Speech Planning Research Articles

FUNCTIONAL-LINGUISTIC PARAMETERS OF ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL DISCOURSE

This paper is devoted to basic functional-linguistic analysis of modern English professional and business discourse. The aim of this paper is to look at the phenomenon of modern English professional discourse from a functional-linguistic perspective to discuss key elements of verbal interaction that define rhetorical uniqueness of this type of communication and combine traditions, standards and conventional nature with enough freedom for speakers to express themselves and be creative in composing texts of their own. The author sums up different approaches to the definition of professional communication, singles out and describes major functional features of this type of verbal interaction: goal-setting, functional loading of professional communication, typical participants, chronotopos, forms of verbal behaviour, role and status relations, pragmatic conventions and standardization, etiquette, functional differences between official and semi-official professional discourse, peculiarities of written communication. All the above mentioned functional features of modern English professional discourse impose severe limitations on the speech arsenal available to people. Basic functionallinguistic analysis of discursive fragments reveals what aspects should be further elaborated on in terms of improving the process of strategic planning of speech, selecting proper linguistic means to cause appropriate pragmatic impact on listeners/ readers, work out ways to increase efficiency of rhetoric.

Detection of Gap and Modulations: Auditory Temporal Resolution Deficits in Adults Who Stutter

Background: Recent models of speech production suggest a link between speech production and perception. Persons with stuttering are known to have deficits in sensorimotor timing and exhibit auditory processing problems. Most of the earlier studies have focused on assessing temporal ordering in adults who stutter (AWS), but limited attempts have been made to document temporal resolution abilities in AWS. Methods: A group of 16 AWS and 16 age- and gender-matched adults who do not stutter (AWNS) were recruited for the study. Temporal resolution abilities were assessed using the Gap Detection Test and temporal modulation transfer function (TMTF). Results: The results revealed significant differences in TMTF between AWS and AWNS, but no differences were found in the gap detection thresholds. Conclusions: Results suggest that the sensory representations of the temporal modulations are compromised in AWS, which may contribute to the programming of rhythmic movements during speech planning.

Behavioral and neural correlates of normal aging effects on motor preparatory mechanisms of speech production and limb movement.

Normal aging is associated with decline of the sensorimotor mechanisms that support movement function in the human brain. In this study, we used behavioral and event-related potential (ERP) recordings to investigate the effects of normal aging on the motor preparatory mechanisms of speech production and limb movement. The experiment involved two groups of older and younger adults who performed randomized speech vowel vocalization and button press motor reaction time tasks in response to temporally predictable and unpredictable visual stimuli. Behavioral results revealed age-related slowness of motor reaction time only during speech production in response to temporally unpredictable stimuli, and this effect was accompanied by increased pre-motor ERP activities in older vs. younger adults during the speech task. These results indicate that motor preparatory mechanisms of limb movement during button press are not affected by normal aging, whereas the functional capacity of these mechanisms is reduced in older adults during speech production in response to unpredictable sensory stimuli. These findings suggest that the aging brain selectively compromises the motor timing of speech and recruits additional neural resources for motor planning and execution of speech, as indexed by the increased pre-motor ERP activations in response to temporally unpredictable vs. predictable sensory stimuli.

Planning and coordination of utterances in a joint naming task.

Dialogue requires speakers to coordinate. According to the model of dialogue as joint action, interlocutors achieve this coordination by corepresenting their own and each other's task share in a functionally equivalent manner. In two experiments, we investigated this corepresentation account using an interactive joint naming task in which pairs of participants took turns naming sets of objects on a shared display. Speaker A named the first, or the first and third object, and Speaker B named the second object. In control conditions, Speaker A named one, two, or all three objects and Speaker B remained silent. We recorded the timing of the speakers' utterances and Speaker A's eye movements. Interturn pause durations indicated that the speakers effectively coordinated their utterances in time. Speaker A's speech onset latencies depended on the number of objects they named, but were unaffected by Speaker B's naming task. This suggests speakers were not fully incorporating their partner's task into their own speech planning. Moreover, Speaker A's eye movements indicated that they were much less likely to attend to objects their partner named than to objects they named themselves. When speakers did inspect their partner's objects, viewing times were too short to suggest that speakers were retrieving these object names as if they were planning to name the objects themselves. These results indicate that speakers prioritized planning their own responses over attending to their interlocutor's task and suggest that effective coordination can be achieved without full corepresentation of the partner's task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Interference in speaking while hearing and vice versa

