bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conceptual Foundations of Self-Actualization
Authors: Frick Willard B.
Published: July 2017

Humanistic biologists, psychologists, and organismic theorists have made a persuasive case for the presence of an innate growth force within the personality for achieving self-actualization (S-A). Among the S-A theorists, however, little attention has been given to the way in which this organic force is mobilized to achieve direction and expression. A notable exception to this omission is found in the motivation theory of Abraham Maslow. He theorized that progressive gratification through his need hierarchy would lead individuals automatically to explore their higher needs for S-A. Later Maslow came to realize that this was not true; many did not move toward S-A even after all other needs in the hierarchy had been gratified. This discovery necessitates a rethinking of his theory. A crucial element in this theory is that S-A, the highest need in the hierarchy, is the weakest biologically. This characteristic, in addition to the many examples of experience, is essential in achieving our highest possibilities. Such concepts are liberating for they help free us from ego-centered developments and thereby add a significant dimension to our conceptual model for personal growth.
The Effect of Listeners' Anticipations on the Intelligibility of Heard Speech
Authors: Bruce D. J.
Published: July 2017

The experiment described demonstrates the effect of prior set on the intelligibility of heard speech. Twenty subjects hear the same twelve word sentences in the presence of noise on five occasions. The sentences fall into two groups — one unprefaced by any indication of topic, the other prefaced on each occasion by a different word, which subjects are told is the topic to which the group refers. Only one of the sentences in the latter group is fully appropriate to each word given. Wherever this conjunction occurs in the order of testing, the sentence involved reaches its highest level of intelligibility. When inappropriately prefaced, sentences are misinterpreted to a considerable extent or resist interpretation.

“Speech is no more than a series of rough hints which the hearer must interpret…”

—L. R. Palmer.
Neuro-Muscular Specification of Linguistic Units
Authors: Fromkin Victoria A.
Published: July 2017

The technique of electromyography was utilized to investigate the relationship which exists between linguistic units and muscular activity. Muscle action potentials of the orbicularis oris muscle were recorded from three subjects. A LINC computer was used to sum and average the EMG signals of 20 tokens of 54 CVC monosyllables. The results showed that no simple correspondence exists between phonemes and motor commands. Different gestures produce /b/ and /p/ in initial and final position of an utterance. It was also shown that electromyography can be used to test linguistic hypotheses regarding particular languages. Two alternative inferences are suggested from the fact that the neural muscular correlate of a given phoneme is different in different phonetic contexts : (1) the minimal linguistic unit corresponding to the motor commands which produce speech is larger than the phoneme, perhaps more of the order of a syllable ; (2) motor commands related to phoneme production are altered, i.e. context restricted, either by feedback information concerning the existing state of muscular motion, or by stored information in the short-term memory. Further investigation is necessary before any conclusions can be reached.
Language of Young Hearing-Impaired Children
Authors: Elliott Lois L. , Hirsh Ira J. , Simmons Audrey A.
Published: July 2017

Verbal descriptions of picture stimuli by young children with normal or impaired hearing were evaluated both by ratings and by certain objective scores. One global dimension of language goodness emerged from judges' ratings of structure, grammar, content and creativity. Ratings of structure were successfully predicted by a linear combination of weighted measures of total number of different words, total number of very-high-frequency words, total number of different function words, and total duration of utterance. Scores for tests repeated over periods as long as three years to the same hearing-impaired children reflected growth in language ability which, in some instances, exceeded rate of development of younger normal children. Children who have considerable hearing impairment but who also receive suitable sound amplification may progress rapidly in a " natural " language learning programme. Although these data should not be considered as normative, a first step in developing a clinical measuring tool may be provided by such picture descriptions and associated objective scores.
Racial Differences in Associative Style
Authors: Wilcox Roger
Published: July 2017

