bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Marking time: The precise measurement of auditory gap detection across the lifespan
Authors: Lister Jennifer J.
Published: November 2016

Deficits of temporal resolution are thought to contribute to speech understanding in noise difficulties and may be documented using auditory gap detection thresholds (GDTs). It is important to establish the appropriate methods to measure GDTs clinically. We have established GDTs for a variety of stimuli, ages (7-90 years), equipment, degrees of hearing loss, psychophysical paradigms, neurophysiological paradigms, marker relationships (within-channel, across-channel), time points, and presentation ears (left, right, diotic). A number important findings will be discussed: 1. Best stimulus for measurement of GDTs is narrow-band noise. 2. GDTs improve from ages 7 to 9, stabilize between ages 9 and 40, and deteriorate with age thereafter. 3. GDTs may be measured reliably using a variety of equipment. 4. Hearing loss has a minor impact on GDTs. 5. A 2-interval psychophysical paradigm is best for measuring GDTs. 6. GDTs may be documented using the P1-N1-P2 auditory evoked potential. 7. Across-channel GDTs provide different information than within-channel GDTs. 8. GDTs are reliable within and across test sessions. 9. GDTs do not differ across ear conditions. A stable and sensitive measure of temporal resolution that may be used in a clinical setting to assess temporal resolution will be recommended.
Auditory evoked fields elicited by repetitive gaps embedded within a continuous tone
Authors: Okamoto Hidehiko
Published: November 2016

The N1m response, which is a prominent auditory evoked component with a latency of around 100 ms, elicited by sound onset is known to decrease with the repetition of identical sound stimuli. Previous studies demonstrated that a silent gap embedded within a continuous sound could also elicit the N1m responses; however, it remains elusive whether the N1m decrement occurs with a repetition of silent gaps. In the present study, we investigated the decrement of N1m responses elicited by five repetitive pure tones presented in silence and by five repetitive silent gaps embedded within a continuous tone using magnetoencephalography. The results obtained demonstrated that the N1m responses elicited by the repetitive pure tones decreased from the 1st to the 2nd and remained constant from the 2nd to the 5th, whereas those elicited by the repetitive gaps in a continuous tone gradually decreased from the 1st to the 5th. Those results indicate that neural refractoriness appears to mainly contribute to the decrement of the N1m responses elicited by repetitive pure tones, while habituation may play an additional role in the decrement of the N1m responses elicited by repetitive gaps in a continuous tone.
A peripheral model of gap detection
Authors: Wong Willy , Lepage Hugo
Published: November 2016

Gap detection is an important measure of the temporal resolution of the auditory system. We present a model of gap detection involving the statistics of peripheral auditory neural activity: detecting a gap involves the detection of an interval that is different from the usual interspike interval found in the auditory spike train. The model is capable of resolving a number of important observations in empirical gap research including why across-channel (or across-frequency) gap detection is an order of magnitude larger than gap detection performed in channel (i.e., using the same frequency). We achieve this by recognizing that in-channel detection involves a different strategy than across-channel detection. The model also provides an explanation for why the intensity dependence of gap detection is limited to a 40 dB range, and why critical bands are crucial towards defining the notion of a channel in gap detection. Specific predictions can be made about the shapes of the psychometric functions.
A trial application of acoustic excitation for jet noise reduction
Authors: Kaneko Shigehiko , Ishii Tatsuya
Published: November 2016

Jet noise, one of the dominant noise components from an aircraft jet engine is known as the result of developed vortices produced during jet mixing process. In last couple of years, a method for jet noise reduction which acoustically controls the jet mixing layer using a sound excitation is proposed and investigated under the collaboration between The University of Tokyo and JAXA. In this paper, the main idea, experimental apparatus, experimental condition and experimental results will be explained. The experiment was conducted under an unheated and subsonic jet condition. The results show that low frequency sound excitation results in an increase in low frequency noise and a decrease in high frequency noise. The low frequency sound excitation is considered to excite the instability of jet flow and collapse the jet plume. On the other hand, the high frequency sound excitation resulted in a slight increase of high frequency noise and a slight decrease of low frequency noise (0.5 dB reduction in maximum) similar to the effect of Chevron nozzle. In addition, LES simulation was conducted to investigate the effect of mixing process caused by sound excitation.
Experimental investigation of compliant wall deformation in a turbulent channel flow
Authors: Zhang Cao , Wang Jin , Katz Joseph
Published: November 2016