Even when speakers are not actively doing another task, they can be interfered in their speech planning by concurrent auditory stimuli. In this study, we used picture naming with passive hearing, or active listening, combined to high-density electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings to investigate the locus and origin of interference on speech production. Participants named pictures while ignoring (or paying attention to) auditory syllables presented at different intervals (+150 ms, +300 ms or +450 ms). Interference of passive hearing was observed at all positive stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) including when distractors appeared 450 ms after picture onset. Analyses of ERPs and microstates revealed modulations appearing in a time-window close to verbal response onset likely relating to post-lexical planning processes. A shift of latency of the N1 auditory component for syllables displayed 450 ms after picture onset relative to hearing in isolation was also observed. Data from picture naming with active listening to auditory syllables also pointed to post-lexical interference. The present study suggests that, beyond the lexical stage, post-lexical processes can be interfered and that the reciprocal interference between utterance planning and hearing relies on attentional demand and possibly competing neural substrates.

A fNIRS Investigation of Speech Planning and Execution in Adults Who Stutter

Our study aimed to determine the neural correlates of speech planning and execution in adults who stutter (AWS). Fifteen AWS and 15 controls (CON) completed two tasks that either manipulated speech planning or execution processing loads. Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to measure changes in blood flow concentrations during each task, thus providing an indirect measure of neural activity. An image-based reconstruction technique was used to analyze the results and facilitate their interpretation in the context of previous functional neuroimaging studies of AWS that used positron emission tomography (PET) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). For planning, we compared neural activity associated with high versus low planning load in AWS and CON. For execution, we compared the neural activity associated with overt versus covert naming in AWS and CON. Broadly, group level effects corroborate previous PET/fMRI findings including under-activation in left-hemisphere perisylvian speech-language networks and over-activation in right-hemisphere homologs. Increased planning load revealed atypical left-hemisphere activation in AWS, whereas increased execution load yielded atypical right fronto-temporo-parietal and bilateral motor activation in AWS. Our results add to the limited literature differentiating speech planning versus execution processes in AWS.

Speech motor planning in the context of phonetically similar words: Evidence from apraxia of speech and aphasia

The purpose of this study was to test two competing hypotheses about the nature of the impairment in apraxia of speech (AOS). The Reduced Buffer Capacity Hypothesis argues that people with AOS can hold only one syllable at a time in the speech motor planning buffer. The Program Retrieval Deficit Hypothesis, states that people with AOS have difficulty accessing the intended motor program in the context where several motor programs are activated simultaneously. The participants included eight speakers with AOS, most of whom also had aphasia, nine speakers with aphasia without AOS, and 25 age-matched control speakers. The experimental paradigm prompted single word production following three types of primes. In most trials, prime and target were the same (e.g., bill-bill). On some trials, the initial consonant differed in one phonetic feature (e.g., bill-dill; Similar) or in all phonetic features (fill-bill; Different). The dependent measures were accuracy and reaction time. The results revealed a switch cost – longer reaction times in trials where the prime and target differed compared to trials where they were the same words – in all groups; however, the switch cost was significantly larger in the AOS group compared to the other two groups. These findings are in line with the prediction of the Program Retrieval Deficit Hypothesis and suggest that speakers with AOS have difficulty with selecting one program over another when several programs compete for selection.

Aging deficits in naturalistic speech production and monitoring revealed through reading aloud.

