Spoken Message Research Articles

The poetry of psychological distance: Bidirectional associations between stimulus speed and its psychological distance and construal level.

Based on the cognitive-ecological approach and on logical-functional principles, in 12 studies (11 preregistered), we examine the novel hypotheses that psychological distance and construal level (CL) are associated in people's minds with stimulus speed: the psychologically distant/abstract is slow, and the psychologically close/concrete is fast. The findings support our expectations. Study Set I examined the association between psychological distance and speed. Findings show that psychological distance is implicitly and explicitly associated with speed (Study 1), that psychological distance is seen as compatible with slow and proximity with fast (Study 2), that stimulus psychological distance affects its perceived speed (Study 3), and that stimulus speed affects its psychological distance (Study 4). Study Set II examined the association between construal level and speed. Findings show that construal level is explicitly associated with speed (Study 5), that abstract is seen as compatible with slow and concrete with fast (Study 6), that natural language word distribution structures reflect an association between abstractness and speed (Study 7), that construal level affects speed (Study 8), and that speed affects stimulus construal level (Study 9). Study Set III examined implications for communication and person perception. Findings suggest that slow-paced (vs. fast-paced) speech is associated with larger perceived spatial and social distance between speaker and audience and larger audiences (Studies 10a, 10b) and that people infer an expansive (contractive) regulatory scope from slow-paced (fast-paced) spoken messages (Study 11). We elaborate on possible mechanisms and their theoretical and practical implications in domains including decision making and urban design. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Previewing test items prior to learning and receiving decorative pictures during testing: Impact on listening comprehension for English as a Foreign Language students

AbstractIn multimedia learning research, pictures are commonly used to visually represent corresponding written texts, generating substantial research on how to apply multimedia principles to more effectively design instructional materials. However, it is still unclear what types of pictures presented in testing, with or without additional instructional supports, enhance learning from spoken messages. To address this gap, the present experiment recruited 184 university students and employed a 2 (representational vs. decorative pictures) × 2 (cueing vs. no cueing) between‐subjects factorial design. Specifically, this study investigated the effects of adding decorative (aesthetic, interest enhancing), as compared to representational (content depicting) pictures, to test items with or without the opportunity to preview such items (cueing) on learning and learning judgments. The results showed significant main effects of picture type and cueing, as well as a significant interaction effect on listening comprehension. That is, cueing neutralized the negative impact of decorative pictures, but did not improve learning when representational pictures were used. In addition, representational pictures led to significantly higher learning judgments than did decorative pictures. The detrimental effect of decorative pictures and the compensating effect of cueing on decorative pictures in testing were confirmed in the listening comprehension scenario.

Representing temporal concepts using redundant gestures in L2 ongoing interactions

Human conversational interaction is multimodal, involving both verbal and non-verbal modalities. That is, when a speaker and listener interact, they use not only spoken messages but also manual gestures. Manual gestures and spoken messages are semantically and temporally related and work together to create and express a complete meaning. This study employs a data-driven approach to investigate how L2 learners spontaneously employ gestures to express temporal concepts in ongoing dyadic interactions using 11 recorded interactions among L2 learners. The distribution and frequency of specific types of manual gestures were examined using sequential and gesture analyses. The results showed that, when representing temporal concepts, the participants produced language-redundant gestures. For example, to convey temporal concepts, they tended to co-express the same information with manual gestures, namely abstract deictic and metaphoric gestures, on an imaginary mental timeline axis, which appeared to represent the English grammatical concepts of tense and aspectual meaning. Regarding the functional differences in gestures in interactions, based on sequential analysis, speakers employed language-redundant gestures to express time concepts explicitly in comprehension sequences and in the negotiation of meaning as a strategy of repair for lexical retrieval, paraphrasing, and clarification. These findings reveal that understanding the use of both modalities, speech and gestures, is critical in uncovering how speakers conceptualize time in their minds and integrate space and time in language.

Necessitated Strategies and Skills in Learning Sight Translation

This paper studies Sight Translation (SiT) and how this type of translation is conducted to render a written text into a spoken message in the target language. It also highlights the most frequent strategies and skills that students need to perform SiT successfully. This paper focuses on the most significant stages of SiT, which are conducted sequentially. This paper reviews categories of SiT that can be seen in different contexts. This descriptive study presents details to illustrate the significant effectiveness of these strategies and how the students can employ their skills to overcome SiT problems. This paper explains this challenging task and the basic perspectives that are needed by the students to improve their performance in SiT.