Interaction of a compliant wall with a turbulent channel flow is investigated by simultaneously measuring the time-resolved, three-dimensional flow field using tomographic PIV and the two-dimensional surface deformation using Mach-Zehnder interferometry. The friction Reynolds number is Reτ = 2300, and the Young’s Modulus of the wall is 0.93 MPa, resulting in a ratio of shear speed to centerline velocity (U0) of 6.8. The wavenumber-frequency spectra of deformation contain a non-advected low-frequency component and advected modes, some traveling at U0 and others at 0.72U0. The wall dynamics is elucidated by correlating the deformation with flow variables, including the 3D pressure distribution. The pressure-deformation correlations peak at y/h~0.12 (h is half channel height), the elevation of Reynolds stress maximum in the log-layer. Streamwise lagging of the deformation behind the pressure is caused in part by phase-lag of the pressure with decreasing elevation, and in part by material damping predicted by the Chase (1991) model. Positive deformations (bumps) are preferentially associated with ejections involving spanwise vortices downstream and quasi-streamwise vortices with spanwise offset, consistent with presence of hairpin-like structures. The negative deformations (dents) are preferentially associated with a positive pressure fluctuation at the sweep-ejection transition. [Sponsored by ONR.]
Noise source identification and noise reduction in a multi-state, centrifugal air compressor system
Authors: Han Je-Heon , Niu Yaying , Lim Changwoo , Kim Yong-Joe
Published: November 2016

The objective of this research is to recommend practical noise control schemes for Hanwha Techwin’s multi-stage, centrifugal air compressors. For purpose of achieving this objective, far- and near-field noise measurements, sound intensity measurements, and structural vibration measurements were performed first to identify the acoustic characteristics of a compressor. Through these measurements, it was shown that the most dominant noise and vibration components were at the blade passing frequencies (BPFs) of the compression stage impellers. Thus, by suppressing these tonal BPF noise components, the overall noise level was reduced effectively. Here, Helmholtz resonators, dynamic dampers, noise insulation materials, and an enclosure were recommended to reduce these tonal noise components. The Helmholtz resonators could be used to reduce the overall SPL up to 3.5 dBA. By applying the mass dampers, 2.7 dBA reduction at 7 kHz and 1.5 dBA reduction at 10 kHz could be achieved. The installation of the sound insulation material could achieve 8 dBA overall SPL reduction. By installing the enclosure around the compressor, 4.3 dB reduction in the overall SPL could be achieved. To achieve a higher noise reduction using the enclosure, the size of leakage holes between the compressor pipe and the enclosure is recommended to be reduced.
The influence of long-term exposure on the perception of foreign-accented speech
Authors: Abrahamyan Hayk
Published: November 2016

We recognize spoken words in our native language with relative ease. Yet, difficulties arise when we encounter a talker with an accent. Short-term lab exposure leads to observable improvements in comprehension of foreign-accented speech. Life-long exposure markedly improves perception of within language variability (i.e. dialects) and refines listeners’ representations. Less is known about the benefits of long-term exposure to foreign-accented speech. We used cross-modal identity priming to investigate if long-term exposure to Chinese-accented English by native speakers of American English would modulate their processing of Chinese-accented speech. We predicted that listeners with long-term exposure to the foreign accent, assumed based on long-term residence in the New York City area, should be faster and more accurate at recognizing Chinese-accented words than listeners without long-term exposure, assumed based on long-term residence in less linguistically diverse areas. Our preliminary results present a surprising finding indicating that the assumed long-term exposure had the opposite effect, where the listeners with long-term exposure to a foreign accent are unexpectedly slower and less accurate than the listeners without long-term exposure. Our results suggest that long-term exposure does affect listeners’ abilities to recognize and represent foreign-accented spoken words.
Segmental versus prosodic predictors of perceived accentedness
Authors: McCullough Elizabeth A. , Wright Richard
Published: November 2016

Previous work has identified both segmental and prosodic influences on the perceived foreign accentedness of non-native speakers, but their relative contributions remain poorly understood, in part because they are often investigated independently. In this study, both segmental and prosodic properties of word-length stimuli were assessed. Native English-speaking listeners rated the accentedness of trochaic English words produced by talkers from four language backgrounds: Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish. Each token’s deviation from native English productions was quantified for two segmental properties (VOT and vowel quality) and three prosodic properties (ratios of duration, intensity, and f0 across the two syllables). For each language background, a linear mixed-effects regression model was created to predict accentedness ratings from the phonetic deviations, and the significance of each fixed effect was examined. In each model, the significant predictors included both segmental and prosodic properties. For L1 Hindi and L1 Spanish talkers, the most influential predictor was segmental; however, for L1 Korean and L1 Mandarin talkers, the most influential predictor was prosodic. Thus, even for short stimuli, both segmental and prosodic information must be considered in accounting for accentedness judgments. Listeners are sensitive to different ways that foreign accent may be manifested across different non-native backgrounds.
Speaker similarity, acoustic properties, and perceptual learning with non-native speech
Authors: Park Hanyong , Silbert Noah H.
Published: November 2016