Consideration of qualitative differences between Negro (N = 60) and white (N = 42) subjects' associative hierarchies based upon 53 target-words revealed that Negro associative hierarchies exhibited smaller proportions of unique associations (UA's) to opposites, adjectives, and both concrete and abstract nouns. Negro subjects gave the highest percentage of UA's to descriptive adjectives, whereas white subjects gave the most UA's to concrete and abstract nouns. Regarding primary and secondary associations, Negroes and whites gave identical primary associations to opposite-evoking words (N = 14) but differed on 50% of the secondary associations to these same words. For the 39 words that were not so tightly associatively interconnected, the races differed on 50% of the primary and 74% of the secondary associations given. When the races differed, Negroes exhibited a tendency to give either opposites or syntagmatic responses as primary and secondary associations. These data together with those of Belcher and Campbell (1968) suggest that the developmental word association model elaborated upon by Entwhistle (1966) may meaningfully apply to the study of such racial differences. Specifically, it is suggested that Negro word associations are indicative of a general developmental lag or deficiency in comparison to whites, and further that remedial programmes designed to eradicate differences between the races with respect to word association and related cognitive abilities be implemented within the public school system.
An Effect of One German-Language Course on English
Authors: Anisfeld Moshe , Gordon Malcolm
Published: July 2017

After completion of a college course in German, students judged the acceptability of novel sound sequences as potential English words. For sequences that are permissible in English and impermissible in German (e.g., /skurn/), the judgments of the students of German did not differ from those of control subjects. But sequences permissible in both languages (e.g., /plor/) were rated as more acceptable by the students of German than by the control subjects. This finding was interpreted as showing that even a limited experience with a foreign language can affect the student's native tongue. Results are also reported of perceptual identifications of sound sequences in the two categories mentioned as well as of sequences permissible in German and not in English and of sequences permissible in neither language.
A Distinctive Feature Analysis of the Consonantal Substitution Pattern
Authors: Singh Sadanand , Frank Diana C.
Published: July 2017

A review was made of data collected to document consonant articulation problems in 90 children (mean age 72·4 months) who exhibited normal hearing and organic structure. The substitutions for the true consonants in these data were evaluated in the light of a distinctive feature model. Rules were established to predict the form of substitutions. Substitution seems to be governed by stability and similarity. The preferred substitute is the nearest fronted consonant to the sound in question. An alternate to the above substitution appears when the nearest consonant is not in the repertoire of the child; then there is a retrogression to an earlier learned sound which is most similar and stable. Statistical tabulation of errors according to phoneme and feature substitution revealed underlying structure in all but ten children.
Variations in Normal Speech Disfluencies
Authors: Broen Patricia A. , Siegel Gerald M.
Published: July 2017

College adults were asked to speak in each of three situations. All 40 subjects started in an Alone situation in which they simply talked spontaneously about any topic while sitting alone in a room. They then participated in a situation in which they were asked to speak alone in front of a TV camera and lights, or as if to an audience (Audience-TV situation). Finally, the experimenter entered the room and engaged the subject in casual Conversation for the final situation. Each situation was 12 minutes and was tape recorded. After the last session, the subjects filled out a brief questionnaire in which they rated each situation according to their judgment of the need to speak carefully and of their estimated disfluency in the situation.

The most significant finding is that subjects were most disfluent in those situations they rated as least important. Contrary to usual observations, the greatest frequency of disfluencies occurred in the Conversation rather than the Audience-TV situation. It appeared that as subjects became more concerned about their speech, they monitored it more carefully and thus became more fluent.
Level of Listening Comprehension as a Function of Two Process Variables: Syntax and Meaningfulness
Authors: Gamlin Peter J.
Published: July 2017

The study was designed to investigate three aspects of listening comprehension. One aim of the experiment was to replicate the results of past research showing that semantic and syntactic processes are separate. A second aim of the study was to determine whether "probe-latency" data could assess "level of comprehension". A third aspect of the experiment was to index the relationship between age and changes in the syntactic-semantic process. The results of this study show (a) that the semantic and syntactic processes are separate, (b) that the "probe-latency" data do assess "level of comprehension" and (c) that age levels of subjects in this experiment had no clear differential influence on syntactic and semantic processing.
Stress Rules and Performance
Authors: Walch Mary Lou
Published: July 2017

Regular stress patterns of English as described by Chomsky and Halle are examined experimentally. Three experiments each on production and recognition are given. Experiments on production used written materials as stimuli. Results indicate that knowledge of the rules did not permit subjects to derive standard productions of words or derived forms of words they had not previously heard or spoken. Production strategies in this case involve a search for a suitable underlying form. Subjects were able to recognize errors of production of familiar as well as unfamiliar words. This ability provides feedback enabling the subject to recognize a standard form as such once he has derived it, but not before. Recognition did not correlate as closely with familiarity as did production, nor did it correlate with ability to produce. Recognition abilities more clearly reflect what one might expect of a performance given the competence of a native speaker.
Verbal Productivity and Adjective Usage
Authors: Entwisle Doris R. , Garvey Catherine
Published: July 2017

