Spoken Message Research Articles

Apparatus for electronically generating a spoken message

An improved apparatus for generating a spoken message is of the type formed by (i) first recording speech and (ii) then utilizing the recording so as to obtain at least one carrier, each carrier having at least one fixed part and at least one open slot, and then (iii) inserting an argument into each open slot. The improvement provides a phonetico-prosodic parameter generator for characterizing the message in terms of a sequence of phonetico-prosodic parameters for each carrier. An electronic memory stores the phonetico-prosodic parameters corresponding to each carrier and a controller constructs sequences of phonetico-prosodic parameters corresponding to the argument of each open slot. From the phonetico-prosodic parameters, a phonetics-to-speech converter generates a digital sound wave pattern which is converted, by a D/A converter, into an analog sound wave pattern. An output unit provides audible sound waves corresponding to the analog sound wave pattern. In a preferred embodiment, an input is provided for entering the arguments as orthographic or phonetic text which is converted to phonetico-prosodic parameters as well, so that the entire spoken message can be synthesized by a phonetics-to-speech system, resulting in enhanced consistency, even when the carriers are generated from the recording of different human subjects.

Very low bit rate speech coding using a diphone-basedrecognition and synthesis approach

High compression rates of speech signals may be achieved by coding schemes based on relevant linguistic segments. A system is described that relies on a diphone recogniser as the coder and on a speech synthesiser reproducing speech starting from a diphone codebook as the decoder. The spoken message is encoded in textual (phoneme labels) plus prosody representation. This speech coding technique may be used for voice mail or phone communication over low bit rate channels.

Theoretical Perspectives on Listening

Research into listening over the past three decades has, above all, highlighted the fundamental intricacy of the processes involved. In order to make sense of spoken messages, listeners may need to integrate information from a range of sources: phonetic, phonological, prosodic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic. The fact that we achieve all this in real time as the message unfolds makes listening “complex, dynamic, and fragile” (Celce-Murcia 1995:366). In this review I consider research into four aspects of these complexities: processes (e.g., speech recognition, discourse comprehension, and memory); the role of context; factors influencing listening; and the relationship of listening with other language skills. Finally I suggest likely directions for future research into listening.

Spoken messages as auditory cues for orientation in promoting indoor travel and activity by persons with multiple disabilities.

Spoken messages lasting about 2 sec. and occurring every 8 or 9 sec. were used as auditory cues for orientation to guide two persons with multiple disabilities to destinations for indoor activities. The use of spoken messages was alternated with buzzer-like sounds of the same duration and frequency of occurrence. The preliminary data indicated that both the spoken messages and the buzzer-like sounds were very effective as orientation cues. Staff found no difference in disturbance between them, yet, both were considered less disturbing than buzzer-like sounds of previous studies which had a higher frequency of occurrence.

Method for electronically generating a spoken message

An improved method for generating a spoken message is of the type formed by (i) first recording speech and (ii) then utilizing the recording so as to obtain at least one carrier, each carrier having at least one fixed part and at least one open slot, and then (iii) inserting an argument into each open slot. The improvement involves applying a prosody transplantation technique to the recording in order to obtain a sequence of phonetico-prosodic parameters for each carrier; identifying in each sequence sections of phonetico-prosodic parameters corresponding to the argument of each open slot; and substituting each of the sections by open slot data comprising at least position information indicating the position of each open slot. In a preferred embodiment, the arguments are entered as orthographic or phonetic text and converted to phonetico-prosodic parameters as well, so that the entire spoken message can be synthesized by a phonetics-to-speech system, resulting in enhanced consistency, even when the carriers are generated from the recording of different human subjects.