Variability in speech signals plays an important role in perceptual learning of non-native speech. Between-talker differences are a major source of variability. The present work aims to quantify within- and between-talker variability, following the approach of Silbert & Park (2014, JASA, 136, 2714) to quantify variation within and across Korean stop categories. We analyze 20 (10 male and 10 female) native speakers’ repeated productions of the Korean CVC nonword /p’ap/, using statistical techniques for dimensionality reduction to map multidimensional acoustic space to lower-dimensional talker-similarity space. We then compare the modeled similarity space to speaker discrimination data. Data were collected in an oddball task, where the listeners choose the oddball after listening to a set of triplets consisting of /p’ap/s spoken by two speakers (two distinct tokens from one speaker, one token from the other). The modeled similarity space allows us to automatically select tokens based on talker similarity and provides a rigorous quantitative method for assessing relationship between multidimensional acoustic properties and perceived speaker similarity. This approach promises to provide a rigorous, automated method for quantitatively defining and manipulating variability in perceptual learning experiments.
The role of vowel quality in the perception of English lexical stress for native speakers of Japanese
Authors: Eguchi Sayoko
Published: November 2016

Vowel quality has been hypothesized to be a cue in determining the location of stress in English words. This study examined the role vowel quality plays in perception by native speakers of Japanese and English using synthesized English words: conflict, contract, and content. Suprasegmental (SP) parameters—F0, duration, and intensity—and vowel quality (VQ) parameters—the frequencies of the first two formants, were independently manipulated to make varying versions of the stimuli. Results of the perception experiment showed that native speakers of Japanese identified the stress location more accurately in the SP-driven stimuli, in which the stress pattern was generated using SP parameters, than in the VQ-driven stimuli, in which the stress pattern was generated using VQ parameters. In contrast, native speakers of English did not differentiate between SP-driven stimuli and VQ-driven stimuli. Furthermore, for the stimuli that SP parameters and VQ parameters indicated incongruent syllable, Japanese speakers identified the stress as located on the SP-driven syllable more often than English speakers did. These results demonstrated that native speakers of Japanese do not use VQ as a cue to perceive stress location whereas native speakers of English do use VQ as a cue. [Work supported by JSPS KAKENHI 23242032.]
Categorical perception of Mandarin tones by Chinese-native, English-native and Chinese-as-a-second-language English listeners
Authors: Ling Wenyi , Grüter Theres , Schafer Amy
Published: November 2016

Previous research found that native-Chinese listeners perceive tones more categorically than listeners with no knowledge of a tonal language (naïve listeners; Hallé et al., 2004). This study examined tone perception by 26 native-English adult learners of Mandarin (L2ers) in comparison to 30 naïve and 30 native-Chinese listeners. Identification and AXB discrimination tasks tested monosyllables (/pi/, /pa/) with 9-step F0 continua between all possible Mandarin tone pairs. Native listeners showed more categorical identification (steeper slopes) than naïve listeners. The L2 group showed significantly shallower identification slopes than native listeners (p<0.01) and steeper slopes than naïve listeners (p<0.01). L2 proficiency (listening test plus self-report) positively correlated with identification performance (r = 0.36, z=-2.56, p<0.01), suggesting higher proficiency may lead to more native-like tone identification. However, although L2ers’ discrimination accuracy (0.90) was significantly higher than native listeners’ (0.82; z = -4.76, p<. 001), it did not differ significantly from naïve listeners’ (0.90; z = -0.61, p = 0.54), suggesting that the non-native groups discriminated tone pair continua in a similar way. Tone pairs involving level tones (e.g., T1-T3) showed more categorical patterns than those involving two contour tones (e.g., T2-T3) in each group, consistent with the Anchor Hypothesis (Xu et al., 2006).
Reaction time of Japanese listeners to retroflex and bunched /r/pronunciation by native English speakers
Authors: Gunji Mai , Wilson Ian , Perkins Jeremy
Published: November 2016

In this study, we focus on Japanese learners’ reaction time (RT) to retroflex and bunched pronunciation of /r/ in English words spoken by native English speakers. In junior high school, Japanese students generally learn only retroflex pronunciation of /r/. If there is a strong link between production and perception, we would expect those students to be able to perceive retroflex /r/ faster than bunched /r/. We carried out a forced-choice RT experiment for 30 native Japanese listeners and 4 native English controls. This experiment used 2 speakers’ voices (both Canadian English) and 9 minimal pairs of /r/ and /l/ words. Stimuli were spoken words and picture-pairs (two simultaneously presented in each trial). Listeners had to identify the spoken word by choosing the left or right picture. As a result, we could measure whether it is easier to perceive sounds pronounced the same way you speak or not. From the results, we found that the RTs for retroflex and bunched pronunciation of English words spoken by native speakers were not significantly different, even for native listeners. In addition, overall accuracy rates were very low among the Japanese speaking participants (66.3%, compared to 99.7% for the English speaking participants).
Cross-linguistic perception of continuous speech: Neural entrainment to the speech amplitude envelope
Authors: Song Jieun , Iverson Paul
Published: November 2016

