Successful Speech Research Articles

Relationships Between Hearing Status, Cognitive Abilities, and Reliance on Visual and Contextual Cues

Objectives: Visual and contextual cues facilitate speech recognition in suboptimal listening conditions (e.g., background noise, hearing loss, hearing aid signal processing). Moreover, successful speech recognition in challenging listening conditions is linked to cognitive abilities such as working memory and fluid intelligence. However, it is unclear which cognitive abilities facilitate the use of visual and contextual cues in individuals with normal hearing and hearing aid users. The first aim was to investigate whether individuals with hearing aid users rely on visual and contextual cues to a higher degree than individuals with normal hearing in a speech-in-noise recognition task. The second aim was to investigate whether working memory and fluid intelligence are associated with the use of visual and contextual cues in these groups. Design: Groups of participants with normal hearing and hearing aid users with bilateral, symmetrical mild to severe sensorineural hearing loss were included (n = 169 per group). The Samuelsson and Rönnberg task was administered to measure speech recognition in speech-shaped noise. The task consists of an equal number of sentences administered in the auditory and audiovisual modalities, as well as without and with contextual cues (visually presented word preceding the sentence, e.g.,: “Restaurant”). The signal to noise ratio was individually set to 1 dB below the level obtained for 50% correct speech recognition in the hearing-in-noise test administered in the auditory modality. The Reading Span test was used to measure working memory capacity and the Raven test was used to measure fluid intelligence. The data were analyzed using linear mixed-effects modeling. Results: Both groups exhibited significantly higher speech recognition performance when visual and contextual cues were available. Although the hearing aid users performed significantly worse compared to those with normal hearing in the auditory modality, both groups reached similar performance levels in the audiovisual modality. In addition, a significant positive relationship was found between the Raven test score and speech recognition performance only for the hearing aid users in the audiovisual modality. There was no significant relationship between Reading Span test score and performance. Conclusions: Both participants with normal hearing and hearing aid users benefitted from contextual cues, regardless of cognitive abilities. The hearing aid users relied on visual cues to compensate for the perceptual difficulties, reaching a similar performance level as the participants with normal hearing when visual cues were available, despite worse performance in the auditory modality. It is important to note that the hearing aid users who had higher fluid intelligence were able to capitalize on visual cues more successfully than those with poorer fluid intelligence, resulting in better speech-in-noise recognition performance.

The speech neuroprosthesis.

Loss of speech after paralysis is devastating, but circumventing motor-pathway injury by directly decoding speech from intact cortical activity has the potential to restore naturalcommunication and self-expression. Recent discoveries have defined how key features of speech production are facilitated by the coordinated activity of vocal-tract articulatory and motor-planning cortical representations. In this Review, we highlight such progress and how it has led to successful speech decoding, first in individuals implanted with intracranial electrodes for clinicalepilepsy monitoringand subsequently in individuals with paralysis as part ofearlyfeasibility clinical trials to restore speech. We discuss high-spatiotemporal-resolution neural interfaces and the adaptation of state-of-the-art speech computational algorithms that have driven rapidandsubstantial progress indecoding neural activity into text, audible speech, and facial movements. Although restoring natural speech is a long-term goal, speech neuroprostheses already have performance levels that surpass communication rates offered by current assistive-communication technology. Given this accelerated rate of progress in the field, we propose key evaluation metrics for speed and accuracy, among others, to help standardize across studies. We finish by highlighting several directions to more fully explore the multidimensional feature space of speech and language, which will continue to accelerate progress towards a clinically viable speech neuroprosthesis.