Framing Politicians

This article argues that in 1980, 1988, and 1992, our sense of presidential candidates' spoken messages differed depending on whether they were reported in issue or strategy frames. Messages in issue frames were more likely to be self-promotional and supported by evidence; messages in strategy frames were more likely to be oppositional and not supported by evidence. However, these differences disappeared in 1996 broadcast news coverage. In 1980, 1988, and 1992, candidates' messages in strategy stories were likely to be unsubstantiated attacks on their opponents. In 1996, stories in an issue frame adopted this tendency by including a higher proportion of attacks than in previous years. This change raised the level of reported negativity in candidate discourse included in 1996 broadcast news stories.

Influence of prior pictorial context on sentence comprehension in older versus younger aphasic subjects

Deficits in language comprehension have been observed in older individuals, particularly affecting comprehension of complex syntactic constructs such as passive sentences. Aphasic adults display a qualitatively similar pattern, with passive constructions being more difficult to comprehend than active constructs. Various types of context have been found to influence auditory comprehension in aphasia, including the comprehension of passive constructions. In particular, visual stimulation has been observed to facilitate the comprehension of complex spoken messages for many aphasic adults. However, it is unclear whether presenting visual stimuli prior to auditory stimuli is more facilitative than initially presenting auditory stimuli. Furthermore, in light of reported age-related declines in comprehension of passive constructions, it is unknown whether age affects the influence of visual stimulation and, if so, when these effects are more facilatory. In this investigation the influence of pictorial stimulation on sentence comprehension was examined for 12 older and 10 younger aphasic adults. The two aphasic groups were tested on the comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences presented in isolation or in paragraphs. Subjects heard the stimuli prior to or after seeing accompanying pictures which were black-and-white line drawings depicting the two possible subjects–object relations presented in the reversible sentences. The older aphasic subjects were significantly more accurate than the younger subjects in the post-exposed visual condition, as well as on isolated passive sentences in which there was no paragraph context. In both of these conditions the availability of contextual information (visual–pictorial or auditory–linguistic) was minimized. In the other conditions in which supportive visual–pictorial or auditory–linguistic context was provided prior to the presentation of the target sentences, the older and younger groups demonstrated similar levels of impaired performance. The results are discussed relative to the ageing process, allocation of resources, and working memory capacity.

Prosodic rules for the implementation of phrase boundaries in synthetic speech

From previous research it is known that speakers use the prosodic cues pause and pitch to audibly structure their spoken messages. Listeners, on the other hand, use these phonetic cues to determine the degree of disjuncture in the flow of speech, which supposedly helps them to process the meaning of the utterances. In the research reported here, a professional speaker’s phrasing behavior was modeled in various sets of rules, corresponding to different levels of prosodic boundary strength. These phrasing rules were evaluated as to their acceptability and it appeared that several of them improve the quality of the synthetic speech. The rule set implementing five levels of boundary strength improved this quality more than rule sets with fewer levels. In fact, it appeared that this rule set produces synthetic speech which is prosodically almost as good as a copy-synthesis version with natural prosody.

Conversational Repair in Schizophrenic and Normal Children

Children acquire the skills to monitor the adequacy of their spoken message and to self-initiate repair strategies that modify the message during early, middle, and late childhood. To characterize further the communication deficits of childhood-onset schizophrenia, this study compared self-initiated repair strategies in schizophrenic and normal children and their relationship with formal thought disorder, discourse deficits, and distractibility. Measures of self-initiated repair, formal thought disorder, and cohesion were coded in 32 schizophrenic and 47 normal children, aged 5.6 to 12.4 years, from speech samples elicited with the Story Game. The schizophrenic children used some repair strategies (false starts, fillers, referential revision) more infrequently than the normal children. Within the schizophrenic group, the children who were receiving neuroleptic medication underutilized repair and had more discourse deficits than the unmedicated patients. Loose associations and distractibility were associated with increased use of false starts but not fillers. In addition to formal thought disorder and discourse deficits, schizophrenic children underutilize self-initiated repair when presenting their thoughts to the listener, particularly if they are being treated with neuroleptics, a potential sign of increased clinical morbidity. Impoverished communication skills might reflect negative signs in childhood-onset schizophrenia.

