Spoken Stories Research Articles

Pupillometry is sensitive to speech masking during story listening: A commentary on the critical role of modeling temporal trends

An increase in pupil size is an important index of listening effort, for example, when listening to speech masked by noise. Specifically, the pupil dilates as the signal-to-noise ratio decreases. A growing body of work aims to assess listening effort under naturalistic conditions using continuous speech, such as spoken stories. However, a recent study found that pupil size was sensitive to speech masking only when listening to sentences but not under naturalistic conditions when listening to stories. The pupil typically constricts with increasing time on task during an experimental block or session, and it may be necessary to account for this temporal trend in experimental design and data analysis in paradigms using longer, continuous stimuli. In the current work, we re-analyze the previously published pupil data, taking into account a problematic constraint of randomization and time-on-task, and use the data to outline methodological solutions for accounting for temporal trends in physiological data using linear mixed models. The results show that, in contrast to the previous work, pupil size is indeed sensitive to speech masking even during continuous story listening. Furthermore, accounting for the temporal trend allowed modeling the dynamic changes in the speech masking effect on pupil size over time as the continuous story unfolded. After demonstrating the importance of accounting for temporal trends in the analysis of empirical data, we provide simulations, methodological considerations, and user recommendations for the analysis of temporal trends in experimental data using linear mixed models.

“There Was a Time of Dancing”—Visual Memory of the Maya Uprising in Guatemala, 1980–1981

Guatemala’s imagery of the war has been mostly construed from the standpoint of state militarism and violence. In the 1980s photos of rebellious Maya villages scarcely appeared in international publications, all of which were forbidden in Guatemala. Using a historical anthropological approach, visual memory, and ethnography of the Maya highlands, this essay delves into the photography of Megan Thomas and Luis Felipe González, two militants of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor who, in 1980 and 1981, took pictures of Mam and Akateko Maya villages during the uprising. Through fieldwork in San Miguel Acatán and Guatemala City, interviews with former indigenous and non-indigenous insurgents, conversations with the photographer Megan Thomas, and archival research in Guatemala and Mexico, this essay proposes to rethink the war in highland Guatemala through visual materials, spoken stories, and indigenous memories.

Bringing research alive through stories: reflecting on research storytelling as a public engagement method

Stories are vital in making sense of our lives – and research. Consequently, 12 researchers from the University of Sheffield underwent a three-month training process from September to November 2019 to learn how to shape their research experiences into accessible, ten-minute, spoken stories. This culminated in a storytelling evening as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s Festival of Social Science, at which researchers from different disciplines discussed various nature–society dynamics in diverse field sites in the Global South. By reflecting on the training process and the performance through qualitative interviews with storytellers and audience members, our study answers the research question: What lessons emerge from an interdisciplinary group of researchers engaging with research storytelling for public engagement? Our study addresses gaps in the literature by focusing on interdisciplinary research storytelling, spoken ten-minute stories, bringing together storytellers’ and audience’s viewpoints, and providing practical recommendations for researchers and practitioners. We argue that research storytelling can have diverse benefits for both researchers and listeners by promoting learning in an accessible format, boosting self-confidence and helping (un/re)learn scholarly communication. However, professional guidance and peer support, as well as ethical sensitivity, are crucial.

A Survey of Narrative Listening Behaviors in 8–13-Year-Old Children

ABSTRACT Reading confers significant benefits to children in both social and academic domains. However, the number of children who read for pleasure is decreasing and has been shown to drop significantly between the ages of 8 and 9. Despite the rising popularity of audiobooks and podcasts, research on children’s listening to spoken stories remains in its infancy. Thus, the present study explores how children engage with these realtively novel media. Fifty-two parents of children aged 8–13 years completed an online survey that asked about their children’s listening habits. Results showed that 74% of children listen to spoken stories, with the vast majority (92.5%) listening at least 1–2 times per week. While the survey revealed children are engaging with both podcasts and audiobooks, being read aloud to continues to be the most popular format for story listening in this age group (77.4% of listeners). Across platforms, the genre most frequently listened to was fantasy stories (84.9%; more detailed descriptions of popular themes and sub-themes are described in text). In sum, access to technology is becoming an increasingly important part of children’s lives. The data described here provide a timely perspective and a basis for informed studies of listening engagement in children.