Brain oscillations in the auditory cortex become entrained to slow amplitude fluctuations in the speech signal (i.e., amplitude envelope) during speech comprehension. Previous research has suggested that this cortical activity plays an important role in speech perception by aligning neuronal excitability to parts of the incoming speech signal that contain linguistic information such as syllables. However, it remains unclear how cortical entrainment to the speech envelope relates to higher-level linguistic processes during speech comprehension. The aim of the present study was to see if cortical entrainment to the amplitude envelope varies depending on whether or not the listener understands the linguistic content of the speech signal. To this end, the phase-locking between neural oscillations and amplitude envelopes of speech were measured in EEG recordings from listeners with different linguistic backgrounds (i.e., native English and Korean speakers) while they heard continuous speech in three languages (i.e., English, Korean, and Spanish). The results demonstrate that auditory-cortical tracking of the envelope is not affected by whether or not listeners understand the speech, supporting the view that envelope-tracking activity is mainly independent of higher linguistic processes.
Do listeners’ expectations about the source of a speaker’s accent affect intelligibility?
Authors: Vaughn Charlotte
Published: November 2016

When encountering accented speakers, listeners initially show a processing cost but are able to adapt to the accent within minutes (Bradlow & Bent, 2008; Floccia et al., 2009). However, the extent to which processing a foreign accent (L2-accented) is similar to processing a within-language accent (L1-accented) is still an open question (cf. Cristia et al., 2012). This project considers whether intelligibility is affected by listeners’ expectations about the source of the accent, namely, whether the speaker is believed to be an L1 or an L2 speaker. In this study, native English listeners transcribed English sentences in noise spoken by a bilingual Spanish/English speaker. Expectations about the source of the speaker’s accent were manipulated using a matched guise design: Some listeners received no information about the L1 status of the speaker, others were told the speaker was an L1-Spanish speaker, and others were told the speaker was a Hispanic American whose L1 was English (Latino English, e.g., Fought, 2003). Transcription accuracy is compared across conditions to explore whether listeners are sensitive to the kinds of acoustic properties differentiating L1-accented vs. L2-accented speech, and whether listeners’ expectations about the source of a speaker’s accent affects the intelligibility of that speaker.
Vowel and tone identification of Mandarin Chinese: Comparison between native Chinese and Korean listeners
Authors: Zhang Hui , Xu Lilong , Xu Can , Yang Xiaohu , Ding Hongwei
Published: November 2016

Speech in tone languages requires listeners to identify not only phonemes but also tones. As non-tone language users, Korean-native speakers may have difficulty in identifying tones and vowels and processing both tonal and phonemic information at the same time, which are not presented in their mother tongue. The goal of the present study was to investigate the identification of Mandarin Chinese vowels and tones for both native Mandarin Chinese and native Korean speakers with medium and high Chinese proficiency. Results showed that for the identification of Mandarin vowel-plus-tone, vowel, and tone, there was no difference between Chinese- and Korean-native listeners with high Chinese proficiency, whereas Chinese listeners significantly outperformed Korean listeners with medium Chinese proficiency, particularly for tones 1, 3, and 4 and vowel /y/. For Korean listeners, there was no significant correlation between the onset age of Chinese learning and identification scores, while the identification performance significantly correlated with the length of Chinese learning. Moreover, for both Chinese and Korean listeners, identification scores of vowel-plus-tone, tone and vowel are comparable, suggesting that both groups may process dual cues (vowel and tone) as efficiently as individual cues (vowel or tone).
Acoustic analysis of oral and nasal Hindi vowels spoken by native and non-native speakers
Authors: Agrawal Shyam S. , Bansal Shweta , Sharan Shambhu , Mahajan Minakshi
Published: November 2016

This paper presents acoustic analysis of Hindi oral and nasal vowels as spoken by the native Hindi speakers and non-native speakers belonging to Punjabi and Nepali linguistic backgrounds. The objective of the study is to determine the measurable acoustic parameters of Hindi vowel sounds which can be used to distinguish oral and nasal vowels by Hindi speakers on one hand and the effect on these parameters due to non-native speakers on the other hand. The database consists of 150 phonetically rich sentences uttered by 10 speakers of each language in a sound treated room. These were analysed using PRATT and Wave Surfer software tools. Five long Hindi vowels (oral as well as nasalized) i.e. /i/, /ɛ/, /a/, /ɔ/ and /u/ were selected for this study and segmented from the sentence utterances. The parameters such as frequencies, amplitude of formants and the pitch and intensity values at the steadiest portion of the vowels were computed. The results show several parameters which distinguishes oral vowel from Nasal vowels as well as the effect of languages of Non-native speakers on Hindi Vowels. Significant observations and the results of the study have been discussed in detail in this paper.
Production and reproduction of Japanese pitch-accent by German, Italian, Vietnam, and Swahili speakers
Authors: Hayashi Ryoko , Isomura Kazuhiro , Matsuda Makiko , Yoshida Natsuya , Ueyama Motoko
Published: November 2016

Japanese pitch accent is lexically distinctive. JFL learners should know the position of the accent to pronounce the words correctly, which is said to be very difficult. In our experiment, we investigate the effectiveness of showing the accent mark to help learners’ pronunciations. We compared the ability of perception, production and reproduction of pitch accent by JFLs of four different languages. 42 Japanese words were presented on a PC screen and 30 subjects participated in three tasks of the experiments. Task 1 was to pronounce the words without any suggestion, task 2 was to imitate the model pronunciation with seeing the accent marks. Task 3 was to pronounce by just seeing the accent marks. The results of task 1 show the percentage of correct accent position was only around 40%, but it rose up to around 90 % in task 2 and fell again in task 3 but still significantly higher than in task 1. The results of task 1 showed different patterns of phonetic interference, task 2 showed that the subjects could easily perceive the position of accent and imitate the pitch pattern. Task 3 implied the effectiveness of showing the accent mark.
Tonal realization of English intonation and register by Japanese learners of English as a foreign language compared to English speakers
Authors: Isei-Jaakkola Toshiko , Ochi Keiko
Published: November 2016