Cognitive Process and Skill Training of Time-Limited Sight Translation

In sight translation, a written message is converted into a spoken message, or a written text must be read aloud in another language. Sight translation has long been considered a hybrid of translation and interpreting and a preparatory training method for simultaneous interpreting. However, because the information input in sight translation is in the form of text rather than fleeting speech, not enough attention is paid to the time factor of sight translation. This paper addresses the definition, cognitive process, and training of the skills of time-limited sight translation. The aim is to highlight the importance of time constraint in sight translation to strengthen the role of sight translation in language skill acquisition, including supplementing cognitive knowledge and improving bilingual conversion ability.

Holistic rehabilitation of cochlear implant users: using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health

BackgroundThe purpose of this article is to propose how the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), particularly the ICF core sets for hearing loss, can be used to plan and evaluate the holistic (re)habilitation of cochlear implant recipients.Material and methodsThe opinions of HearRing experts were gathered on what – based on their clinical experience – are the most relevant ICF categories and codes to describe audiological rehabilitation after cochlear implantation. For each ICF category, the most commonly used audiological assessment tools and methods were identified.ResultsThe most relevant codes for <i>Body functions and structures</i>, <i>Activities and Participation</i> as well as <i>Environmental factors were identified</i>. These were the following. <i>Body structures</i>: structure of the inner ear (s260), auditory nerve (s260), brainstem (s1105), midbrain (s1101), diencephalon (s1102), and cortical lobe (s110). <i>Hearing functions</i>: sound detection (b2300), sound discrimination (b2301), localization of sound source (b2302), lateralization of sound (b2303), and speech discrimination (b2304). <i>Activities and participation</i>: listening (d115); communicating with (receiving) spoken messages (d310); handling stress and other psychological demands (d240); using communication devices and techniques (d360); conversation (d350); family relationships (d760); school education (d820); paid employment (d850); and community life (d910). <i>Environmental factors</i>: sounds (e250), products and technology for communication (e125), immediate family (e310), attitudes of immediate family members (e410), societal attitudes (e460), health professionals (e355), and health services, systems, and policies (e580).ConclusionsUsing the ICF can help target the holistic (re)habilitation of cochlear implant recipients. By providing a common language, it can enable clearer communication across disciplines, and closer comparison between different studies, which is essential for meta-analyses.

Phonemic restoration in Alzheimer’s disease and semantic dementia

AbstractBackgroundIn daily life, spoken messages are often interrupted by extraneous sounds. However, we generally perceive such messages as continuous: our brains automatically and efficiently ‘repair’ interrupted speech signals by phonemic restoration, a fundamental physiological process whereby speech sounds that are obscured by noise are ‘filled‐in’ perceptually to reconstitute the underlying signal. As a dynamic, integrative process, phonemic restoration is potentially affected by neurodegenerative pathologies but this has not been clarified.MethodHere we studied this phenomenon in patients with typical Alzheimer’s disease and semantic dementia, relative to healthy age‐matched controls. Participants heard isolated sounds, spoken real words and pseudowords in which noise bursts either overlaid a consonant or replaced it; a tendency to hear replaced (missing) speech sounds as present signified phonemic restoration.ResultAll groups perceived isolated noises normally and showed phonemic restoration of real words, most marked in the Alzheimer’s disease group. For pseudowords, healthy controls showed no phonemic restoration, patients with Alzheimer’s disease showed a marked suppression of phonemic restoration and patients with semantic dementia showed phonemic restoration comparable to real words.ConclusionOur findings provide the first evidence that phonemic restoration is preserved or even enhanced in neurodegenerative diseases, with distinct syndromic profiles that may reflect the relative integrity of bottom‐up phonological representation and top‐down lexical disambiguation mechanisms in different diseases. This work has theoretical implications for predictive coding models of language and neurodegenerative disease, and for understanding cognitive ‘repair’ processes in dementia.

Processing of acoustically degraded speech in primary progressive aphasia and Alzheimer’s disease