A survey of free verbal productions of ninth-grade males and females fails to reveal differential use of qualifiers (high frequency adjectives) by social class, but girls for the most part use more adjectives than boys. Consistent differences in productivity appear with girls more productive than boys, high IQ children more productive than low IQ children, and rural children less productive than members of urban or suburban groups. Productivity per se seems to be a fruitful variable to study in connection with social class, particularly since it relates to school performance. The role of specific situations in relation to verbal productivity needs more study.
Syntactic Indices of Language Use of Mentally Retarded and Normal Children
Authors: Lozar Barbara , Wepman Joseph M. , Hass Wilbur
Published: July 2017

Three groups of 11-year old children institutionalized and non-institutionalized retardates and normals, were compared in their language usage on responses to TAT cards. The distribution of their words into common and uncommon, and over the part of speech categories was analysed, as well as the complexity and diversity of their sentences, verb and noun phrases. Retarded children did not differ from normal children in their usage of common and uncommon words, nor in their use of part of speech categories. Also, their verb phrases and noun phrases were in many respects comparable to those used by normal children. The clearest differences were found in the measures of sentence complexity and diversity: institutionalized retardates received the lowest scores of the three groups on these measures (significantly lower than the scores of the normal children), the scores of the non-institutionalized retardates were intermediate and those of the normal children the highest. Additional comparisons of the patterns of scores with those received by younger children showed that the institutionalized retardates were most comparable to normal 5-year olds, particularly in their sentence usage, whereas the non-institutionalized retardates were most comparable to normal children of the same chronological age.
Intonation Patterns in Australian English
Authors: Burgess O.N.
Published: July 2017

An instrumental analysis was made of the intonation patterns used by a group of speakers of Australian English in producing a corpus of selected sentences. The results obtained were compared with those suggested for the same utterances in Received English. It would seem that there is a broad similarity in intonatory habits between speakers of the two varieties of English. Australian English, however, tends to avoid, in general, variation of pitch within syllables and, in particular, the high-fall accent. The evidence presented does not readily support the contention that in "Yes/No" questions Australian intonation patterns are clearly differentiated from those of Received English. Instead there is some indication that differentiation is more marked with questions containing a specific interrogative word.
Vowel and Speaker Identification in Natural and Synthetic Speech
Authors: Lehiste Ilse , Meltzer David
Published: July 2017

The study describes the results of a listening test in which subjects were required to identify both the vowel and the sex of the speaker. Ten monophthongal American English vowels were selected: /i I ε æ a u Λ 3/. These vowels were produced by a male speaker, a female speaker, and a child. Formant values were read from spectrograms made of these vowels and used for synthesizing the same 30 vowels on a Glace-Holmes synthesizer. A third set of vowels was generated synthetically using formant and fundamental frequency values reported by Peterson and Barney (1952). In this set, the fundamental frequency characteristic of male, female and children's voices was combined with male, female and children's formants. The set of 150 stimuli was presented to 60 listeners, who were asked to identify the speakers and vowels. Overall speaker identification scores were higher than overall vowel identification scores for both normal speakers and vowels synthesized from measurements; for the Peterson-Barney set, the scores were approximately the same. The highest overall correct score was 88.3%, obtained for the normal male speaker; the lowest correct score was 31.0%, obtained for children's vowels synthesized from measurements.
Mothers' and Non-Mothers' Semantic Adaptation to Deviant Speech
Authors: Hofmann Joanne , Panagos John M.
Published: July 2017

This study examined whether a group of mothers of children with deviant speech, and a group of non-mothers, could adapt their comprehension strategies to decode command sentences spoken by a child known to generate patterned deviant utterances. While subjects made significant improvement in their comprehension performance (adaptation), a significant difference between groups was not observed. Perceptual adaptation to variant linguistic codes may be so basic to decoding performance that maternal experience with child speech would not provide mothers with a decoding advantage over native speakers engaged in everyday adaptive communication.
The Silent Interval of Stop Consonants
Authors: Suen Ching Yee , Beddoes Michael P.
Published: July 2017