Theoretically, there are four levels of tone in English intonation, whereas in standard Japanese, phonologically, there are two levels (high and low) and phonetically, there are three levels of in lexical tone. The Japanese said to be a mora-timed and pitch-accented language and English to be a stress-timed. The Japanese language sounds monotonous. Further, English speakers (EL1) seem to have a wider register than Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (JEFL). There is only one kind of interrogative sentence in Japanese, while there are two kinds in English. Moreover, there is a difference in the position of the nucleus between Japanese and English. This study aims to examine whether JEFL can realize the four levels of tone in English, and the degree of difference in register between JEFL and EL1 when producing a sample English intonation pattern. We conducted experiments to investigate JEFL’s realization of English intonation in one word-sentences, affirmative sentences, and interrogative sentences with rising, falling, and rising-falling tones. We found that JEFL could produce intonational contours resembling the model English sentences but with insufficient nuclei (weak intensity), and that EL1 have a wider register than JEFL in both minimum F0 and maximum F0 as presumed.
Types of errors in English prosody made by native speakers of Korean
Authors: Lee Heeju , Jun Sun-Ah
Published: November 2016

This study investigates the types of errors that are made by speakers of L1 Korean in the production of L2 English prosody. English and Korean differ in prosodic and rhythmic structure and in the ways word prominence and semantic/pragmatic meaning are marked. In English, a prominent word is marked by a pitch accent on its stressed syllable, and semantic/pragmatic information is delivered by pitch accent types (e.g., H*, L + H*) and boundary tones. In Korean, a language without lexical stress, a word’s prominence is marked by its location at the beginning of a phrase, and semantic/pragmatic information is delivered by prosodic phrasing and boundary tones. Data were selected from recordings of the UCLA TOP (Test of Oral Proficiency) exam taken by Korean students. The present study analyzes the part where students (twelve) present information from the same syllabus in front of raters and questioners acting as students. Control data from three native English speakers was collected in the same format. Prominence, phrasing, and intonation patterns were marked following English ToBI conventions. Preliminary results indicate that the types of errors can be distinguished in terms of prosodic phrasing, location and types of pitch accent, and realization of pitch accents and stressed/unstressed syllables.
Oral gestural reduction of English nasal coda produced by Mandarin English-as-a-foreign-language learners
Authors: Liu Yadong
Published: November 2016

Mandarin post-vocalic nasal production studies focus on vowel-to-nasal formant transitions (e.g. Jian and Le [(2014), Information Technology Journal, 13(11), 1793-1799] show the vowel-to-nasal boundary was absent in the context of VN.V). However, it remains unclear whether this feature of Mandarin speakers’ L1 extends to their L2 productions. The present study investigates five Mandarin EFL learners’ articulation of English post-vocalic nasal codas /n, ŋ/ and homorganic oral codas /d, g/ in monosyllabic words in pre-vocalic contexts. Articulatory data from ultrasound-imaging were analyzed for lingual gesture achievement (in terms of aperture), where a reduced oral constriction corresponds to absence of a stop. The results show reduction of the oral constriction of both /n/ and /ŋ/ relative to their oral counterparts. Further, the reduction varied by place, with greater reduction in /ŋ/ compared to /n/. Additionally, the height of the preceding vowel affects oral constriction reduction of both nasals, with low vowels eliciting more reduction than high vowels. This research studies nasal provides evidence of oral constriction reduction during Mandarin EFL learners’ English nasal coda production from an articulatory perceptive, consistent with the L1 nasal closure reduction shown in Jian and Le (2014).
Articulatory variations of Mandarin retroflex consonants produced by second language speakers: An electromagnetic articulograph study
Authors: Saito Haruka
Published: November 2016

This study investigated articulatory variations in tongue positions and shapes during the production of Mandarin post-alveolar retroflex consonants produced by speakers with varying Mandarin proficiency (native Mandarin speakers, Japanese L2 speakers of Mandarin, and Japanese monolinguals with no knowledge of Mandarin). We aimed to examine (1) whether there are articulatory variations for Mandarin retroflex consonants and (2) if preferred variations differ across groups. Speakers either read aloud or imitated the consonants after hearing them and their tongue positions and shapes were measured by electromagnetic articulography (WAVE, NDI). Results showed that there are multiple articulatory variations for Mandarin retroflex consonants. Native Mandarin speakers produced a concave or convex tongue shape; all Japanese L2 speakers of Mandarin produced a convex tongue shape. In contrast, the majority of Japanese monolinguals imitated the sounds with an entirely different tongue position: bunching their tongues in the middle, which somewhat resembled the “bunched” rhotic in American English. Despite these articulatory variations, productions by most L2 speakers and several monolinguals were successfully identified as retroflex consonants by native Mandarin listeners. These results suggest that L2 speakers may prefer certain articulatory variations and the preference may change depending on proficiency.
A limited role of hand gestures and head nods in native English speakers’ production of Mandarin tones
Authors: Hirata Yukari , Zheng Annie , Kelly Spencer D.
Published: November 2016