Considerations for implanting speech brain computer interfaces based on functional magnetic resonance imaging

Objective. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have the potential to reinstate lost communication faculties. Results from speech decoding studies indicate that a usable speech BCI based on activity in the sensorimotor cortex (SMC) can be achieved using subdurally implanted electrodes. However, the optimal characteristics for a successful speech implant are largely unknown. We address this topic in a high field blood oxygenation level dependent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, by assessing the decodability of spoken words as a function of hemisphere, gyrus, sulcal depth, and position along the ventral/dorsal-axis. Approach. Twelve subjects conducted a 7T fMRI experiment in which they pronounced 6 different pseudo-words over 6 runs. We divided the SMC by hemisphere, gyrus, sulcal depth, and position along the ventral/dorsal axis. Classification was performed on in these SMC areas using multiclass support vector machine (SVM). Main results. Significant classification was possible from the SMC, but no preference for the left or right hemisphere, nor for the precentral or postcentral gyrus for optimal word classification was detected. Classification while using information from the cortical surface was slightly better than when using information from deep in the central sulcus and was highest within the ventral 50% of SMC. Confusion matrices where highly similar across the entire SMC. An SVM-searchlight analysis revealed significant classification in the superior temporal gyrus and left planum temporale in addition to the SMC. Significance. The current results support a unilateral implant using surface electrodes, covering the ventral 50% of the SMC. The added value of depth electrodes is unclear. We did not observe evidence for variations in the qualitative nature of information across SMC. The current results need to be confirmed in paralyzed patients performing attempted speech.

Short- and long-term neuroplasticity interact during the perceptual learning of concurrent speech.

Plasticity from auditory experience shapes the brain's encoding and perception of sound. However, whether such long-term plasticity alters the trajectory of short-term plasticity during speech processing has yet to be investigated. Here, we explored the neural mechanisms and interplay between short- and long-term neuroplasticity for rapid auditory perceptual learning of concurrent speech sounds in young, normal-hearing musicians and nonmusicians. Participants learned to identify double-vowel mixtures during ~ 45min training sessions recorded simultaneously with high-density electroencephalography (EEG). We analyzed frequency-following responses (FFRs) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate neural correlates of learning at subcortical and cortical levels, respectively. Although both groups showed rapid perceptual learning, musicians showed faster behavioral decisions than nonmusicians overall. Learning-related changes were not apparent in brainstem FFRs. However, plasticity was highly evident in cortex, where ERPs revealed unique hemispheric asymmetries between groups suggestive of different neural strategies (musicians: right hemisphere bias; nonmusicians: left hemisphere). Source reconstruction and the early (150-200ms) time course of these effects localized learning-induced cortical plasticity to auditory-sensory brain areas. Our findings reinforce the domain-general benefits of musicianship but reveal that successful speech sound learning is driven by a critical interplay between long- and short-term mechanisms of auditory plasticity, which first emerge at a cortical level.

Speech synthesis from intracranial stereotactic Electroencephalography using a neural vocoder

Speech is one of the most important human biosig nals. However, only some speech production characteristics are fully understood, which are required for a successful speech based Brain-Computer Interface (BCI). A proper brain-to speech system that can generate the speech of full sentences intelligibly and naturally poses a great challenge. In our study, we used the SingleWordProduction-Dutch-iBIDS dataset, in which speech and intracranial stereotactic electroencephalography (sEEG) signals of the brain were recorded simultaneously during a single word production task. We apply deep neural networks (FC-DNN, 2D-CNN, and 3D-CNN) on the ten speakers’ data for sEEG-to-Mel spectrogram prediction. Next, we synthesize speech using the WaveGlow neural vocoder. Our objective and subjective evaluations have shown that the DNN based approaches with neural vocoder outperform the baseline linear regression model using Griffin-Lim. The synthesized samples resemble the original speech but are still not intelligible, and the results are clearly speaker dependent. In the long term, speech-based BCI applications might be useful for the speaking impaired or those having neurological disorders.

EEG-based speaker-listener neural coupling reflects speech-selective attentional mechanisms beyond the speech stimulus.

When we pay attention to someone, do we focus only on the sound they make, the word they use, or do we form a mental space shared with the speaker we want to pay attention to? Some would argue that the human language is no other than a simple signal, but others claim that human beings understand each other because they form a shared mental ground between the speaker and the listener. Our study aimed to explore the neural mechanisms of speech-selective attention by investigating the electroencephalogram-based neural coupling between the speaker and the listener in a cocktail party paradigm. The temporal response function method was employed to reveal how the listener was coupled to the speaker at the neural level. The results showed that the neural coupling between the listener and the attended speaker peaked 5s before speech onset at the delta band over the left frontal region, and was correlated with speech comprehension performance. In contrast, the attentional processing of speech acoustics and semantics occurred primarily at a later stage after speech onset and was not significantly correlated with comprehension performance. These findings suggest a predictive mechanism to achieve speaker-listener neural coupling for successful speech comprehension.