An experiment was conducted to measure the silent interval (SI) preceding the burst of all the stop consonants in English. A list of words was constructed for each pair of stop cognates. More commonly used words with stop cognates in similar environments were chosen for the experiment. Six subjects spoke these lists and their speech samples were analysed with the aid of a digital computer and a precision display unit. The average durations of the SI found in descending order were: /p/, 117.64 msec; /k/, 113.09 msec; /t/, 102.04 msec; /b/, 85.58 msec; /g/, 79.97 msec, and /d/, 68.59 msec. The average difference in SI between the voiceless and voiced stop. cognates was about 33 msec. and the average ratio between them was about 1.4. By taking a variety of environments into consideration, the analysis of the SI yielded a result which suggests that the duration of the SI is strongly influenced by different phonetic environments: when homorganic nasal phonemes preceded, the SI was short; when short vowels preceded, the SI was long; when there was a stress pattern in the words, the SI was short.
An Effect of the Definite Article on the Salience of a Noun
Authors: de Villiers Peter A.
Published: July 2017

Subjects were asked to correct the meaning of semantically anomalous sentences in which a noun, either the subject or object, or the verb could be considered anomalous. Increased specificity of reference led to an increase in the salience of the nouns in the meaning of the sentences. A noun was significantly more likely to be retained in the corrections and the verb considered anomalous if that noun was definite than if it was indefinite. Subject nouns were also more likely to be retained than were object nouns when they broke the selection restrictions of the verb. This finding is discussed in terms of other studies showing the importance of the subject noun in sentence comprehension.
Language Switching and Constituent Structure
Authors: Wakefield James A. , Bradley Peggy E. , Lee Yom Byong-Hee , Doughtie Eugene B.
Published: July 2017

Four experiments employing two groups of bilinguals, Korean-English and Spanish-English, and two modalities of presentation, visual and auditory, were performed. Split-language sentences were presented to the bilingual subjects. The point in the sentence at which the language changed was varied. One group was asked to respond true or false to sentences in which the change in language occurred between constituents. Another group was asked to respond to sentences in which the language change occurred within one of the constituents. Longer response times resulted from the sentences in which the language change occurred within a constituent.
Acoustic Study of /i,u/ in the Spanish Diphthong
Authors: Borzone de Manrique Ana M.
Published: July 2017

The positional variants of /i, u/ in the Spanish diphthong were studied by spectographic techniques. Four male speakers recorded a list of 24 words that contained the dipthongs /ie/, /ei/, /ue/ and the sounds /i/, /u/ in the same consonant environment. The measurement of the central frequency of the first three formants shows that their displacement is different for each positional variant. Furthermore the intensity relation between the positional variants and the vowel-sound /e/ and the rate of change of F2 transition seem to be significant cues for the identification of the three variants observed. These acoustic results suggest some articulatory differences in the way these variants are produced.
The Duration of Intervocalic Stops in Ceylon Tamil
Authors: Thananjayarajasingham S.
Published: July 2017

In this paper, the results of an experimental study of the duration of intervocalic voiceless double stops that occur in the colloquial Tamil speech of the writer are presented. Kymography and spectrography are the two experimental devices used for measuring the duration of the intervocalic double stops.

From the kymographic and spectrographic evidence it was found that the duration of the closure was very long if the stop was preceded by a short vowel and considerably less if the stop was preceded by a long vowel.
The Effect of Level of Education on Judgments of Grammatical Acceptability
Authors: Mills John A. , Hemsley Gordon D.
Published: July 2017