Theories of embodied cognition have emphasized the importance of the whole body in human communication (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999), and numerous empirical studies have shown that bodily actions affect multiple aspects of speech production and perception. This study examined the roles that hand and head gestures play in production of Mandarin tones by native English speakers. Twenty-four native English speakers were asked to imitate the four Mandarin tones from a model across three conditions: (1) audio-only, (2) audio and hand gestures, and (3) audio and head nods. For (2) and (3), participants watched videos in which a native Mandarin speaker visually depicted the tones with her hand and head, respectively. The participants’ production was then presented to seven native Mandarin listeners in an identification test to determine percent correctly produced. A 3 (conditions) x 4 (tones) ANOVA revealed a significant main effect of tone (1 > 3, 4 > 2) but no main effect or interaction of condition, indicating that hand and head gestures did not help learners accurately produce Mandarin tones. The results corroborate earlier acoustic analysis of the production data, confirming a limited role of hand and head gestures in phonetic and phonological aspects of L2 learning.
Collocational patterns of disfluencies in native and non-native speech: Evidence from the Wildcat Corpus
Authors: Kato Misaki , Kendall Tyler , Baese-Berk Melissa
Published: November 2016

While disfluencies are generally considered a natural part of spontaneous speech, patterns of disfluencies in non-native (NN) speech could contribute to making that speech sound less proficient or less “fluent”. NN speech has been described as having more frequent and longer pauses, pauses at within-clause boundaries, shorter mean length of runs, and slower speech rate, compared to native (N) speech (e.g., Riggenbach, 1991; Trofimovich & Baker, 2006). However, in order to understand what makes NN disfluency patterns unique, it is important to examine such phenomena locally by examining the contexts of different types of disfluency. In the present study, we describe what features collocate with disfluencies in spontaneous English dialog. We examine speech from the Wildcat Corpus (Van Engen et al., 2010) which includes English dialogue produced by various pairings of N and NN speakers (N-N, N-NN, or NN-NN). Specifically, we extract turn-internal disfluencies of several types (e.g., silent pause, filled pause, repetition), and examine lexical (e.g., part-of-speech) and phonetic (e.g., vowel length) features of speech surrounding these disfluencies. Further, we examine whether these disfluency patterns change depending on speaker pairings. Differences between N and NN disfluency patterns are discussed in terms of their potential sources (e.g., speaker- vs. listener-oriented).
Transfer of L1 tone knowledge to L2 vowel quantity contrasts as a secondary cue: The case of Cantonese learners of Japanese
Authors: Liu Chun Yin , Hirata Yukari
Published: November 2016

Distinguishing vowel quantities in Japanese is problematic for Cantonese-speaking learners. Vowel length is lexically contrastive in Japanese but not in Cantonese. Apart from duration, fundamental frequency (F0) patterns are secondary cues to vowel length distinction. As tone is lexically contrastive in Cantonese (particularly rising vs. high level), learners would likely be able to transfer this phonological knowledge to help themselves acquire vowel length contrast in Japanese. A perception experiment was conducted in which learners listened to Japanese disyllabic words. The first syllable of which was lengthened according to the within-word vowel duration ratio in eight steps. A level or dynamic (rising or falling) F0 pattern was then imposed on the first vowel. Similar to other L2 learners, Cantonese-speaking learners did not perceive the long vs. short contrast categorically, but gradiently. While both dynamic F0 patterns signal a long vowel, they only exploited the rising pattern to recognise a long vowel. Our study suggests that learners have assimilated the falling contour to high level, both of which belong to the same tonal category in Cantonese. The theoretical implications of these results are discussed.
Native listeners’ evaluation of natural and synthesized prosody in Mandarin of American learners
Authors: Chen Ying , Zhao Xueqin , Liu Li
Published: November 2016

Compared to duration and intensity, F0 was found the most difficult acoustic parameter to acquire in L2 prosody, especially post-focus compression of F0 (Chen, 2016). This study examined three groups’ Mandarin production of prosodic focus: native Beijing speakers, early American learners and late American learners. PENTAtrainer2 (Xu & Prom-on, 2014), a data-driven system for prosody analysis and synthesis, was used to model and synthesize F0 contours based on speaker groups and layered annotations of communicative functions: lexical, sentential and focal. Native Mandarin speakers were recruited to identify focus status (neutral, initial, medial, or final focus) and rate the naturalness (1-5 scale) of original and synthesized speech. Results reveal that natural speech was recognized and rated better than synthesized speech, early learners’ speech better than late learners’ speech, focused sentences better than no-focus sentences, and initial focus and medial focus better than final focus. Tones of focused words interacted with focus status of the sentence and speaker group. Future work will involve pairwise shape comparisons, root-mean-square error, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient comparing between natural and synthesized F0 contours. [This work was supported by the National Science Foundation of China 61573187 and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities in China NJUSTWGY14001.]
Effects of language bias and proficiency on cross-language activation: Evidence from eye-tracking
Authors: Martinez-Garcia Maria Teresa , Tremblay Annie
Published: November 2016