The current study investigated how aging affects production and self-correction of errors in connected speech elicited via a read aloud task. Thirty-five cognitively healthy older and 56 younger participants read aloud 6 paragraphs in each of three conditions increasing in difficulty: (a) normal, (b) nouns-swapped (in which nouns were shuffled across pairs of sentences in each paragraph), and (c) exchange (in which adjacent words in every two sentences were reversed in order). Reading times and errors increased with task difficulty, but self-correction rates were lowest in the nouns-swapped condition. Older participants read aloud more slowly, and after controlling for aging-related advantages in vocabulary knowledge, produced more speech errors (especially in the normal condition), and self-corrected errors less often than younger participants. Exploratory analysis of error types revealed that aging increased the rate of function word substitution errors (saying the instead of a), whereas younger participants omitted content words more often than did older participants. This pattern of aging deficits reveals powerful effects of vocabulary knowledge on speech production and suggests aging speakers can compensate for aging-related decline in control over speech production with their higher vocabulary knowledge and careful attention to speech planning in more difficult speaking conditions. These results suggest a model of speech production in which planning of speech is relatively automatic, whereas monitoring and self-correction are more attention-demanding, in turn leaving speech production relatively intact in aging. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Deriving the onset and offset times of planning units from acoustic and articulatory measurements.

Many psycholinguistic models of speech sequence planning make claims about the onset and offset times of planning units, such as words, syllables, and phonemes. These predictions typically go untested, however, since psycholinguists have assumed that the temporal dynamics of the speech signal is a poor index of the temporal dynamics of the underlying speech planning process. This article argues that this problem is tractable, and presents and validates two simple metrics that derive planning unit onset and offset times from the acoustic signal and articulatographic data.

What reading aloud reveals about speaking: Regressive saccades implicate a failure to monitor, not inattention, in the prevalence of intrusion errors on function words.

Bilinguals occasionally produce language intrusion errors (inadvertent translations of the intended word), especially when attempting to produce function word targets, and often when reading aloud mixed-language paragraphs. We investigate whether these errors are due to a failure of attention during speech planning, or failure of monitoring speech output by classifying errors based on whether and when they were corrected, and investigating eye movement behaviour surrounding them. Prior research on this topic has primarily tested alphabetic languages (e.g., Spanish-English bilinguals) in which part of speech is confounded with word length, which is related to word skipping (i.e., decreased attention). Therefore, we tested 29 Chinese-English bilinguals whose languages differ in orthography, visually cueing language membership, and for whom part of speech (in Chinese) is less confounded with word length. Despite the strong orthographic cue, Chinese-English bilinguals produced intrusion errors with similar effects as previously reported (e.g., especially with function word targets written in the dominant language). Gaze durations did differ by whether errors were made and corrected or not, but these patterns were similar for function and content words and therefore cannot explain part of speech effects. However, bilinguals regressed to words produced as errors more often than to correctly produced words, but regressions facilitated correction of errors only for content, not for function words. These data suggest that the vulnerability of function words to language intrusion errors primarily reflects automatic retrieval and failures of speech monitoring mechanisms from stopping function versus content word errors after they are planned for production.

Frequency of mazes in an experimental narrative task in monolingual English and Spanish-English bilingual children

ABSTRACTMazes such as self-corrections during speech production are observed in all speakers at varying rates. One hypothesis is that mazes result from the challenge of speech planning when speakers experience linguistic uncertainty. The aim of the study was to examine mazes in 4- and 5-year old typically developing English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children’s narratives when uncertainty was manipulated in narrative context. Three typically developing groups participated in this study: a Spanish-English bilingual group, an age-matched monolingual English-speaking group and a language-matched younger monolingual English-speaking group. Two narrative task conditions were designed to manipulate linguistic uncertainty as a means of experimentally testing for the production of mazes. In the more uncertainty condition, the picture scenes presented did not depict a story with a logical sequence or ending and a less uncertainty condition where the picture scenes depicted a story scene with a logical sequence and ending. Maze frequency in two narrative conditions and the amount of mazes between groups were compared to explore conditions and related factors to frequency of mazes in young monolingual English and Spanish-English bilingual children. Number of different words was correlated with a higher mazes frequency for all three groups across both narrative conditions. Manipulation of certainty in narrative conditions elicited mazes in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingual children did not exhibit more mazes than their monolingual peers indicating that bilingual experience in and of itself was not an indicator of exhibiting more mazes during this type of task.