Task demands affect lipreaders’ search for information

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether a lipreader’s task (making phonemic or prosodic distinctions about the spoken message) changes the regions of the talker’s face from which information is needed, and whether lipreaders are sensitive to these changes. An initial experiment found that when face movement was limited to the talker’s lips-plus-mandible region, the accuracy of intonation judgments was reduced but the accuracy of phonemic judgments was not. A second experiment then recorded gaze direction of lipreaders as they attempted to make judgments about the phonemic, stress, or intonation contour characteristics of short utterances. Results indicated that they spent more time looking at upper portions of the face when judging intonation contours than in the other conditions. Other differences in the eye movement patterns were also found among task conditions. Thus lipreaders are aware that different aspects of the speech information are signaled at different facial regions, and can adjust their direction of gaze to take advantage of this knowledge. [Work supported by NIH.]

When expertise reduces age differences in performance.

The authors examined whether aviation expertise reduces age differences in a laboratory task that was similar to routine air traffic control (ATC) communication. In Experiment 1, older and younger pilots and nonpilots read typical ATC messages (e.g., commands to change aircraft heading). After each message, they read back (repeated) the commands, which is a routine ATC procedure requiring short-term memory. Ss also performed less domain-relevant tasks. Expertise eliminated age differences in repeating heading commands, but did not reduce age differences for the less relevant tasks. In Experiment 2, expertise reduced but did not eliminate age differences in repeating heading commands from spoken messages. The results suggest that expertise compensates age declines in resources when the task is highly domain relevant.

Selection of speech messages in free-field listening.

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by initial consonants of words in a spoken message were recorded from 10 human subjects. In an ecologically valid free-field situation, brain responses to speech were recorded for the first time without using artificial probe stimuli as ERP trigger signals. In an analogy to a 'Cocktail-Party' situation in its most elementary form, two concurrent stories were delivered via separate left and right loudspeakers. The subject's task was to selectively attend to a designated message while ignoring the other. Results show a very early attention effect for a speech message commencing at about 40 ms from stimulus onset. This early effect appears to be based on tonic facilitation of the attended message and contextual cues.

Electronic audio memory with single action single control

Small light weight voice recorder is worn by a user as a short term memory aid. It has a single, large, readily accessible control button on its front face. The device has two alternating operating modes, each of which is initiated by actuating the same button in the same way. In a first mode the device records a brief spoken message. In the second mode the message is played back. The device has all solid state components with no moving parts for durability, freedom from maintenance and low battery drain. It is especially useful for those with failing memory who may find the complexities and dexterity requirements of conventional recording devices beyond their capabilities. An alternative embodiment of the invention includes covered, rear mounted controls that are easily accessed and operated for playing back the recorded message at a preset time. This feature is designed to not interfere with the primary function of record and playback by alternate operation of a single button.

The effect of redundant cues on comprehension of spoken messages by aphasic adults

Aphasic adults with severe auditory comprehension impairment responded to redundant and nonredundant spoken and/or gestured messages by pointing to pictures. Messages of two types (pantomime and emblem) were presented under four conditions (spoken message alone, spoken message repeated, gestured message alone, and spoken message plus redundant gesture). Though spoken messages repeated and spoken messages with gestures were comprehended significantly more often than gestures alone, neither of these stimulus conditions was reliably superior to spoken messages alone. This finding casts doubt on the clinical strategy of supplementing spoken messages with redundant gestures when auditory comprehension is severely impaired, and raises questions about the ability of severely aphasic individuals to utilize semantically redundant message content. Pantomimes were consistently comprehended more frequently than emblems, regardless of stimulus condition. This finding was attributed to a depictability factor: the pictures associated with pantomimes were relatively direct representations of item content, while those associated with emblems were necessarily less direct representations. For this group of subjects, whose range of comprehension deficit was deliberately restricted, neither auditory nor reading comprehension at the single-word level was found to correlate with comprehension of symbolic gestures.