Language bias and proficiency have been proposed to modulate cross-language activation, but it is unclear how they operate and whether they interact. This study sheds further light on this by investigating whether stress differences between Spanish-English cognates (material, final-syllable stress in Spanish) affect how native-English second-language-Spanish bilinguals recognize Spanish words (materia “subject/matter,” second-syllable stress in Spanish). In a Spanish-English eye-tracking experiment, participants heard trisyllabic Spanish targets with second-syllable stress (materia) and saw four orthographic words, including the target and a Spanish-English cognate competitor. Cross-language activation was examined by manipulating the stress of the cognate in English; English cognates with the same stress as the Spanish target (target: materia, competitor: material) were predicted to cause more cross-language interference than English cognates with a different stress (target: litera “bunk bed,” competitor: literal). Participants were assigned to a Spanish-bias condition, with 20% of English (filler) items, or an English-bias condition, with 65% of English (filler) items. Spanish proficiency was assessed with a cloze test and LexTALE. Results indicate that English cognates with the same stress as the Spanish target interfered with the recognition of the Spanish target only in the English-bias condition, and bilinguals better controlled this cross-language interference with increasing Spanish proficiency.
Neural changes accompanying overnight nonnative phonetic learning
Authors: Earle F. S. , Myers Emily B.
Published: November 2016

Sleep is important in the consolidation of learning, including the perceptual learning of non-native speech sounds. Previous work investigating the role of post-training sleep on nonnative phonetic learning has demonstrated that sleep significantly improves identification for a trained talker in the absence of further training. In addition, sleep appears to facilitate generalization of learning to non-native tokens produced by an untrained talker. We investigated the neural correlates of these behavioral observations using fMRI. Participants were trained in the Hindi dental-retroflex contrast in the evening on Day 1. Immediately following training, participants performed the category identification task in the scanner, and then again 12 hours later. Sleep duration was monitored via wrist Actigraphs. On Day 1, significant differences in activation for the Trained vs. Untrained Talker were identified in the supramaginal gyrus and adjacent parietal areas, whereas on Day 2, activation for both talkers was observed to move into the temporal lobes bilaterally. After sleep, and in the absence of further training, decreases in activation were observed in right superior temporal gyrus, right precentral gyrus, and left prefrontal cortex. Based on these findings, we argue that newly acquired nonnative sounds are processed in classic (i.e., more native-like) speech regions following sleep.
Effects of perceptual training on the perception of Korean boundary tones by Chinese learners
Authors: Lee Ho-Young , Hwang Hyosung , Yoon Eunkyung
Published: November 2016

Previous studies have proven that High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) is an effective method for training non-native listeners to discriminate L2 phoneme contrasts or prosodic contrasts, such as Chinese tone and Japanese segment length. However, it still remains uninvestigated whether this training method can be successfully applied to the perceptual training of nondistinctive L2 intonation. This study aims to prove that the HVPT method is also effective in training Chinese learners of Korean to distinguish Korean boundary tones. Korean boundary tones have three important grammatical and pragmatic functions: distinction of declarative and interrogative sentences, distinction of wh- and yes-no questions, and distinction of ambiguous meanings of some terminal endings. Our experiment is designed to train Chinese learners to discriminate these three functions using the HVPT method. 40 Chinese learners participated in 10 online sessions. They were exposed to 276 sentences delivered by different speakers each session. The subjects showed significant improvements in discriminating all three intonational functions in the posttest. Lower proficiency learners showed greater improvements. A notable change occurred in the development of categorical perception. The category boundaries between declarative and interrogative sentences shifted closer to the native speakers’ after the training.
Noninvasive brain stimulation to facilitate foreign language speech-sound learning in low-aptitude learners
Authors: Perrachione Tyler K. , Dougherty Sara C. , Choi Ja Young , Hu Elly R.
Published: November 2016

Native English speakers with poor pitch-contour identification abilities also have a low aptitude for learning lexical tones, as in Mandarin Chinese. In a four-day training paradigm, native English-speaking young adults with low pitch-contour perception abilities learned a vocabulary incorporating minimal contrasts based on lexical tones (with level, rising, and falling contours), in which they matched spoken words to photographs of objects. Participants were assigned to two groups: The “stimulation” group received anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) over left inferior frontal lobe at 2mA during training; the “sham” group underwent an identical set-up procedure each session, but did not receive brain stimulation during training. Participants' learning trajectories, learning attainment, and ability to generalize word recognition to novel talkers were compared between groups and to previously published training data from both low- and high-aptitude learners. Active brain stimulation improved learning for some, but not all, low-aptitude learners. Some low-aptitude learners who received brain stimulation performed as well as high-aptitude learners in previous studies. Low-aptitude learners who received sham stimulation learned no better than in previous studies. These results suggest noninvasive brain stimulation may help recover speech-sound learning abilities in listeners with low pre-training perceptual aptitude.
Development of a visual app for improving learner's pronunciation with ultrasound and the speech accent archive
Authors: Suzuki Kyori , Wilson Ian
Published: November 2016