А. КОЧЕТКОВ. «БАЛЛАДА О ПРОКУРЕННОМ ВАГОНЕ» (ОПЫТ КОМПОЗИЦИОННО-СЕМАНТИЧЕСКОГО АНАЛИЗА)

The main attention in the article is paid to the interpretation of the semantics of the poetic text, the content of the word as the main constructive element of poetic speech. In terms of semantical and syntactical composition, the poem is divided into three parts. The core of the first (bigger) part is the dramatic dialogue between two lovers. Emotional tension is created by the mysteriousness of the persons conducting the conversation. The semantic composition of the poem is extremely complex. Its semantic layout consists of two speech plans, implicitly developing the dramatic life line of the characters. The dialogue in this poem is a kind of emotional impulse to the narration of the train crash in which one of the characters dies. The second part of the poem is a narrative monologue, which presents the life drama of one of the characters. The story about the catastrophic event is perceived as a realization of the character’s tragic feelings, as a plot development of the motives outlined in his speech. The transition to the 3rd person pushes the picture away, objectifies it, allows you to see it as if from outside. In the final (3rd) part the verbal material is transferred into a different emotional and semantic sphere: the structure of the poem includes imperative forms with modal shades of request, even spell. In the final half-strophe of the poem, a bitter conclusion is made in the name of the lyrical hero to continually take into account the fragility of human existence, its insecurity from blind chance. Key words: semantic composition, dialogue, motive, narrative monologue, metaphorical and metonymic images, imperative mood.

INTENTIONAL NETWORKS OF DISCOURSE

The article is devoted to the description and study of special structural formations in the discourse that differ from linear referential structures, intentional networks, the participation of which is necessary for the implementation of author's intentions. The intentional networks deprived of the nucleus serve as representations of the cognitive presentation plan, linking the reference basis of the presentation with the network structure that creates the conditions for regulating the processes of message understanding.
 The material base of intentional networks is formed by language tools with non-descriptive semantics, the functional purpose of which is to pragmatically accentuate the fragments of the presentation that are most significant for the formation of meaning, and to create a field of understanding containing the necessary cognitive and communicative orientations for the participants to communicate.
 The predominant interest in the processes of planning, production and understanding of speech acts in cognitive pragmatics highlights the problem of systematic conceptual knowledge models (individual and conventional), the presence of which is a condition of understanding. Less attention is paid to the systematic nature of language processes, which, in our opinion, is of primary interest to linguistics. The current state of knowledge requires further differentiation and differentiation in the discursive process of rigorous algorithmic procedures and flexible structures, which allow making changes to the strategic program implemented by the author of the text during the creation of the text.
 The study of speech works makes it possible to distinguish structural formations of two types in them, linear and network structures. In contrast to the centralized sequence of propositions, the intentional network is created by many centers, the flexibility of the network elements is due to the multilayered subjective perspective, which has several levels of organization. The grammatical level is represented by the grammatical subject, the semantic (propositional) - by a certain type of agent, the cognitive - by the subject of reflection or perception. The communicative (pragmatic) level allows you to make a choice between the subject of speech (addressee), the addressee and the observer (external participant in communication). The network nodes use various combinations of perspectives, which creates unique opportunities for managing the processes of understanding in the conditions of remote comunication.

The Relative Contribution of High-Gamma Linguistic Processing Stages of Word Production, and Motor Imagery of Articulation in Class Separability of Covert Speech Tasks in EEG Data