From Chomsky's assertion that the deep and surface structures of very simple utterances are highly similar, it follows that judgments of the degree of acceptability of such utterances should approximate judgments of their grammaticality. To test Chomsky's assertion that all native speakers of English share the same deep structure, judgments of the acceptability of selected permutations of examples of Scott's subject-verb-object-qualifier (SVOQ) were obtained. The design of the experiment was 3 x 8 x 2 x 3 factorial, with three levels of education (Group 1 — university students, Group 2 — people with three or four years of high school, and Group 3 — people with one or two years of high school), eight of degree of disruption of SVOQ, two of familiarity (sentences consisted either of very low or very high frequency words), and three of qualifier (common adverbs, -ly adverbs, and prepositional phrases). The analysis of S judgments (cases where a permutation was said to be grammatical and the same in meaning as the SVOQ form) yielded a significant Groups x Permutations x Familiarity interaction because, in the low familiar sentences, Group 3 (and, to some extent, Group 2) showed less capacity for grammatical discrimination than Group 1. The analysis of D judgments (cases where a permutation was said to be grammatical but different in meaning from SVOQ) yielded a number of significant main effects and interactions, which were generally interpreted as showing that Group 1 showed more grammatical sophistication than the other groups. On the basis of the experimental results it was concluded that Chomsky's assertion regarding deep structure had been falsified.
The Meaning of Frequency Words in Different Contexts
Authors: Dennis Russell , Dennis Cathy , Jobe Larry
Published: July 2017

The problem was to identify the effect of context situations on the meaning of frequency words. One hundred college students served in the rating of the materials as well as in the experimental task. Frequency words and sentences without frequency words were rated and then four frequency words and five sentences were selected on the basis of the positive-negative continuum. Each of the four frequency words (and no frequency word) were then placed in the five sentences and rated by 20 subjects each. A two-way analysis of variance with repeated measures showed sentences, frequency words, and sentence and frequency words interaction all significant. The main conclusion is frequency words take on different meanings (positive-negative) when placed in various sentences.
Elicited Imitation and Assessment of Abilities
Authors: Berry P.B.
Published: July 2017

It is possible to regard imitation within at least three theoretical frameworks. First, imitation may be regarded as a special case of another more general form of learning (Miller and Dollard, 1941; Gewirtz, 1971). Secondly, it is possible to consider imitation as a unique process which may be accounted for in its own right (Bandura, 1969). A third theory of imitation has its origin in the work of Piaget (1951) and suggests that imitation is only one aspect of the total functioning of an individual and lies between accommodation and assimilation.

The Piagetian account of imitation implies that as an individual develops, his imitations undergo a series of transformations, so that the level of organization of the individual directly influences his imitations.

There is some evidence that, in the case of the severely subnormal child, the Piagetian theory has implications for both the development of learning and the assessment of abilities. In a series of experiments requiring the ESNS children to imitate sounds in words, whole words, strings of words (structured and semi-structured) and sentences of varying complexity (Berry, 1971; 1973), an analysis of errors indicated differential levels and strategies of processing the linguistic input. In addition, the level of performance on imitation tasks correlated significantly with abilities on other tasks of linguistic ability such as receptive vocabulary, the comprehension of sentences of varying syntactic complexity and the ability to vary syntactic complexity and the ability to produce language related to picture stimuli. Evidence from other researchers using the technique for the assessment of language (e.g. Slobin, 1968; Osser, Wang and Zaid, 1970) as well as studies in motor imitation (e.g. Wapner and Cirillo, 1968) suggests that elicited imitation of a model might be a useful technique for the psychological assessment of skills, since errors in imitation tasks seem to be directly related to the individual's competence.
Attribution Processes and Interpersonal Accommodation in a Bilingual Setting
Authors: Simard Lise M. , Taylor Donald M. , Giles Howard
Published: July 2017

A theory of interpersonal accommodation has proposed that if a member of one ethnolinguistic group adopts the language of the other group member, this will evoke positive attitudes in the other and also result in that ethnic member making an effort to accommodate back to the initiator. The present study was designed to demonstrate that using the other's language may not necessarily lead to positive evaluation and reciprocal accommodation. Guided by attribution theory, three conditions were created involving English Canadians who spoke French or English to French Canadian subjects: (1) Subjects were given no information about the language capacity of the English Canadian speaker, (2) the speaker was externally pressured to use French or English, and (3) Subjects were aware that the speaker was capable of speaking French. The results demonstrated that the accommodation model was not sufficient in its original form to account for language choice in all contexts and an elaboration was suggested in attribution terms.
Selecting a Voice for a Specified Task: the Example of Telephone Announcements
Authors: Cox Anthony C. , Cooper Martin B.
Published: July 2017