Ten-month-old infants’ neural tracking of naturalistic speech is not facilitated by the speaker’s eye gaze

Eye gaze is a powerful ostensive cue in infant-caregiver interactions, with demonstrable effects on language acquisition. While the link between gaze following and later vocabulary is well-established, the effects of eye gaze on other aspects of language, such as speech processing, are less clear. In this EEG study, we examined the effects of the speaker’s eye gaze on ten-month-old infants’ neural tracking of naturalistic audiovisual speech, a marker for successful speech processing. Infants watched videos of a speaker telling stories, addressing the infant with direct or averted eye gaze. We assessed infants’ speech-brain coherence at stress (1–1.75 Hz) and syllable (2.5–3.5 Hz) rates, tested for differences in attention by comparing looking times and EEG theta power in the two conditions, and investigated whether neural tracking predicts later vocabulary. Our results showed that infants’ brains tracked the speech rhythm both at the stress and syllable rates, and that infants’ neural tracking at the syllable rate predicted later vocabulary. However, speech-brain coherence did not significantly differ between direct and averted gaze conditions and infants did not show greater attention to direct gaze. Overall, our results suggest significant neural tracking at ten months, related to vocabulary development, but not modulated by speaker’s gaze.

The evidential future in Italian

AbstractThis paper provides a systematic description and analysis of the non-predictive use of the Italian future. Several authors claim that, on this use, the Italian future is an evidential (Squartini 2001, Mari 2010, Eckardt and Beltrama 2019, Frana and Menéndez-Benito 2019). Others argue that the non-predictive future does not directly contribute an evidential signal (e.g., Giannakidou and Mari 2018, Farkas and Ippolito 2022). We side with the evidential camp. From an empirical standpoint, we present the results of a battery of tests that show that the non-predictive future patterns with evidentials cross-linguistically. From a theoretical standpoint, we put forward an analysis that combines a slightly modified version of the proposal for evidentials in Davis et al. (2007) with Schlenker’s (2007) view of expressive content. On this account, the Italian evidential future (i) lowers the quality threshold required to perform a successful speech act (Davis et al. 2007) and (ii) triggers an evidential presupposition relativized to the speaker’s beliefs (modeled after Schlenker’s analysis of expressives). Our treatment of the evidential component as an expressive presupposition opens up a new perspective on the study of evidentiality and highlights the need for further detailed empirical studies exploring the extent to which this perspective is applicable cross-linguistically.

A case of pure apraxia of speech after left hemisphere stroke: behavioral findings and neural correlates.

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder impairing the coordination of complex articulatory movements needed to produce speech. AOS typically co-occurs with a non-fluent aphasia, or language disorder, making it challenging to determine the specific brain structures that cause AOS. Cases of pure AOS without aphasia are rare but offer the best window into the neural correlates that support articulatory planning. The goal of the current study was to explore patterns of apraxic speech errors and their underlying neural correlates in a case of pure AOS. A 67-year-old right-handed man presented with severe AOS resulting from a fronto-insular lesion caused by an ischemic stroke. The participant's speech and language were evaluated at 1-, 3- and 12-months post-onset. High resolution structural MRI, including diffusion weighted imaging, was acquired at 12 months post-onset. At the first assessment, the participant made minor errors on the Comprehensive Aphasia Test, demonstrating mild deficits in writing, auditory comprehension, and repetition. By the second assessment, he no longer had aphasia. On the Motor Speech Evaluation, the severity of his AOS was initially rated as 5 (out of 7) and improved to a score of 4 by the second visit, likely due to training by his SLP at the time to slow his speech. Structural MRI data showed a fronto-insular lesion encompassing the superior precentral gyrus of the insula and portions of the inferior and middle frontal gyri and precentral gyrus. Tractography derived from diffusion MRI showed partial damage to the frontal aslant tract and arcuate fasciculus along the white matter projections to the insula. This pure case of severe AOS without aphasia affords a unique window into the behavioral and neural mechanisms of this motor speech disorder. The current findings support previous observations that AOS and aphasia are dissociable and confirm a role for the precentral gyrus of the insula and BA44, as well as underlying white matter in supporting the coordination of complex articulatory movements. Additionally, other regions including the precentral gyrus, Broca's area, and Area 55b are discussed regarding their potential role in successful speech production.