Neural Activity during Story Listening Is Synchronized across Individuals Despite Acoustic Masking

Older people with hearing problems often experience difficulties understanding speech in the presence of background sound. As a result, they may disengage in social situations, which has been associated with negative psychosocial health outcomes. Measuring listening (dis)engagement during challenging listening situations has received little attention thus far. We recruit young, normal-hearing human adults (both sexes) and investigate how speech intelligibility and engagement during naturalistic story listening is affected by the level of acoustic masking (12-talker babble) at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). In , we observed that word-report scores were above 80% for all but the lowest SNR (-3 dB SNR) we tested, at which performance dropped to 54%. In , we calculated intersubject correlation (ISC) using EEG data to identify dynamic spatial patterns of shared neural activity evoked by the stories. ISC has been used as a neural measure of participants' engagement with naturalistic materials. Our results show that ISC was stable across all but the lowest SNRs, despite reduced speech intelligibility. Comparing ISC and intelligibility demonstrated that word-report performance declined more strongly with decreasing SNR compared to ISC. Our measure of neural engagement suggests that individuals remain engaged in story listening despite missing words because of background noise. Our work provides a potentially fruitful approach to investigate listener engagement with naturalistic, spoken stories that may be used to investigate (dis)engagement in older adults with hearing impairment.

Age-related deficits in dip-listening evident for isolated sentences but not for spoken stories

Fluctuating background sounds facilitate speech intelligibility by providing speech ‘glimpses’ (masking release). Older adults benefit less from glimpses, but masking release is typically investigated using isolated sentences. Recent work indicates that using engaging, continuous speech materials (e.g., spoken stories) may qualitatively alter speech-in-noise listening. Moreover, neural sensitivity to different amplitude envelope profiles (ramped, damped) changes with age, but whether this affects speech listening is unknown. In three online experiments, we investigate how masking release in younger and older adults differs for masked sentences and stories, and how speech intelligibility varies with masker amplitude profile. Intelligibility was generally greater for damped than ramped maskers. Masking release was reduced in older relative to younger adults for disconnected sentences, and stories with a randomized sentence order. Critically, when listening to stories with an engaging and coherent narrative, older adults demonstrated equal or greater masking release compared to younger adults. Older adults thus appear to benefit from ‘glimpses’ as much as, or more than, younger adults when the speech they are listening to follows a coherent topical thread. Our results highlight the importance of cognitive and motivational factors for speech understanding, and suggest that previous work may have underestimated speech-listening abilities in older adults.

Spoken Stories: A Narrative Inquiry on the Public School Teachers’ Early Retirement Decision

The study conducted assesses the perception of the public school teachers on early retirement decision. This study focused on three aspects of retirement which are the respondents concept of retirable age, their fears upon retirement and the psychological impacts early retirement decision has upon their well-being particularly in family relations, social relations and economic status. A narrative inquiry paradigm is used in this study. The study revealed that employees concept of retirable age is 55 years old. The most feared after retirement is the reduction in the cost of living allowance. The family and the respondents’ relationship with them contribute to the success in the retirement adjustment and the ability of the respondents to maintain good relationship with former co-workers creates a satisfactory retirement life.

The Existence of Jipang Village as a Collective Builder Cepu Community in Blora Regency

The problem of locality and local wisdom in Indonesia has become a problem that has got much attention in the post-Reformation 1998. Cepu District in Blora Regency is now starting to rise to revitalize the glory of the Jipang Duchy in the past. Meanwhile, Duke of Arya Penangsang who ruled Jipang in the mid-16th century was a symbol of their hero. The chronicle of Babad Tanah Djawi and the Javanese Mataraman/inland culture have built a hegemonic representation whose traces are manifested in the art of Solo kethoprak (Mataraman). Meanwhile, Kethoprak Pati (coastal area) which accommodates spoken stories in Coastal Java builds a representation that has a resistance pattern. Cepu is a city that inherits the existence of the figure of Arya Penangsang and Kadipaten Jipang. The revitalization of the glory of the Jipang Duchy in Cepu is a resistance patterned representation. The existence of Jipang Village [1] as a collective memory builder of the Cepu community in Blora Regency is very important. Jipang Village, in the past was the capital of the Jipang Duchy, which is currently seen as important by the Cepu community. This research shows that there are three important things related to the existence of Jipang Village. First, Arya Penangsang and the Duchy of Jipang for the Cepu Community. Second, the construction of the collective memory of the Cepu people. Third, the material culture of Arya Penangsang and the Duchy of Jipang.