There has been a considerable degree of interest in speech style as an indicator of various attributes of the speaker. This paper reports an investigation into which attributes would be considered most important by a panel of judges asked to assess various voices for the task of making telephone announcements. The results showed that it was possible to arrive at a model describing the basis of selection, and that model is presented here together with a discussion of some of its implications. However, the analysis indicated that there are other variables that would need to be investigated before a full understanding of the vocal attributes required of a telephone announcer could be obtained.
Elicited Verbal and Nonverbal Imitation in Down's Syndrome and Other Mentally Retarded Children: a Replication and Extension of Berry
Authors: Rondal J.A. , Lambert J.L. , Sohier C.
Published: July 2017

Several tasks of elicited verbal and gestural imitation were given to a sample of 38 Down's syndrome and other mentally retarded children. The data are presented and discussed in relation to previous work on elicited verbal imitation. They confirm the validity of elicited imitation as a tool for assessing language functioning in mentally retarded subjects. The data also illustrate the inferior capability of the Down's syndrome children to imitate verbally and gesturally when they are compared to other retardates of corresponding CA and IQ.
Foreign Accents: Factors Relating to Transfer of Accent from the First Language to a Second Language
Authors: Tahta Sonia , Wood Margaret , Loewenthal Kate
Published: July 2017

This study examined predictors of transfer of accent from the first language (L1) to a second language (L2), in a group of people whose acquisition of English as an L2 had begun at ages ranging from 6 to 15+. The effect of age of L2 acquisition is very marked. If L2 acquisition had begun by 6, there is no transfer of accent. If L2 acquisition began after 12—13, there is invariably accent transfer, usually very marked. When accent transfer occurs between 7 and 11, it is usually very slight. These findings agree quite well with those of other studies, but there are discrepancies and these are indicated and discussed. Between 7 and 11, accent transfer may be affected by factors other than biological maturation. In our study, the only such factor to emerge strongly was whether L2 was used in the home, suggesting a shift of identification from the L1 to the L2 culture.
Irritating Expressions in Australian English
Authors: Hammarström Göran
Published: July 2017

Certain language expressions irritate certain individuals. Some individuals are comparatively tolerant in this respect, but others are very intolerant of expressions they do not like. in order to examine this problem in some detail, a questionnaire containing 50 irritating Australian English expressions was designed. The questionnaire was answered by 135 subjects. Differences between expressions, groups of expressions, irritability indices of individuals, and age and sex groups of speakers were established.
Word Duration in Monologue and Dialogue Speech
Authors: Mcallister Jan , Potts Anne , Mason Kathryn , Marchant Geoffrey
Published: July 2017

The work reported here represents an attempt to extend the collaborative view of conversation (see, for example, Clark and Wilkes-Gibbs, 1986) to the level of the characteristics of individual words - in particular, word duration. Speaker dyads engaged in the tangram task which has been widely used for researching discourse-level behaviour. Four monologue and four dialogue trials were recorded from each speaker. Content words which appeared in at least seven trials were identified, and the successive tokens of these words were digitised and measured. Overall, words spoken in monologues were reliably longer than words spoken in dialogues, suggesting that speakers were conservative in their estimate of how intelligible a listener would find the words when no visual or linguistic feedback was available. In addition, monologue and dialogue tokens exhibited different shortening effects in response to repetition; in dialogue, speakers attenuated word durations on the second mention, but in monologue no shortening occurred between successive repetitions, although a gradual decrease in duration was observed across the four trials. These results parallel findings relating to referring expressions, where the decline in the number of words used to refer to an entity is much sharper in dialogue than in monologue. The results are discussed within the framework of the collaborative model.
Learning to Pronounce Vowel Sounds in a Foreign Language using Acoustic Measurements of the Vocal Tract as Feedback in Real Time
Authors: Dowd Annette , Smith John , Wolfe Joe
Published: July 2017

An acoustic impedance spectrometer was used to measure the frequencies R1 and R2 of the first two resonances of the vocal tract. The measurement was made just outside the mouth, in parallel with the free field, using a new technique that provides precise information about the acoustic response of the vocal tract in real time. Values measured for native speakers for a particular vowel were used as target parameters for subjects who used a visual display of an impedance spectrum of their own vocal tracts as realtime feedback to realize the vocal tract configuration required to pronounce the target vowel. We report the values (R1,R2) for eleven non-nasalized vowels of French. These values are similar to the formant frequencies measured previously for these vowels, and their relative positions in the (R2,R1) plane are similar to those of the same vowels in the (F2,F1) formant plane. The confusion and correct identification of these vowels are shown to be strongly related to their separation in the (R2,R1) plane. We report the results of attempts to imitate six of these vowels by monolingual anglophone subjects. One group used a traditional method of learning pronunciation: they heard the vowel sounds and then attempted to imitate them. Another group also heard the sounds, but were assisted by the vocal tract feedback described above when imitating the target sounds. The acoustic properties and recognizability of the vowels were significantly superior when the subjects used vocal-tract feedback.
Speech Production Skills of Nuclear Family Members of Children with Phonology Disorders
Authors: Lewis Barbara A. , Freebairn Lisa
Published: July 2017