AbstractBackgroundIn daily life, spoken messages are often “degraded” by competing sounds and vocal idiosyncrasies. Comprehension of degraded speech demands intense computations across distributed neural networks; it is likely to present a particular challenge for patients with neurodegenerative pathologies. However, this issue has not been studied systematically.MethodHere, we studied the processing of degraded speech signals in a cohort of patients representing all major variant syndromes of primary progressive aphasia (N = 32), in relation to patients with typical Alzheimer’s disease (N = 19) and healthy age‐matched controls (N = 25). As a model paradigm for the degraded ‘noisy’ speech signals of daily life, we used noise‐vocoding: digital division of the speech signal into a variable number of frequency channels constituted from amplitude‐modulated white noise, such that fewer channels convey less spectrotemporal detail and reduce intelligibility. We assessed the impact of noise‐vocoding on the recognition of spoken three‐digit numbers (e.g., ‘five‐hundred‐and‐eighty‐seven’) and used psychometric modelling to ascertain the threshold number of noise‐vocoding ‘channels’ required for intelligibility by each participant.ResultCompared with healthy controls, all patient groups showed normal comprehension of natural speech; for vocoded speech, patients with semantic variant primary progressive aphasia performed normally whereas other patient groups had a raised noise‐vocoding threshold and this was particularly marked in logopenic aphasia.ConclusionOur findings suggest that degraded speech is a promising paradigm for probing real‐world communication difficulties in people with dementia, and for stratifying syndromes and pathologies. Future work should assess the potential of this paradigm for developing new biomarkers and interventions to assess and improve communication function in these diseases.

Development of an auditory fitness-for-duty standard that predicts performance in military hearing tasks from auditory thresholds and performance on the 80-word modified rhyme test

Military operations often require Service Members (SMs) to make life-and-death decisions based on information they can only obtain auditorily. However, the wide variety of critical sounds, essential spoken messages, and masking environments encountered while performing military missions makes it difficult to use clinical tests to predict the operational performance of hearing-impaired SMs. In this study, ≈2400 SMs performed listening tasks derived from binaural recordings made during realistic battlefield exercises at the US Army Joint Readiness Training Center. The listening tasks included standardized speech recognition tasks based on the Oldenburg Matrix Test and Modified Rhyme Test (MRT), as well as scenario-based multiple-choice tasks where questions were asked about unmodified verbal exchanges that occurred between SMs engaged in the battlefield simulation. The scores SMs achieved on these operational tasks were then compared to their hearing thresholds and to their scores on the MRT80. The results show that an auditory fitness-for-duty standard that requires individuals with thresholds that exceed the values defined in the new US Army H3 Profile to obtain a minimum score on the MRT80 is generally able to identify individuals who are most at risk of performing abnormally poorly on militarily relevant listening tasks. [The views expressed in this abstract are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or U.S. Government.]

A CASE STUDY OF DEFINITENESS AND INDEFINITENESS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

The definiteness and indefiniteness is an important communicative category. This category is universal and is expressed in different languages by various means. There are no special indicators of definiteness / indefiniteness such as articles in the Russian language. However, these values are expressed by various means related to different levels of the language. Due to this fact, word order is an important and an interesting subject for a linguistic research. As a grammatical means, word order can convey not only information, but also the attitude to this information or communicative situation of the speaker, and also to concretize the content of the spoken message from the point of view of definiteness / indefiniteness. This study focuses on describing the means of expressing the category of definiteness and indefiniteness in Russian and the ways of conveying its semantic shades.

High level speaker specific features modeling in automatic speaker recognition system

Spoken words convey several levels of information. At the primary level, the speech conveys words or spoken messages, but at the secondary level, the speech also reveals information about the speakers. This work is based on the high-level speaker-specific features on statistical speaker modeling techniques that express the characteristic sound of the human voice. Using Hidden Markov model (HMM), Gaussian mixture model (GMM), and Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) models build Automatic Speaker Recognition (ASR) system that are computational inexpensive can recognize speakers regardless of what is said. The performance of the ASR system is evaluated for clear speech to a wide range of speech quality using a standard TIMIT speech corpus. The ASR efficiency of HMM, GMM, and LDA based modeling technique are 98.8%, 99.1%, and 98.6% and Equal Error Rate (EER) is 4.5%, 4.4% and 4.55% respectively. The EER improvement of GMM modeling technique based ASR systemcompared with HMM and LDA is 4.25% and 8.51% respectively.

The Echo Listening Profile: Initial Validity Evidence for a Measure of Four Listening Habits

This article contributes to the larger literature on meaning construction and misunderstanding by developing a typology of listening habits and a corresponding scale to measure individual differences in typical ways of listening. Our typology includes four habits of listening grounded in two underlying aspects of meaning, content and relational, found in any spoken message. Analytical Listening (AL) involves filtering information through an interest in results and facts, while Conceptual Listening (CL) involves filtering information through an interest in concepts and possibilities. Connective Listening (CV) involves filtering information through interests in others (people, groups, processes, or audiences), while Reflective Listening (RV) involves filtering information through one’s own interests and purposes. Results from two studies provide construct, convergent, and discriminant validity evidence for the resulting ECHO Listening Profile. In particular, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were used to create a 40-item version of the ECHO Listening Profile (ECHO) that was shown to map onto a conceptually similar measure of listening habits, the Listening Style Profile; ECHO did not, however, fully duplicate that scale and thus adds to our knowledge of how all listening is biased. Moreover, through use of comparative forced-choice scaling, ECHO reduces concerns found with self-reporting of listening, including response bias. Future work investigating the impact of Connective, Reflective, Analytical, and Conceptual Listening on how people navigate their personal and professional lives is warranted.