Acoustic and phonemic processing are impaired in individuals with aphasia

Acoustic and phonemic processing are understudied in aphasia, a language disorder that can affect different levels and modalities of language processing. For successful speech comprehension, processing of the speech envelope is necessary, which relates to amplitude changes over time (e.g., the rise times). Moreover, to identify speech sounds (i.e., phonemes), efficient processing of spectro-temporal changes as reflected in formant transitions is essential. Given the underrepresentation of aphasia studies on these aspects, we tested rise time processing and phoneme identification in 29 individuals with post-stroke aphasia and 23 healthy age-matched controls. We found significantly lower performance in the aphasia group than in the control group on both tasks, even when controlling for individual differences in hearing levels and cognitive functioning. Further, by conducting an individual deviance analysis, we found a low-level acoustic or phonemic processing impairment in 76% of individuals with aphasia. Additionally, we investigated whether this impairment would propagate to higher-level language processing and found that rise time processing predicts phonological processing performance in individuals with aphasia. These findings show that it is important to develop diagnostic and treatment tools that target low-level language processing mechanisms.

A Study of Interactional Metadiscourse Features in Chinese University Students' Prepared English Speech

Speech is an activity in which speakers convey their message to listeners continuously. A coherent, logical argument must be made by the speaker, and audience participation is essential for a successful speech. The majority of prior research on English Public Speaking (hence referred to as EPS) from the Critical Discourse Analysis (hereinafter referred to as CDA) perspective focused on political or academic speech. Although the speech of English language learners (also known as EFLs) has caught the interest of academics. There has not been much study of the interactional metadiscourse characteristics of EFLs' EPS. In this study, we investigate how the usage of metadiscourse influences speakers' performance and the ways presenters engage with their listeners. We do this by drawing on Hyland's stance and engagement framework from 2005. Based on a corpus of 90 prepared speech scripts from high-scoring and low-scoring groups, the results suggest that explicit mentions of oneself and listeners are the most frequent elements, whereas stance markers are employed more frequently than listener engagement markers. Additionally, this study found a positive correlation between the usage of hedges and speech scores and a marginally negative correlation between speech scores and the use of self-mentions. In terms of technique, the interactional metadiscourse analysis on investigating EPS is provided by this study, while in terms of pedagogy, it emphasizes the significance of interactional metadiscourse in EPS instruction.

Formulaic Language in the Acquisition of L2 Pragmatic Competence in a Community-based Classroom

Pragmatic formulas have been recognized as linguistic building blocks necessary for successful speech act performance. Current approaches to speech act teaching overlook pragmatic formulas, promoting an incomplete view of pragmatics instruction. This paper reports on the results of a classroom-based study in which a formula-enhanced treatment focusing on both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic components of pragmatic ability was tested. Seven students from the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program participated in four lessons involving pre-, post- and delayed post-test measures. During the treatment, the students were exposed to target formulas from four interaction contexts. A qualitative utterance analysis was conducted to determine how pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic abilities of the students evolved after the teaching intervention. Additionally, three expert judges evaluated students’ pragmatic performance. The results indicate that improvements in both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic abilities of the students were associated with the use of target-like formulas in their speech acts.

