not characterize any particular social group of speakers. Such use has the character of an individual speech trait: in some cases, the word istoria acquires a status of a “parasite word” and indicates a low LSC of a native speaker, and in other situations, it indicates the desire of a speaker with a high LSC to establish an easy communication style.

The multimodal nature of communicative efficiency in social interaction

How does communicative efficiency shape language use? We approach this question by studying it at the level of the dyad, and in terms of multimodal utterances. We investigate whether and how people minimize their joint speech and gesture efforts in face-to-face interactions, using linguistic and kinematic analyses. We zoom in on other-initiated repair—a conversational microcosm where people coordinate their utterances to solve problems with perceiving or understanding. We find that efforts in the spoken and gestural modalities are wielded in parallel across repair turns of different types, and that people repair conversational problems in the most cost-efficient way possible, minimizing the joint multimodal effort for the dyad as a whole. These results are in line with the principle of least collaborative effort in speech and with the reduction of joint costs in non-linguistic joint actions. The results extend our understanding of those coefficiency principles by revealing that they pertain to multimodal utterance design.

IMPLEMENTATION OF LINGUISTIC ECONOMY PRINIPLES IN A GERMAN INTERVIEW

This article is an attempt to identify and analyze the methods of information compression in a German interview that help interlocutors to avoid unnecessary waste of speech efforts as well as excesses and repetitions in a conversation and express their thoughts clearly and meaningfully.
 The relevance of this study is due to the special significance of the law of economy in the light of the new realities of globalization, that is one of the main trends and characteristic features of modern communication, constantly stimulating the interest of linguists in identifying and systematizing means of accelerating the transmission of information.
 The purpose of this study is to present the results of scientific understanding of the role and place of the means of linguistic economy in the dialogical genre of German journalism, in an interview.
 The scientific novelty of the research lies in its complex attempt to study the phenomenon economy at all levels of the language in a German interview.
 The research material are the texts of interviews from the information and political magazine «Focus» published by the Burda-Verlag in Munich, being highly popular in Germany.
 The study was conducted using such linguistic methods as observation, comparison, explication, reconstruction, as well as elements of quantitative calculation, linguo-stylistic and contextual analysis.
 The results of research. The authors formulate the set of lexical (composites, borrowings from English, abbreviations), morphological (substantivisation, substitution, non-article way of using nouns) and syntactic (asyndeton, aposiopesis, ellipsis) means, which are united by a functional feature of language economy, and conclude that this phenomenon is universal in a German interview.
 The field of practical implications of these results can be the teaching of theoretical and practical disciplines in the German language.

Early Tracheostomy in Prolonged Mechanical Ventilation Due to Severe Head Injury to Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia (VAP)

Introduction: Early tracheostomy needs to be considered if the use of a ventilator is expected to be used for a long time. Early Tracheostomy is recommended because it can improve respiratory function, reduce the risk of Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia, improve patient comfort, cleanse secretions in the throat, reduce laryngeal ulceration, improve mobilization, and speech efforts, and allow treatment outside the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Case Report: We report four cases of severe head injury with early tracheostomy which illustrates prevent of VAP. In these four cases, early tracheostomy was performed (£ 4 days) with consideration of the initial critical GCS, the location of the lesion, and mechanical ventilation is expected to be used for a long period time. During treatment, there is no VAP which is evidenced by a sputum culture examination. Based on a meta-analysis study early tracheostomy can reduce mortality due to VAP by up to 50% and reduce the length of stay in ICU compared to delayed/late tracheostomy (> 10 days) or prolonged intubation (> 14 days). Conclusion: VAP prevention efforts are carried out by applying VAP Bundle. An early tracheostomy provides more benefits than prolonged intubation or delayed/late tracheostomy. VAP Bundle is performed on every patient who uses a ventilator, and it can be proven scientifically that the application of VAP Bundle can reduce the incidence of VAP by up to 25%.