Can a framed intervention motivate older adults in assisted living facilities to exercise?

BackgroundThe majority of institutionalized older adults do not exercise, despite the many health benefits. The current study investigated whether a framed intervention can motivate older adults in assisted living facilities (ALFs) to perform functional resistance exercises. It was hypothesized that repeated framing of these exercises from a prevention perspective (e.g., to avoid health deterioration) would nurture the development of controlled motivation to exercise. By contrast, repeated framing of the exercises from a promotion perspective (e.g., to improve health) was expected to lead to higher exercise frequencies over time and to foster the development of autonomous motivation. Autonomous motivation was hypothesized to predict higher exercise frequencies over time.MethodsA total of 111 residents, aged 65+ years (M = 81.4 y; SD = 6.4 y) participated in the study. These participants received a printed three-week individual program with a standard session of eight functional resistance exercises. Four weekly sessions were recommended. Participants were semi-randomized into three framing conditions: neutral (i.e., control), prevention or promotion. They received condition-specific written and spoken messages about the exercises at the beginning of the intervention. The spoken messages were repeated at the end of each week. Participants kept a checklist with their weekly exercise frequency and at corresponding points in time, they completed a questionnaire about their levels of autonomous and controlled motivation to exercise.ResultsAcross conditions and time points, the exercise frequencies and the levels of autonomous motivation were generally high, whereas the levels of controlled motivation were generally low. Contrary to the expectations, there were no significant framing effects. However, higher levels of autonomous motivation predicted higher exercise frequencies. During the final exercise week, this was especially the case for intrinsic regulation (i.e., for the sake of the activity).ConclusionsThis study indicates that older adults who live in ALFs can be motivated to perform functional resistance exercises. Given the importance of intrinsic regulation, we advise to create an exercise atmosphere that allows for immediate, positive experiences and in which the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness are satisfied.Trial registrationClinicalTrialsID NCT02780037 (23 February 2016).

Student Evaluations of a (Rude) Spoken Dialogue System Insights from an Experimental Study

Communicating with spoken dialogue systems (SDS) such as Apple’s Siri® and Google’s Now is becoming more and more common. We report a study that manipulates an SDS’s word use with regard to politeness. In an experiment, 58 young adults evaluated the spoken messages of our self-developed SDS as it replied to typical questions posed by university freshmen. The answers were either formulated politely or rudely. Dependent measures were both holistic measures of how students perceived the SDS as well as detailed evaluations of each single answer. Results show that participants not only evaluated the content of rude answers as being less appropriate and less pleasant than the polite answers, but also evaluated the rude system as less accurate. Lack of politeness also impacted aspects of the perceived trustworthiness of the SDS. We conclude that users of SDS expect such systems to be polite, and we then discuss some practical implications for designing SDS.

A Anamnese Fonoaudiológica segundo os preceitos da Classificação Internacional de Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde (CIF)

Objetivo: identificar, por meio da anamnese fonoaudiológica, quais as categorias e componentes mais frequentes relacionados à funcionalidade segundo os princípios da Classificação Internacional de Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde (CIF), em quadros de Transtornos de Linguagem e Fala. Métodos: pesquisa retrospectiva de acervo parcial de registros de entrevista fonoaudiológica de clínica-escola, correspondente a 1000 casos avaliados entre os anos de 2004 a 2013; após cálculo estatístico, constituiu-se uma amostra por conveniência de 110 protocolos. Analisaram-se os registros da anamnese de acordo com as 362 categorias do nível dois da CIF e considerou-se na seleção um corte, arbitrário, nas 30 primeiras categorias mais frequentes de cada domínio e entre todas elas, para o agrupamento. Para o tratamento estatístico adotou-se o Teorema do Limite Central e a Leis dos Grandes Números para o cálculo pré-amostral e o teste não-paramétrico Igualdade de Duas Proporções, na análise da frequência. Resultados: as categorias mais frequentes foram: b176 (funções mentais para a sequência de movimentos complexos), d310 (comunicar e receber mensagens orais), d330 (falar) e e410 (atitudes individuais de membros da família próxima). Os componentes mais frequentes foram função do corpo e atividades/participação, os menos frequentes, os fatores ambientais e estrutura do corpo. As queixas “aprendizagem e fala” e “dificuldades de aprendizagem” foram as que apresentaram mais categorias nos componentes. Conclusão: foi possível a identificação de categorias e componentes da CIF, relacionados à funcionalidade, recorrentes em relatos da anamnese fonoaudiológica. Deste modo, esse resultado amplia o olhar e o cuidado do fonoaudiólogo com a saúde do indivíduo.