Presentation of Public Speeches in the Framework of Gricean Maxims: A Case Study of Kakamega County

Public speaking has continually become authentic without which communication can take place among the people of any society, and therefore there is a need to scrutinize whether or not they conform to Gricean maxims or violate them. Grice's principle of 1975 gives the conventions by which a successful speech can be uttered. The key objective of the study is to analyse the type of speeches that conform to Gricean maxims and the maxim which is susceptible to violation. The types of speeches include persuasive, informative, and ritualistic. Descriptive research design was adopted and the target population was people of Kakamega County. Convenience sampling technique was applied to gather the speeches from the church, funerals, marriage ceremonies, learning institutions, media platforms, graduation ceremonies, and seminars. Secondary sources of data include speeches from the president and the governor. The research instruments included audio-tape recording, oral interview and observation until saturation stage was attained. Data was analysed in the table and textual form. It was found that ritualistic speeches flouted the maxim of quantity and manner. Persuasive speeches mostly violated three maxims. Most of the informative speeches conformed to all maxims. It therefore, recommends that ritualistic speeches are specific and mostly written and should not take more than 5 minutes. Persuasive speeches mostly flout the maxim of quality, quantity, and manner because some are informal and figurative. Informative speeches are formal and time-bound, therefore, conform to the maxims. Since Gricean principles could not account for political speeches, relevance theory was applicable to cover the deficit.

Listen up! ADHD slows spoken-word processing in adverse listening conditions: Evidence from eye movements

BackgroundCognitive skills such as sustained attention, inhibition and working memory are essential for speech processing, yet are often impaired in people with ADHD. Offline measures have indicated difficulties in speech recognition on multi-talker babble (MTB) background for young adults with ADHD (yaADHD). However, to-date no study has directly tested online speech processing in adverse conditions for yaADHD. AimsGauging the effects of ADHD on segregating the spoken target-word from its sound-sharing competitor, in MTB and working-memory (WM) load. Methods and proceduresTwenty-four yaADHD and 22 matched controls that differ in sustained attention (SA) but not in WM were asked to follow spoken instructions presented on MTB to touch a named object, while retaining one (low-load) or four (high-load) digit/s for later recall. Their eye fixations were tracked. Outcomes and resultsIn the high-load condition, speech processing was less accurate and slowed by 140ms for yaADHD. In the low-load condition, the processing advantage shifted from early perceptual to later cognitive stages. Fixation transitions (hesitations) were inflated for yaADHD. Conclusions and implicationsADHD slows speech processing in adverse listening conditions and increases hesitation, as speech unfolds in time. These effects, detected only by online eyetracking, relate to attentional difficulties. We suggest online speech processing as a novel purview on ADHD. What this paper adds?We suggest speech processing in adverse listening conditions as a novel vantage point on ADHD. Successful speech recognition in noise is essential for performance across daily settings: academic, employment and social interactions. It involves several executive functions, such as inhibition and sustained attention. Impaired performance in these functions is characteristic of ADHD. However, to date there is only scant research on speech processing in ADHD. The current study is the first to investigate online speech processing as the word unfolds in time using eyetracking for young adults with ADHD (yaADHD). This method uncovered slower speech processing in multi-talker babble noise for yaADHD compared to matched controls. The performance of yaADHD indicated increased hesitation between the spoken word and sound-sharing alternatives (e.g., CANdle-CANdy). These delays and hesitations, on the single word level, could accumulate in continuous speech to significantly impair communication in ADHD, with severe implications on their quality of life and academic success. Interestingly, whereas yaADHD and controls were matched on WM standardized tests, WM load appears to affect speech processing for yaADHD more than for controls. This suggests that ADHD may lead to inefficient deployment of WM resources that may not be detected when WM is tested alone. Note that these intricate differences could not be detected using traditional offline accuracy measures, further supporting the use of eyetracking in speech tasks. Finally, communication is vital for active living and wellbeing. We suggest paying attention to speech processing in ADHD in treatment and when considering accessibility and inclusion.

Audiological and Demographic Factors that Impact the Precision of Speech Categorization in Cochlear Implant Users.