The speech production skills of 38 school-aged siblings and 94 parents of children with phonology disorders were assessed by administering tasks involving the repetition of multisyllabic real and nonsense words, and “difficult-to-articulate” phrases and sentences. Results demonstrated that speech production, as measured by these tasks, continues to improve into adulthood. Furthermore, family members who reported histories of childhood speech and language problems performed more poorly on these challenging articulatory tasks than did individuals without such a history. These tasks were positively correlated with reading, spelling, and language achievement measures, thus suggesting a relationship between spoken and written language.
Prosody as an Interactional Resource: Turn-projection and Overlap
Authors: Wells Bill , Macfarlane Sarah
Published: July 2017

One aim of current research into talk-in-interaction is to identify the resources that enable recipients to monitor the course of a turn in progress in order to project its upcoming completion. This issue is addressed through analysis of instances of overlapping talk, focusing on their design—that is, their particular prosodic and other linguistic characteristics; their placement—in other words, where precisely they occur in relation to the turn being overlapped; and the subsequent behavior of the coparticipants. Phonetic analysis is combined with interactional techniques developed within Conversation Analysis, to warrant the relevance of categories by reference to the behavior of the participants themselves. As French and Local (1983) found, for an incoming to be treated as turn-competitive, it has to be designed with relatively high pitch and loud volume. These turn-competitive incomings are positioned within the turn in progress, and before the final major accent. By contrast, overlapping incomings positioned after the major accent are not designed as or treated as turn-competitive. On the basis of this analysis, we can define transition relevance place (TRP) as the space between the TRP-projecting accent of the current turn and the onset of the next turn. TRP-projecting accents are identifiable on independent grounds, being phonetically distinct from non-TRP-projecting accents. They thus provide a robust resource for participants to monitor the upcoming completion of the turn.
Collaborative Signaling of Informational Structures by Dynamic Speech Rate
Authors: Koiso Hanae , Shimojima Atsushi , Katagiri Yasuhiro
Published: July 2017

The research reported in this paper is an attempt to elucidate the functions of dynamic speech rates as contextualization cues in conversational Japanese. We examine five spontaneous task-oriented dialogs conducted in Japanese and analyze the potential of speech rate changes in signaling the structure of the information being exchanged in the dialogs. A correlation is found between speech decelerations and the openings of new information, and another is found between speech accelerations and the absence of information openings. These correlations hold not only in the case of a single speaker's speech, but also in the case of multiple speakers' sequential utterances, both with and without turn shifts. On the basis of these findings, we examine the potential of dynamic speech rates as cues to information structures in dialogs, in terms of their precision, recall, and primacy. We claim that changes in the speech rate in conversational Japanese have a definite potential for cuing the structure of information collaboratively constructed by participants of a conversation.
Intonational Settings as Markers of Discourse Units in Telephone Conversations
Authors: Douglas-Cowie Ellen , Cowie Roddy
Published: July 2017

A study of business telephone calls provides quantitative evidence suggesting “intonational settings”: Certain attributes of intonation are sustained throughout discourse units in the calls (openings, business transactions, preclosures, and final closures), and differentiate one unit from another, as if phonologically significant aspects of intonation are realized within a space controlled by discourse-related parameters. Two types of parameter emerge, one controlling the midpoint of the F0 contour in frequency space, the other controlling the way it fluctuates.
Articulatory Correlates of Prosodic Control: Emotion and Emphasis
Authors: Erickson Donna , Fujimura Osamu , Pardo Bryan
Published: July 2017