Although many language learners desire to improve their pronunciation of a foreign language, there are not many apps to help them do so. Most commercial apps for pronunciation evaluation and training focus on only the acoustic signal. However, few systems give visual movements of native speakers’ lips, tongue, and jaw. In this paper, we describe the ongoing development of and app that is programmed in Swift for iPhone. The app incorporates and links together different kinds of phonetic data for the pronunciation learner—for example, recorded frontal and side videos of a native speaker’s face during pronunciation with an ultrasound movie of the tongue moving in the mouth overlaid. The training text is a paragraph from the Speech Accent Archive. The initial version of this app has two systems. First, listening to English sentences by a native speaker and checking tongue movement with ultrasound. Second, this app has buttons that play from user-chosen words and it also plays in slow motion. The method of these systems may help people to learn a second language more easily and accurately by letting them shadow the audiovisual speech of a native speaker. This app will be demonstrated in front of the poster.
Influence of age-related factors on English /r/-/l/ audiovisual training for Japanese speakers
Authors: Shinohara Yasuaki
Published: November 2016

Audiovisual training has proven successful for improving Japanese adults’ identification accuracy of the English /r/-/l/ contrast. However, its effects on Japanese children have not been investigated yet. In the present study, 10 sessions of audiovisual English /r/-/l/ identification training were given to Japanese adults and children, and the age effects on learning the contrast in three testing conditions (audio-only, visual-only and audiovisual) were examined. It was hypothesized that children would improve their visual perception more than adults and they would show more audiovisual advantage than adults (i.e., higher improvement in the audiovisual condition than in the audio-only and visual-only conditions). The results demonstrated that both adults and children improved their identification accuracy in all three conditions, and the increase of the identification accuracy in the audiovisual condition was higher than that in the audio-only condition. However, there was no significant difference in improvement between adults and children. Due to a possible ceiling effect, it was unclear whether children had an advantage over adults in integrating visual information to auditory perception.
Acoustic analysis on before- and after-training English speeches by a male Japanese high-school student
Authors: Ito Kikuyo
Published: November 2016

Two sets of a 7-minute English speech by a 15-year-old Japanese male speaker, one made before two-month intensive training (approx. 2 hours per day, 3 to 4 days per week) and the other made after the training, were recorded and acoustically analyzed. The speech manuscript was constructed for a national English speech competition for students of the National Institutes of Technology in Japan, with ages ranging from 15 to 22 years. The intelligibility ratings of the two speeches evaluated by native speakers of American English (AE) indicated that the post-training speech was much more intelligible than the pre-training speech. Preliminary acoustic analysis focusing on the most frequently occurring words “traffic accidents” indicated that the temporal alignments of the consonant-vowel sequences of the words, along with the intensity and the duration of the stressed and unstressed vowels, were evidently different between the two speeches, with the tokens in the post-training speech closer to those in the speech by a native AE speaker than those in the pre-training speech. To identify the acoustic properties that make non-native speech “better sounding,” three-way comparisons between the pre-training speech, the post-training speech, and the native speech are discussed in detail.
Auditory and acoustic-phonetic mechanisms of adaptation in the perception of sibilant fricatives
Authors: Chodroff Eleanor , Wilson Colin
Published: November 2016

Previous research has demonstrated that speech perception is highly dependent on preceding acoustic context (e.g., Ladefoged & Broadbent, 1957), and suggested that this reflects adaptation to the long-term average spectrum (LTAS; e.g., Holt, 2006). The present study examined whether adaptation is further enhanced by acoustic-phonetic covariation among speech sounds within the natural class of sibilants. In each trial of Experiment 1, listeners were exposed to a [z]-initial CVC syllable and then categorized one member of an [s]-[ʃ] continuum. The distribution of the spectral center of gravity (COG) of [z] in the adaptation stimuli was manipulated (high vs. low). In Experiment 2, the [z]-initial syllables were replaced by LTAS-matched white noise. Listeners adjusted the [s]-[ʃ] boundary in accordance with the exposure conditions, showing contrastive adaptation in both experiments; however, the adaptation effect was significantly stronger with the speech precursor. Furthermore, in Experiment 1, fricative COG provided a better quantitative account of responses than COG of the full syllable (ΔBIC: 24). These findings indicate that while general auditory processes can give rise to adaptation, listeners also exploit acoustic-phonetic relations among sounds: here, high correlations among fricative COG means observed in a large multi-talker corpus ([s]-[z], r = 0.62, [s]-[ʃ], r = 0.53).