Топонимические предания и легенды Юго-Восточной Тувы

В статье анализируется локальное своеобразие сюжетов и мотивов топонимических преданий Юго-Восточной Тувы: Тес-Хемского, Эрзинского и Тере-Хольского кожуунов (районов). Учитывается контекст этнокультурных связей тувинцев региона с монголами — жителями соседней Западной Монголии. Юго-Восточная Тува рассматривается как территория тувинско-монгольского двуязычия, которое составляет колорит его локальной культуры. Материалом послужили образцы легенд и преданий, изданные в различных сборниках тувинского фольклора, а также полевые записи совместной тувинско-монгольской научной экспедиции в Эрзинский кожуун Республики Тыва в 2011 г., в которой принимала участие автор.В Юго-Восточной Туве проживают тувинские родоплеменные группы кыргыс, соян, чооду, среди которых с разной степенью распространен тувинско-монгольский билингвизм. Бытование монгольского языка у них сегодня является культурным реликтом.В локальной устной традиции Юго-Восточной Тувы бытуют легенды (тоолчургу чугаа — сказочное повестование), предания (төөгү чугаа — исторический рассказ) и устные рассказы (болган таварылга — былички). Среди них значительное место занимают рассказы, объясняющие происхождение названий разных географических объектов местности —топонимические предания. Им присущи следующие черты: отсутствие четкой композиционной структуры, одноэпизодность, локализация места и времени события, ссылка на конкретных свидетелей и участников, ориентированность на историзм и достоверность сведений. В ряде топонимических преданий одним из основных звучит мотив спора между тувинцами и монголами из-за территорий, пастбищных угодий, которые периодически происходили между кочевниками. Распространены сюжеты, повествующие о появлении названий местных гор — Улуг Хайыракан, Кыргыс-Тей, Кежеге и др.; об озерах — Төре-Хөл и Тере-Хөл.Устные рассказы, примеры которых приведены, ценны тем, что передают древние названия многих географических местностей, гор, рек, озер и родовых кочевий Юго-Восточной Тувы, но и природных объектов, находящихся в настоящее время на территории другого государства, где они возможно уже забыты или переименованы. Потому фиксация таких преданий важна не только как устная история отдельных родоплеменных групп тувинцев, но и как показатель тесных исторических контактов приграничных районов Тувы и Монголии.

Benefits of wearing hearing aids in a natural complex auditory environment

A simulation of multi-talker environments (Hafter et al., Basic Aspects of Hearing. 2013) asks subjects to process a continuous flow of information from spoken stories. Subjects respond manually to visually-presented questions that appear soon after occurrence of the relevant information in one of the stories. In the present study, hearing-impaired listeners either do or do not receive gain through their hearing aids, and special interest is in responses to questions based on phonetic cues vs. those which require semantic analysis of the acoustic signal. Our aim is to determine the benefit of receiving hearing-aid amplification, comparing the benefit observed for phonetically based questions to that observed with semantically-based questions, and in terms of individual linguistic and cognitive abilities as measured by frequently used tests for the purpose. Results showed a strong benefit of aided listening among subjects when the need is only to recognize speech but, large individual difference in aided benefits when the listener was required to understand the meaning of the speech, with auditory, linguistic and cognitive capabilities all being factors that determine successful understanding. The incorporation of naturalistic elements in the simulation of multi-talker listening is important for unearthing the large individual variability in communication success.