Идентификация инициальной аббревиатуры, используемой в языке современной молодежи (на материале семантического эксперимента)

The article presents the results of a psycholinguistic experiment carried out among high school students. The purpose of the work is to identify the features of the identification of the initial abbreviation and / or its individual elements by native speakers - users of social networks. Participants in the Internet communication actively use abbreviations not only in personal correspondence, but also as a hashtag to their publications, designed to attract the attention of the target audience. The ability of users to identify abbreviations allows them to predict the content of the desired material. The initial abbreviations used in the Internet discourse mainly by young communicants served as the material for the research. Research methods are the following: methods of observation and selection of initial abbreviations, the choosing abbreviations for conducting an experiment with the help of an expert group, a semantic experiment, statistical methods for processing the results of the experiment. The analysis of the experimental material made it possible to draw conclusions about the peculiarities of the use of the initial abbreviation in the language of users of social networks: the level of assimilation and the frequency of use of the abbreviation depends on the number of its components. The participant in the experiment might not know the exact decoding of the abbreviation, but he indicated the meaning that is regularly updated in speech and described the situation in which it is appropriate to use this linguistic unit. The frequency of use and the variety of abbreviations in the Internet discourse is facilitated not only by the desire of users of social networks to save speech efforts, but also by the need to consolidate the status of participants in Internet communication.

Experimental determination of the acoustical effects of face masks on speech effort

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a global trend in mask wearing. This study investigates how wearing face masks influence the output levels of the human vocal range. Masks were equipped onto a test fixture to evaluate acoustic insertion loss over whole-octave bands important for vocal transmission. With the exception of face shield, tested masks showed less than 2 dB of insertion loss at frequencies less than 2 kHz and up to 5 dB of attenuation at frequencies above 2 kHz. The face shield showed insertion loss of more than 10 dB in the 4 and 8 kHz octave bands.

Трансформация жанра «воспоминание» в социальной сети Instagram

Active development of the Internet communication and the expansion of technical capaсities caused the transformation of existing genres and determined the emergence of new ones. The article discusses the features of the implementation of the speech genre “memoirs” in the social network Instagram. The hashtag #воспоминание was chosen as the criterion for collecting entries, since, in our opinion, users can use this hashtag to mark the genre of a post. The aim of the work is to establish how genre characteristics of memoirs are reflected in the polycode space. The study revealed that in the social network Instagram, the appeal to the past is recorded as follows: 1) the narrative as a traditional form of the genre is preserved, while the photo, an obligatory element of this sphere of communication, performs an illustrative function; 2) there is a special type of representation of the speaker’s experience using a creolized text, in which the text, image and hashtags are in a relationship of mutual complement. The emergence of a new way of presenting memoirs, in which the reported information is distributed among several semiotic systems, is explained, on the one hand, by the desire of users to save speech effort, on the other hand, by the technical features of the social network. Under the influence of these circumstances, there is a loss of language indicators of significant characteristics of the genre and its modification. In addition, the author focuses on the difficulties of perception of records defined by users as #воспоминание. Given informative insufficiency of verbal components and the absence of a common apperception base for the addressee and addressee, understanding can be achieved by decoding the image.

About semantic and syntactic compression, or What do we mean when we don’t say something out loud?

The purpose of the article is to analyze cases of semantic and syntactic compression (contraction, constriction) in the Russian language. From the surface side the syntactic compression is a reduction of the phrase, due to the tendency to save speech effort. In fact – it is an actual method of compacting and packaging information, in which the internal structure of the utterance is transformed, some words get new functions, and others are omitted and reduced. Colloquial speech plays a special role in the spread and legalization of such cases of compression. Examples from fiction and journalism in Russian are given – such as archeology instead of archaeological excavations or sports instead of s ports motorcycle . The article analyzes cases of complex, multi-component transformations, during which the structure of the phrase is significantly reduced and «condensed», for example: the richest people in Russia, recorded in the magazine «Forbes» → Russian «Forbes» . Nouns (or noun groups) are usually used as key (reference) words that remain in the course of contraction. The article shows that the addressee (reader), as a rule, adequately perceives and understands such statements, based: 1) on previous speech experience (including standard models of metonymy); 2) on verbal and situational context; 3) on the rules of common sense. It is concluded that the analysis of utterances that include facts of semantic and syntactic contraction (as an element of «dynamic» grammar) helps to demonstrate the rich capabilities of the Russian language in terms of processing and packaging of thought.