Take-over requests in highly automated driving: A crowdsourcing survey on auditory, vibrotactile, and visual displays

An important research question in the domain of highly automated driving is how to aid drivers in transitions between manual and automated control. Until highly automated cars are available, knowledge on this topic has to be obtained via simulators and self-report questionnaires. Using crowdsourcing, we surveyed 1692 people on auditory, visual, and vibrotactile take-over requests (TORs) in highly automated driving. The survey presented recordings of auditory messages and illustrations of visual and vibrational messages in traffic scenarios of various urgency levels. Multimodal TORs were the most preferred option in high-urgency scenarios. Auditory TORs were the most preferred option in low-urgency scenarios and as a confirmation message that the system is ready to switch from manual to automated mode. For low-urgency scenarios, visual-only TORs were more preferred than vibration-only TORs. Beeps with shorter interpulse intervals were perceived as more urgent, with Stevens’ power law yielding an accurate fit to the data. Spoken messages were more accepted than abstract sounds, and the female voice was more preferred than the male voice. Preferences and perceived urgency ratings were similar in middle- and high-income countries. In summary, this international survey showed that people’s preferences for TOR types in highly automated driving depend on the urgency of the situation.

Highlighting the Utility of the Consultation Analysis Record for Consultation Research and Training

ABSTRACTWhat we say in consultation is important, and thus studying spoken messages has been an important topic in consultation research and training for decades. Here we raise awareness of the Consultation Analysis Record (CAR; Bergan & Tombari, 1975), a well-established verbal interaction coding system that has largely disappeared from the professional literature. Following a description of the CAR and six summary findings from research that has employed it, we turn our attention to its future utility, including facilitating its use with technology and its applications to multitiered systems of support teams and procedural integrity research. The central thesis is that the CAR remains a valuable tool to study processes and outcomes of consultation as well as to train consultants, and it should be used more often for these purposes.

The role of familiarity in audiovisual speech perception

Speech perception involves processing a spoken message’s linguistic content and information about the talker's voice carrying the message. Speech perception is also affected by visual information, e.g., the McGurk effect. Familiarity with a talker's voice facilitates auditory speech perception (Nygaard & Pisoni, 1998), but it is not clear whether visual familiarity with a talker's face affects audiovisual speech perception (Walker, Bruce, & O'Malley, 1995). In this study we investigated how visual familiarity with a talker affects the perception of the English sibilants /s/ and /ʃ/, which involve visible lip-rounding contrasts. Participants identified syllable-initial sibilants from stimuli that were audio-only, visual-only, audiovisual-congruent, or audiovisual-incongruent (e.g., audio “save” paired with visual “shave”). We also examined whether visual familiarity affects the occurrence of the McGurk effect. Participants identified syllable-initial stops from syllables that were audiovisual-congruent or ...

Indefinitely beyond Our Reach: The Case for Elevating Audio Description to the Importance of Captions on Australian Television

Indefinitely beyond Our Reach: The Case for Elevating Audio Description to the Importance of Captions on Australian Television

Autonomous Driving

Autonomous vehicles will need de-escalation strategies to compensate when reaching system limitations. Car-driver handovers can be considered one possible method to deal with system boundaries. The authors suggest a bimodal (auditory and visual) handover assistant based on user preferences and design principles for automated systems. They conducted a driving simulator study with 30 participants to investigate the take-over performance of drivers. In particular, the authors examined the effect of different warning conditions (take-over request only with 4 and 6 seconds time budget vs. an additional pre-cue, which states why the take-over request will follow) in different hazardous situations. Their results indicated that all warning conditions were feasible in all situations, although the short time budget (4 seconds) was rather challenging and led to a less safe performance. An alert ahead of a take-over request had the positive effect that the participants took over and intervened earlier in relation to the appearance of the take-over request. Overall, the authors' evaluation showed that bimodal warnings composed of textual and iconographic visual displays accompanied by alerting jingles and spoken messages are a promising approach to alert drivers and to ask them to take over.