The ability to adapt to subtle variations in acoustic input is a necessary skill for successful speech perception. Cochlear implant (CI) users tend to show speech perception benefits from the maintenance of their residual acoustic hearing. However, previous studies often compare CI users in different listening conditions within-subjects (i.e., in their typical Acoustic + Electric configuration compared with Acoustic-only or Electric-only configurations) and comparisons among different groups of CI users do not always reflect an Acoustic + Electric benefit. Existing work suggests that CI users with residual acoustic hearing perform similarly to Electric-only listeners on phonetic voicing contrasts and unexpectedly poorer with fricative contrasts which have little energy in the range of the Acoustic + Electric listeners' acoustic hearing. To further investigate how residual acoustic hearing impacts sensitivity to phonetic ambiguity, we examined whether device configuration, age, and device experience influenced phonetic categorization in a large individual differences study. CI users with various device configurations (Electric-only N = 41; Acoustic + Electric N = 95) categorized tokens from five /b-p/ and five /s-ʃ/ minimal pair continua (e.g., bet-pet; sock-shock). We investigated age, device experience, and when applicable, residual acoustic hearing (pure tone hearing thresholds) as predictors of categorization. We also examined the relationship between phonetic categorization and clinical outcomes (CNC, AzBio) in a subset of our sample. Acoustic + Electric CI users were better able to categorize along the voicing contrast (steeper categorization slope) compared with Electric-only users, but there was no group-level difference for fricatives. There were differences within the subgroups for fricatives: bilateral users showed better categorization than unilateral users and bimodal users had better categorization than hybrid users. Age was a significant factor for voicing, while device experience was significant for fricatives. Critically, within the Acoustic + Electric group, hybrid CI users had shallower slopes than bimodal CI users. Our findings suggest residual acoustic hearing is beneficial for categorizing stop voicing, but not frication. Age impacts the categorization of voicing, while device experience matters for fricatives. For CI users with ipsilateral residual acoustic hearing, those with better hearing thresholds may be over-relying on their acoustic hearing rather than extracting as much information as possible from their CI, and thus have shallower fricative categorization.

“I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride”: The Ukrainian Cyber War

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has shown that cyberwarfare is integral to modern military strategies. Although the Russian army has developed cyber capabilities and capacities over the years, Ukraine has quickly created a new and innovative cyber defence that includes public and private actors. Using online communication platforms to reach out to populations, internally and externally, has been instrumental for military success. Inventive thinking has enabled the actors to utilise the online space and develop new computing tactics to defend the country. The intense online presence of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy stands in clear contrast to Russian President Putin. President Zelenskyy is mastering online communication and is speaking directly to the people. Because of his constant use of virtual communication platforms, new public and private resistance movements have formed based on civic activism and a defiant stance against Russian aggression. Various non-governmental groups of hackers, hacktivists and activists have created a structure of resistance, where each has taken on a role in a nodal system depending on skills and engagement levels. This article will focus on how the Ukrainian leadership has been able to carry out a successful speech act that has activated numerous online users internally and externally. This speech act has enabled a new form of online civic activism where online actors fight with the military forces — but mostly without being employed by the state. Within the first 40 days, this activism has proven beneficial to the existing military force to defend Ukraine. The article investigates Ukraine’s role in the David and Goliath fight and how Ukraine’s initiatives have helped develop its cyber defence. The research is based on secondary sources predominately based on grounded theory, where the data collected are critically compared with theoretical content. All data is theoretically sampled and analysed based on the established socio-political approaches deriving from discourse analysis. The timeframe for this research is the first 40 days of the conflict, starting on February 24 2022.

The ability to use contextual cues to achieve phonological constancy emerges by 14 months.

The ability to map similar sounding words to different meanings alone is far from enough for successful speech processing. To overcome variability in the speech signal, young learners must also recognize words across surface variations. Previous studies have shown that infants at 14 months are able to use variations in word-internal cues (i.e., acoustic cues within the target word) to form phonological categories and to learn words. The present study takes into consideration the fact that talker variability can easily lead to acoustic overlap between phonological categories, in which case reliance on word-external cues (i.e., acoustic cues in the context preceding and/or following the target word, also referred to as contextual cues) as a frame of reference is obligatory for successful talker adaptation. In a series of experiments, the present study examines when infants are able to use word-external cues to tune to different talkers for the benefit of word learning. Cantonese-learning 14-month-old, 18-month-old, and 24-month-old infants (N = 258) were tested on the associative learning of Cantonese Tone 1-Tone 3 contrast. Results showed that talker variability that yielded acoustic overlap between the two tonal categories compromised infants' ability to map the contrast onto word meanings. However, when given speaker-matched contextual cues, infants as young as 14 months of age demonstrated a certain degree of talker adaptation which may have subserved their use of phonetic details in novel word learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Enhanced left superior parietal activation during successful speech production in patients with left dorsal striatal damage and error-prone neurotypical participants.