The Effects of Pausing and Listening Ability on Retention of a Spoken Message

The Effects of Pausing and Listening Ability on Retention of a Spoken Message

The facial displays of leaders: Toward an ethology of human politics

Introduction Can human behavior be studied experimentally from the perspective of human ethology? This paper presents evidence which shows that socially important categories of nonverbal behavior can be defined in objective terms, integrating ethological research on primate social displays with studies of human expressive behavior in social psychology. Focusing on facial displays, we show that three categories of displays---called here 'happiness/reassurance', 'anger/threat', and 'fear/evasion'--have distinctive features that affect the emotions and attitudes of viewers. When presented with videotapes of a powerful leader exhibiting these different kinds of facial displays, viewers describe the leader's expressive behavior in ways consistent with the objective criteria used to select the stimuli. Further, the viewer's description of these displays was not influenced by their prior attitudes toward the leader, even though he is well known and controversial. We also find that the same dimensions of expressive behavior are communicated by facial cues, by the spoken message, by the combination of sound and image, by the image accompanied by filtered sound (so that paravocal cues are heard but the meaning is obscured), and even by the written text being read silently. While viewers describe expressive behavior in a way that is consistent with the objective classification of non-verbal behavior, their emotional responses are more complex. Verbal self-reports of emotion are the result of an interaction between previous attitudes toward the leader and the display that has been observed. Hence, even though all the viewers describe a particular display in the same way, supporters report emotional reactions to these displays which differ from those of critics. The results are particularly significant because, at the psychophysioiogical level, different kinds of expressive displays elicit distinct patterns of response that did not vary for both critics and supporters. These physiological reactions include both autonomic changes associated with arousal and changes in the tension of facial muscles known to

Towards Improving Second-Language Pronunciation

Over two decades ago the spoken message was characterized as the most prized of the four language skills. The emphasis on communicative competence in recent years where second-language (L2) instruction has focused on the primacy of speech from the very onset of instruction would seem to indicate that priorities have not changed. Entire chapters, even volumes, have been written on this topic.2 With the Report of the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies advocating that second-language instruction should concentrate on speaking and understanding before other skills are developed, and with the advent of methodologies such as the natural approach to L2 acquisition, it is likely that a strong emphasis on speaking will continue in our classrooms for years to come.3 Furthermore, the notion of proficiency-based foreign language teaching, which stresses the importance of the productive skills, is rapidly gaining momentum.4 Although the goal of producing a comprehensible spoken message has remained the same, discussions of this topic rarely devote much attention to the teaching of pronunciation. (The rating scales developed for the ACTFL-ETS oral proficiency interviews are a notable exception, since they attempt to provide a graduated sequence of learning goals for teachers and learners, including the quality of sounds produced at the various levels of proficiency.5) This is ironic, since the comprehensibility of a message depends, to a large degree, on the speaker's mastery of the prosodic features of a language. Encounters with persons who have mastered the structure and lexicon of a second language, yet produce all but unintelligible speech due to inadequacies in pronunciation, are not rare. With appropriate training, such speech habits could certainly be improved. The same holds true for our L2 classrooms. Clearly, if we expect reasonable accuracy in structure and vocabulary, then our expectations should be no lower in pronunciation. Apparently, little or no time is devoted to the creative teaching of pronunciation in many classrooms today.6 One way to remedy this problem might be to spend a minimal amount of time (even as little as five minutes daily) on the improvement of pronunciation in four-skills courses at the elementary and intermediate levels. On the post-secondary level, a solution to the problem might be a course devoted to the teaching of pronunciation, such as the one described here.7

Composition through the Team Approach

grades are given on compositions, an A to this paper and a C to that one. Individuals are rewarded for individual achievement. If students help each other with papers, they are labeled cheaters and punishment such as F grades, public humiliation, and bad reputations swiftly follows. Only the teacher is permitted to give help, and there is little time for much of that. At the same time, the student who writes unusually good compositions rarely wins many friends among the other students. The brain makes life harder for the rest of the class by setting the standards for writing higher than they would otherwise be. Even in classes using writing groups, there is no incentive for students to help each other because they're still competing individually for grades. Writing groups frequently suffer from the mixed signals generated by the silent message, You succeed when others do poorly, on the one hand, and, on the other, the spoken message, Working together is a good way to learn. It's a wonder as many students learn as much as they do and that as many students try as hard as they do.