Stories of women involved in a postpartum depression peer support group

Living through postpartum depression (PPD) might lead women to seek a variety of support to re-establish their well-being, including a hybrid of traditional and non-traditional services. Within this mix, some women participate in peer groups; however, there is a paucity of research regarding their subjective experiences of engaging in this type of support. The purpose of this study was to describe how women talked about living through PPD in the context of a peer support group. This focused ethnography was a component of a larger participatory action study in northern Ontario, Canada. The seven members of a 5-week peer support group described their postpartum experiences through written, visual, and spoken stories. Using structural narrative analysis, stories about recovery were identified across the data. Three groups of recovery stories were labelled as illness, mothering wisdom, and mobilizing. The findings suggested that women actively sought and established a therapeutic space for PPD recovery with peers. As such, health-care providers are encouraged to acknowledge the merits and advocate for the multiple and diverse alliances women might require to actualize recovery.

A comparison between written and spoken narratives in aphasia

The aim of the present study was to explore how a personal narrative told by a group of eight persons with aphasia differed between written and spoken language, and to compare this with findings from 10 participants in a reference group. The stories were analysed through holistic assessments made by 60 participants without experience of aphasia and through measurement of lexical and syntactic variables. The findings showed that the participants with aphasia generally received lower ratings than the reference group, but also that stories written by participants with aphasia were rated as easier to understand, more interesting, and more coherent than the group's spoken stories. Regression analysis showed that syntax could predict several of the rated variables for the stories told by the participants with aphasia. Results point to the need to include writing training in language rehabilitation in order to increase the ability for persons with aphasia to participate in communicative situations in everyday life.

Orphan Boy the Farmer: Evaluating Folktales to Teach Safety to Hmong Farmers

ABSTRACT Many Hmong refugees continue their cultural tradition of farming in the United States. The purpose of this project was to evaluate culturally based storytelling as a method to convey farming safety information to Hmong families. Hmong have an oral tradition; spoken stories are used to teach about heritage, as well as personal and social values, and end with a lesson or moral that can apply to their lives. Stories from “Orphan Boy the Farmer” illustrate hazards, behaviors, consequences, and control strategies related to farm work typical of Hmong farming in Minnesota and Wisconsin. The message of the 3 stories is that the successful farmer works safely and keeps his children safe from injury. Three stories were read, in Hmong, at 6 events in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Data were collected from 118 participants using focus group discussions. Transcripts were translated and analyzed to identify ideas and reactions to the stories expressed by participants. Findings indicate that storytelling was an appealing delivery method for most of the participants of this study. Participants were able to recount story content pertaining to farming safety and relate messages to their experiences dealing with hazards; unanticipated findings uncovered barriers to adopting safe practices. Several aspects of the storytelling performance influence its effectiveness. Development of folktale content and implementation of storytelling performances are described.

Noun Phrase Elaboration in Children’s Spoken Stories

One feature of literate language, noun phrase elaboration, was examined in the oral fictional narratives of school-aged children. Two narratives were elicited from 5-, 8- and 11-year-old children, 1 in response to a picture sequence and 1 in response to a single picture. Noun phrases were categorized into 4 types. Simple designating noun phrases were produced by all children at age 5, simple descriptive noun phrases by all children at age 8, and noun phrases with postmodification by all children at age 11. All noun phrase types were produced by more children in object than in subject position and in the single picture than in the picture sequence context. There are important developmental changes in noun phrase elaboration in the elementary school years as children learn to manage narrative contexts. Even within picture tasks, variations in visual depiction can affect the use of elaborated noun phrases (ENPs), with more descriptive language more likely to occur in narratives based on a single picture fantasy context than on a realistic picture sequence context. Performance expectations for types of ENPs within these contexts are provided. These findings will be useful to school clinicians in evaluating and working on narrative language within the elementary school period.