Word production begins with high-Gamma automatic linguistic processing functions followed by speech motor planning and articulation. Phonetic properties are processed in both linguistic and motor stages of word production. Four phonetically dissimilar phonemic structures “BA”, “FO”, “LE”, and “RY” were chosen as covert speech tasks. Ten neurologically healthy volunteers with the age range of 21–33 participated in this experiment. Participants were asked to covertly speak a phonemic structure when they heard an auditory cue. EEG was recorded with 64 electrodes at 2048 samples/s. Initially, one-second trials were used, which contained linguistic and motor imagery activities. The four-class true positive rate was calculated. In the next stage, 312 ms trials were used to exclude covert articulation from analysis. By eliminating the covert articulation stage, the four-class grand average classification accuracy dropped from 96.4% to 94.5%. The most valuable features emerge after Auditory cue recognition (~100 ms post onset), and within the 70–128 Hz frequency range. The most significant identified brain regions were the Prefrontal Cortex (linked to stimulus driven executive control), Wernicke’s area (linked to Phonological code retrieval), the right IFG, and Broca’s area (linked to syllabification). Alpha and Beta band oscillations associated with motor imagery do not contain enough information to fully reflect the complexity of speech movements. Over 90% of the most class-dependent features were in the 30-128 Hz range, even during the covert articulation stage. As a result, compared to linguistic functions, the contribution of motor imagery of articulation in class separability of covert speech tasks from EEG data is negligible.

Power and phase coherence in sensorimotor mu and temporal lobe alpha components during covert and overt syllable production.

The sensorimotor dorsal stream is known to activate in both overt and covert speech production. However, overt production produces sensory consequences that are absent during covert production. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to investigate differences in dorsal stream activity between these two production conditions across the time course of utterances. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 68 channels while 23 participants overtly (Op) and covertly (Cp) produced orthographically cued bisyllabic targets. Sensorimotor mu and auditory alpha components (from anterior and posterior aspects of the dorsal stream) were identified using independent component analysis (ICA). Event-related spectral perturbation (ERSP) analyses identified changes in mu and alpha oscillatory power over time, while intercomponent phase coherence (IPC) measured anterior-posterior connectivity in the two conditions. Results showed greater beta (15-25Hz) suppression during speech planning across left and right hemisphere sensorimotor and temporal ICs for Op relative to Cp. By contrast, greater intrahemispheric beta coherence was observed for Cp compared to Op during speech planning. During execution, greater beta suppression was observed along with greater low frequency (< 10Hz) power enhancement and intrahemispheric phase coherence in Op compared to Cp. The findings implicate low frequency sensorimotor and posterior temporal phase coherence in the integration of somatosensory and acoustic feedback in overt relative to covert execution. Findings are consistent with early frontal-temporal forward models involved in planning and execution with modulations depending on whether the task goal is internal or overt syllable production.

How conceptualizing influences fluency in first and second language speech production

ABSTRACTWhen speaking in any language, speakers must conceptualize what they want to say before they can formulate and articulate their message. We present two experiments employing a novel experimental paradigm in which the formulating and articulating stages of speech production were kept identical across conditions of differing conceptualizing difficulty. We tracked the effect of difficulty in conceptualizing during the generation of speech (Experiment 1) and during the abandonment and regeneration of speech (Experiment 2) on speaking fluency by Dutch native speakers in their first (L1) and second (L2) language (English). The results showed that abandoning and especially regenerating a speech plan taxes the speaker, leading to disfluencies. For most fluency measures, the increases in disfluency were similar across L1 and L2. However, a significant interaction revealed that abandoning and regenerating a speech plan increases the time needed to solve conceptual difficulties while speaking in the L2 to a greater degree than in the L1. This finding supports theories in which cognitive resources for conceptualizing are shared with those used for later stages of speech planning. Furthermore, a practical implication for language assessment is that increasing the conceptual difficulty of speaking tasks should be considered with caution.

A Phenomenological Analysis of the Experience of Stuttering.

Stuttering behaviors and moments of stuttering are typically defined by what a listener perceives. This study evaluated participants' perceptions of their own experience of moments of stuttering. Thirteen adults who stutter participated in a phenomenological qualitative study examining their experience of moments of stuttering. Analysis yielded several common themes and subthemes culminating in an essential structure describing the shared experience. Speakers experience anticipation and react in action and nonaction ways. Many speakers experience a loss of control that relates to a lack of a well-formed speech plan or agency. The experience of moments of stuttering changes through therapy, over time, with self-help, and across situations. Many speakers experience so-called typical stuttering behaviors as reactions rather than direct consequences of trying to speak. Interactions with listeners can affect the experience of stuttering. Although research recognizes that the experience of the stuttering disorder involves more than just speech behaviors, people who stutter experience stuttering behaviors in time as involving more than just the disruption in speech. This finding has implications for both the theoretical understanding of stuttering and the clinical evaluation and treatment of the stuttering disorder.