The economics of writing

Differences exist between oral and written communication. For example, as a spoken message passes from one person to another, the accuracy of the message declines. Furthermore, we soon lose 50 percent of what we hear and within two days we'll lose another 25 percent. This article argues that written communication, thoughtfully and thoroughly revised, is a better way. The author asserts that the average length of a letter or memo can be cut in half with no change in meaning by purging it of three forms of clutter: redundancy, deadwood, and roundabout phrases.

Critical Issues in the Development of Speech Technology for Man-Machine Integration

It is evident that speech technology, recognition and generation, has grown rapidly in the last few years with new commercial and industrial products developing almost overnight. Speech technology offers the potential of a natural, efficient, and hands-free communication medium for humans to interact with computers. This exciting new man-machine interface concept is not merely looking for a new home, it is in desperate need of much good human factors research. The capabilities demonstrated by human and machine are very different. This means that the integration of a new technology should enhance, in particular, those human tasks that are difficult and fatiguing. In other words, the primary consideration should be in designing for the human's needs and capabilities. The machine and the interface can be redesigned and improved with time and scientific progress. Speech technology as a new interface medium offers another opportunity for the roles of human and machine to be complementary. Speech technology requires an expansion of the traditional concept of the visual-manual interface. A verbal capability permits new dialogue formats and information access and should not be viewed as a mere one for one substitute for visual or manual operations. The research reviewed will include performance studies in time-shared environments, which illustrate that voice recognition can be a preferred method of input over a keyboard. The speech generation studies reviewed indicate the utility of remote location spoken messages for alerting functions. However, there appears to be a lack of research effort in exploiting the interplay of the two speech technologies as a natural conversational dialogue interface. Some key basic research studies are sorely missing and their suggested format will be described. This presentation attempts to summarize the kinds of research issues that have been addressed in the application of speech technology to the human-machine interface, especially within the context of military and industrial environments. Merely determining technically that a particular task can be performed using the speech medium does not imply that this same task should be implemented using speech technology. Such features as user utility, role within the whole work station, type of payoff, and additional environmental factors need to be simultaneously considered and weighted accordingly for each particular application. Some methodological approaches that have been developed to aid in these determinations will be discussed. Guidelines for both human factors considerations and methodology development will be described to include the following: a. Criteria for assessing task utility b. Vocabulary selection using confusion matrices c. Structure of task-oriented grammar d. Structure of dialogue tasks e. Potential linguistic-semantic enhancements f. Recommended performance evaluation tests g. Operator training recommendations h. Impact of environmental constraints i. Problems encountered in restricted communication modes j. Potential of multi-modal communications k. Enhancements to hardware and software configurations In addition to these guidelines for speech technology implementations, some specific considerations that need to be given for speech recognition and generation individually will be described. For example, the impact that connected or continuous speech recognition may have on man-machine interfaces, and the use of flexible word order entry needs to be considered. There are also some concerns about the additional auditory memory loadings that may be placed on operators using lengthy speech generation feedback messages. Furthermore, speech generation implementation requires complex prioritization and inhibition logic trees to be developed to prevent simultaneous receipt of two messages with vastly different user impact. Guidelines and recommendations for speech technology users and researchers alike will be discussed. The current gap in the development of speech technology as a successful and useful input/output mode focuses on the need for good human factors research. This discussion portrays what is known about the strengths and limitations of speech technology. In doing this, it illustrates the kinds of human factors issues and cautions that have to be addressed before speech technology can find its rightful role in enhancing any man-machine interface.