Learning About Literacy: SLPs Play Key Role in Reading, Writing

Learning About Literacy: SLPs Play Key Role in Reading, Writing

ROBERTS, Janine, TALES & TRANSFORMATIONS: Stories in Families and Family Therapy

ROBERTS, Janine, TALES & TRANSFORMATIONS: Stories in Families and Family Therapy. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 1994, 230pp., $27.00 US, $35.00 Canadian, hardcover. Reviewed by: CHESTER A. WINTON This book explores the role of storytelling in a therapeutic process of affecting change, both intrapsychic change for an individual and interpersonal changes affecting relationship dynamics between people. The author begins by exploring different kinds of stories. There are oral stories that are told. Stories that are told about the past tend to be selective in the memories that are evoked. The selectivity process is grist for the therapeutic mill. Many people and families have stories that are unspoken, that they prefer not to tell. The secretive stories often function to inhibit change, because what is not disclosed, not discussed, is often about a problem. So long as the problem is avoided or repressed, it is maintained. The exploration of stories can thus be a valuable tool in confronting areas that are left out for any of multiple reasons. Stories have a past, present and a future and time is one dimension that can be used in therapeutically working with stories. Spoken stories have the benefits of spontaneity and immediacy. They can be used either in individual psychotherapy or in dealing with interpersonal interactions, where one person tells a story or part of a story and a family member or partner tells a story of what they heard, creating a dialogue around the story. Then there are written stories. This can involve writing one's own story or a family's story. It can involve reading a written story to another, again creating a dialogue around the story. The stories may be illustrated, by photographs that are stories within a story, or by pictures drawn by children, as may be useful when a child writes a story of a parental divorce. Written stories can include thank you notes or letters of appreciation which the author refers to as mini-stories. Stories can be enacted, which allows people to tell the story and be in the story simultaneously. Enactments may involve role-playing, sculpting, or using puppets. The author uses one chapter to link cultural themes and values to stories before discussing how she uses stories to train therapists. She discusses different styles of stories including intertwined stories that are used in an interpersonal context, distinct/separated stories, minimal/interrupted, silenced/secret, rigid and evolving stories. I think that all stories can become evolving stories. Throughout this book, there, there are innumerable illustrations of stories as told by the author's clients and students. …

Linguistic flexibility in signed and written language productions of deaf children

Linguistic flexibility of deaf and hearing children was compared by examining the relative frequencies of their nonliteral constructions in stories written and signed (by the deaf) or written and spoken (by the hearing). Seven types of nonliteral constructions were considered: novel figurative language, frozen figurative language, gestures, pantomime, linguistic modifications, linguistic inventions, and lexical substitutions. Among the hearing 8- to 15-year-olds, oral and written stories contained comparable numbers of nonliteral constructions. Among their age-matched deaf peers, however, nonliteral constructions were significantly stories contained comparable numbers of nonliteral constructions. Among their age-matched deaf peers, however, nonliteral constructions were significantly more common in signed than written stories. Overall, hearing students used more nonliteral constructions in their written stories than did their deaf peers (who used very few), whereas deaf students used more nonliteral constructions in their signed stories than their hearing peers did in their spoken stories. The results suggest that deaf children are linguistically and cognitively more competent than is generally assumed on the basis of evaluations in English. Although inferior to hearing age-mates in written expression, they are comparable to, and in some ways better than those peers when evaluated using their primary mode of communication.

Traditional Literatures of the American Indian: Tests and Interpretations

Praise for the first edition: "A highly valuable collection of interpretive essays ..."Traditional Literatures of the American Indian" should be in the library of every serious student of Native American cultures. It is informative interesting, and valuable." - "American Indian Quarterly". "These well-documented essays are im-portant reading for students of Native American literature." - "Choice". In American Indian societies, storytelling and speech-making are invested with special significance, crafted to reveal central psychological and social values, tensions, and ambi-guities. As Karl Kroeber notes, "It is our scholarship, not Indian storytelling, that is primitive, undeveloped."This book is an essential introduction to the study and appreciation of American Indian oral literatures. The essays, by leading scholars, illuminate the subtle artistry of form and content that gives spoken stories and myths an enduring vitality in native communities yet often makes them perplexing to outsiders. The presentation and analysis of complete oral texts, often without translations, enable the reader to grasp the meaning, purpose, and structure of the tales and to become familiar with the techniques scholars use to translate and interpret them. This expanded edition of the widely praised collection contains a recent analysis of the Wintu myth of female sexuality, a revised introduction by Karl Kroeber, a contribution by Dell Hymes, a new translation by Dennis Tedlock, and a new, annotated bibliography. Karl Kroeber is a professor of English at Columbia University and the author of "Retelling-Rereading: The Fate of Storytelling in Modern Times".