Functional imaging studies of neurotypical adults report activation in the left putamen during speech production. The current study asked how stroke survivors with left putamen damage are able to produce correct spoken responses during a range of speech production tasks. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, activation during correct speech production responses was assessed in 5 stroke patients with circumscribed left dorsal striatal lesions, 66 stroke patient controls who did not have focal left dorsal striatal lesions, and 54 neurotypical adults. As a group, patients with left dorsal striatal damage (our patients of interest) showed higher activation than neurotypical controls in the left superior parietal cortex during successful speech production. This effect was not specific to patients with left dorsal striatal lesions as we observed enhanced activation in the same region in some patient controls and also in more error-prone neurotypical participants. Our results strongly suggest that enhanced left superior parietal activation supports speech production in diverse challenging circumstances, including those caused by stroke damage. They add to a growing body of literature indicating how upregulation within undamaged parts of the neural systems already recruited by neurotypical adults contributes to recovery after stroke.

Age-related differences in the neural network interactions underlying the predictability gain

Speech comprehension is often challenged by increased background noise, but can be facilitated via the semantic context of a sentence. This predictability gain relies on an interplay of language-specific semantic and domain-general brain regions. However, age-related differences in the interactions within and between semantic and domain-general networks remain poorly understood. Using functional neuroimaging, we investigated commonalities and differences in network interactions enabling processing of degraded speech in healthy young and old participants. Participants performed a sentence repetition task while listening to sentences with high and low predictable endings and varying intelligibility. Stimulus intelligibility was adjusted to individual hearing abilities. Older adults showed an undiminished behavioural predictability gain. Likewise, both groups recruited a similar set of semantic and cingulo-opercular brain regions. However, we observed age-related differences in effective connectivity for high predictable speech of increasing intelligibility. Young adults exhibited stronger connectivity between regions of the cingulo-opercular network and between left insula and the posterior middle temporal gyrus. Moreover, these interactions were excitatory in young adults but inhibitory in old adults. Finally, the degree of the inhibitory influence between cingulo-opercular regions was predictive of the behavioural sensitivity towards changes in intelligibility for high predictable sentences in older adults only. Our results demonstrate that the predictability gain is relatively preserved in older adults when stimulus intelligibility is individually adjusted. While young and old participants recruit similar brain regions, differences manifest in underlying network interactions. Together, these results suggest that ageing affects the network configuration rather than regional activity during successful speech comprehension under challenging listening conditions.

The Speech Act of Thanking in Shakespeare: The Case of Romeo and Juliet and All’s Well that Ends Well

Shakespeare’s written words are not innocent. Many individual words from his dramatic texts can be “obscure or impenetrable”. They are not only meant to embellish the scene and the context, yet their elaboration is aimed to set up meaning and effect. In this part, we will analyze and look at how this utterance operates in characters’ dialogues. We will try to highlight Shakespeare conventionalized thank you, which can be not only a sign of gratitude but a complex emotion that adds to the dramatic situation. In the construction of Shakespeare's dialogues in the plays, many linguistic features are omnipresent and do serve a variety of functions. From a linguistic perspective, thanking is a conversational routine such as advising, requesting and complementing, yet in the use of thanking expressions, there is genuine artistry that Shakespeare wittingly invented. Some words carry risks when negotiating actions. We might think primarily of insults, criticisms and curses. These negative speech acts are not the only damaging and threatening in speech, there is also thanksgiving, which can be regarded as an element bearing risks. The present study focuses on the speech act of thanking in the Shakespearean corpus. The word "thanks" and the formula "I thank you" occurred more than four hundred times in the 37 plays of Shakespeare. Was "thanking" a sincere speech act that acted in the fictional setting of the play? What are the reasons that lead to "thanks" in 16th century Shakespeare? Did Shakespeare succeed to use “thanks” as a successful performative speech act that acts when it is said, or are "thanks" a simple language ornament? To answer these questions, we are going to select specific scenes from Shakespeare's All's Well that Ends Well and Romeo and Juliet examining how the speech act of thanking operates in the plays.