АББРЕВИАЦИИ КАК СРЕДСТВО ВЫРАЖЕНИЯ ЭМОЦИЙ ЯЗЫКОВОЙ ЛИЧНОСТИ (НА МАТЕРИАЛЕ АНГЛИЙСКИХ SMS-СООБЩЕНИЙ)

The paper considers the role of the language personality in speech activity in neologizations of abbreviated SMS messages in the English discourse. Within the framework of the communicative-discursive direction in Russian linguistics, a paradigmatic approach to the study of the role of the language personality in the creation of new knowledge has been established. The language personality is able to participate in the process of nominating objects and actions of the world picture. Intralinguistic and extralinguistic factors influence language changes. Intralinguistic factors provide potential for language renewal, including its neologization, in accordance with the laws of dialectical development. Extra- linguistic factors are represented by numerous social and socio-political phe- nomena from the surrounding world. The high popularity of SMS messages is explained not only by the action of the law of saving speech efforts in the language, but also by the ability of language personality to express emotions in the language, thanks to the opportunities for innovations and improvisations inherent in it. The paper considers the language functions and stylistic features of abbreviated SNS messages in English discourse.

The need for a harmonized speech dataset for Alzheimer’s disease biomarker development

This commentary is the product of a concerted effort to understand the needs, barriers, and gaps in the field of speech and language biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). It distills interviews, surveys, and extensive correspondence with global leaders in the areas of dementia research, clinical trials, linguistics, and data analytics into an idealized clinical-study design for the harmonized collection of voice recordings. The ultimate goal of the effort is to democratize the ongoing speech and language analytics efforts by making such rich datasets available to the wider research ecosystem.

Slang in forensic discourse (communicative and pragmatic aspect)

The relevance of the work is associated with the growing interest of researchers to the problem of medical discourse as a holistic communicative education. In this article, we focus on the problem of the functioning of Medical Slang in considering forensic discourse, which, in our opinion, has not yet received a systemic linguistic description. The author of the article presents the results of a communicative-pragmatic analysis of empirical material from fragments of forensic medical discourse. On the basis of theoretical communication and the study of actual linguistic material, some features of the functioning of slang nominations in this discourse were revealed: natural lexico-semantic processes were identified that organize intra-system variation within the thematic group “Slang of a forensic expert”: narrowing and expanding the meanings of slang nominations, activation of semantic transfers. Special attention was paid to the question of interpretation of the most successful nomination for characterizing the described phenomenon. In linguistic research, there is controversy as to which term is the most accurate: «medical jargon», «slang», «professional vernacular», «non-standard vocabulary», etc. In our work we use the term «slang», it seems to us that this term most accurately reflects the content of the studied subject. The reasons for the occurrence of slang words in forensic discourse are analyzed: autonomy of professional communication; saving speech efforts in the process of communication; the psycholinguistic nature of the use of slang nominations. The revealed and interpreted communicative-pragmatic features of forensic discourse allow us to draw the following conclusions: the boundaries of the terminological and non-terminological zones in the space of discourse are mobile; activation of lexical and semantic processes, as a result of which new slang words appear or a rearrangement of the semantic content of existing units occurs. These features allow us to talk about the open nature of the forensic discourse as a cognitive structure.

COMPOSITE TRADEMARKS: A STUDY OF ACTIVE TRENDS IN NOMINATION

Revival of small and medium-sized enterprises under the conditions of anti-Russian sanctions facilitates a surge of new names for this kind of economic activity and its products. This fact substantiates the urgency of the given study. The object under investigation includes composite trademarks, i.e. proper names used by various companies to nominate their products and services. Logos or brands also belong here. While creating a new trademark, modern companies orient towards its presentation in mass media, and specifically towards their production advertisement through Internet on the pages of social networking sites, via hashtags and mobile applications. In accordance with its functions, a trademark should be informative, salient and expressive and, at the same time, taking into account the specificity of the sign functioning in the Internet environment, it should not be long and heavy. This explains the popularity of composite words in this sphere; due to their multi-stem composition, composite words can perform the function of a trademark and be an effective way of information presentation and attraction of attention. The article analyzes trademark nominants used in the sphere of services and made up of composite words and singles out thematic groups on extralinguistic grounds (kind of service) motivating their formation in the process of creative word building. The author comes to the conclusion that being a means of economy of effort in speech, composite words can reflect the content that should be advertized by the trademark in an expressive and substantial way, and the impact of these units is reinforced by the fact that the composite structure creates the effect of a language game.