Information packaging in speech shapes information packaging in gesture: The role of speech planning units in the coordination of speech-gesture production

Abstract Linguistic encoding influences the gestural manner and path depiction of motion events. Gestures depict manner and path of motion events differently across languages, either conflating or separating manner and path, depending on whether manner and path are linguistically encoded within one clause (e.g., “rolling down”) or multiple clauses (e.g., “descends as it rolls”) respectively. However, it is unclear whether such gestural differences are affected by how speech packages information into planning units or by the way information is lexicalised (as verb plus particle or as two verbs). In two experiments, we manipulated the linguistic encoding of motion events in either one or two planning units while lexicalisation patterns were kept constant (i.e., verb plus particle). It was found that separating manner (verb) and path (particle) into different planning units also increased gestural manner and path separation. Thus, lexicalisation patterns do not drive gestural depiction of motion events. Rather gestures are shaped online by how speakers package information into planning units in speech production.

Adults who stutter lack the specialised pre-speech facilitation found in non-stutterers.

ObjectivesPersistent developmental stuttering is a speech fluency disorder defined by its symptoms, where the underlying neurophysiological causes remain uncertain. This study examined the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of the speech planning process, using facilitation in the motor cortex during speech preparation as an analogue.Methodstranscranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses induced motor evoked potentials (MEPs), which were recorded from the tongue. Eighteen adults who stutter (AWS) and 17 adults who do not stutter (ANS) completed three experiments, which involved reading a German prefix+verb utterance from a screen. Each experiment involved 120 trials with three distinct levels of speech production: immediate speech, delayed speech without pacing and delayed speech with predefined pacing. TMS was applied shortly before speech onset. Trial MEPs were normalised to average non-speech MEPs. MEP amplitude, MEP facilitation ratio (amplitude: pre-speech offset) and group difference were the outcomes of interest analysed by multiple regression, as well as speech reaction time analysed by correlation.ResultsMEP values were 11·1%-23·4% lower in AWS than ANS (by standardised Beta), across all three experiments. MEP facilitation ratio slopes were also 4·9%-18·3% flatter in AWS than ANS across all three experiments. Reaction times for AWS were only significantly slower than for ANS in immediate speech and predefined pacing experiments. No stuttering was detected during the trials. The group difference in immediate speech was 100% and 101% greater than the other two experiments respectively.DiscussionWhile performance of both ANS and AWS worsens under disturbed speech conditions, greater disturbance conditions affected controls worse than AWS. Future research and therapy in stuttering should focus on non-disturbed speech.

Dual-tasking with simple linguistic tasks: Evidence for serial processing

In contrast to the large amount of dual-task research investigating the coordination of a linguistic and a non-linguistic task, little research has investigated how two linguistic tasks are coordinated. However, such research would greatly contribute to our understanding of how interlocutors combine speech planning and listening in conversation. In three dual-task experiments we studied how participants coordinated the processing of an auditory stimulus (S1), which was either a syllable or a tone, with selecting a name for a picture (S2). Two SOAs, of 0 ms and 1000 ms, were used. To vary the time required for lexical selection and to determine when lexical selection took place, the pictures were presented with categorically related or unrelated distractor words. In Experiment 1 participants responded overtly to both stimuli. In Experiments 2 and 3, S1 was not responded to overtly, but determined how to respond to S2, by naming the picture or reading the distractor aloud. Experiment 1 yielded additive effects of SOA and distractor type on the picture naming latencies. The presence of semantic interference at both SOAs indicated that lexical selection occurred after response selection for S1. With respect to the coordination of S1 and S2 processing, Experiments 2 and 3 yielded inconclusive results. In all experiments, syllables interfered more with picture naming than tones. This is likely because the syllables activated phonological representations also implicated in picture naming. The theoretical and methodological implications of the findings are discussed.