This study examines mandibular correlates of prosodic control in nonread dialog exchanges, in which the subject is asked to repeat the same correction of one digit in a three-digit sequence consisting of “five” or “nine” followed by “Pine Street.” Articulatory and acoustic data were collected for four speakers of American English at the X-ray Microbeam Facilities at the University of Wisconsin. Jaw opening was measured as vertical jaw position at the time of maximum opening. Middle digits perceived by independent listeners as emphasized generally show jaw opening which is larger than the average jaw opening for the utterances in which they occur. As the speaker repeatedly makes the same correction, not only does jaw opening increase significantly on the corrected digit but also the overall amount of jaw opening on all digits in the corrected exchanges increases. Independent separate perception tests show that listeners also perceive the speakers' answers to be more irritated as the speaker repeats the same correction. The findings suggest a local and global use of the jaw opening gesture to produce both linguistic or paralinguistic and extralinguistic information, that is, word emphasis and the emotional tenor of the dialog itself.
Linguistic Adaptations During Spoken and Multimodal Error Resolution
Authors: Oviatt Sharon , Bernard Jon , Levow Gina-Anne
Published: July 2017

Fragile error handling in recognition-based systems is a major problem that degrades their performance, frustrates users, and limits commercial potential. The aim of the present research was to analyze the types and magnitude of linguistic adaptation that occur during spoken and multimodal human-computer error resolution. A semiautomatic simulation method with a novel error-generation capability was used to collect samples of users' spoken and pen-based input immediately before and after recognition errors, and at different spiral depths in terms of the number of repetitions needed to resolve an error. When correcting persistent recognition errors, results revealed that users adapt their speech and language in three qualitatively different ways. First, they increase linguistic contrast through alternation of input modes and lexical content over repeated correction attempts. Second, when correcting with verbatim speech, they increase hyperarticulation by lengthening speech segments and pauses, and increasing the use of final falling contours. Third, when they hyperarticulate, users simultaneously suppress linguistic variability in their speech signal's amplitude and fundamental frequency. These findings are discussed from the perspective of enhancement of linguistic intelligibility. Implications are also discussed for corroboration and generalization of the Computer-elicited Hyperarticulate Adaptation Model (CHAM), and for improved error handling capabilities in next-generation spoken language and multimodal systems.
Can Prosody Aid the Automatic Classification of Dialog Acts in Conversational Speech?
Authors: Shriberg Elizabeth , Stolcke Andreas , Jurafsky Daniel , Coccaro Noah , Meteer Marie , Bates Rebecca , Taylor Paul , Ries Klaus , Martin Rachel , van Ess-Dykema Carol
Published: July 2017

Identifying whether an utterance is a statement, question, greeting, and so forth is integral to effective automatic understanding of natural dialog. Little is known, however, about how such dialog acts (DAs) can be automatically classified in truly natural conversation. This study asks whether current approaches, which use mainly word information, could be improved by adding prosodic information.

The study is based on more than 1000 conversations from the Switchboard corpus. DAs were hand-annotated, and prosodic features (duration, pause, F0, energy, and speaking rate) were automatically extracted for each DA. In training, decision trees based on these features were inferred; trees were then applied to unseen test data to evaluate performance. Performance was evaluated for prosody models alone, and after combining the prosody models with word information—either from true words or from the output of an automatic speech recognizer.

For an overall classification task, as well as three subtasks, prosody made significant contributions to classification. Feature-specific analyses further revealed that although canonical features (such as F0 for questions) were important, less obvious features could compensate if canonical features were removed. Finally, in each task, integrating the prosodic model with a DA-specific statistical language model improved performance over that of the language model alone, especially for the case of recognized words. Results suggest that DAs are redundantly marked in natural conversation, and that a variety of automatically extractable prosodic features could aid dialog processing in speech applications.
Self-Assessment in the Measurement of Public Health Workforce Preparedness for Bioterrorism or other Public Health Disasters
Authors: Kerby Dave S. , Brand Michael W. , Johnson David L. , Ghouri Farooq S.
Published: July 2017

Objective.

The purpose of this study was to examine effective ways to evaluate public health workers' competence for preparedness.

Methods.

The Public Health Ready project, developed by the National Association of County and City Public Health Officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is a pilot program designed to prepare local public health agencies to respond to emergency events. Workers at a Public Health Ready site ( N=265) rated their need for training and their competence in meeting generic emergency response goals. Cluster analysis of cases was conducted on the self-assessed need for training.

Results.

Three groups of workers emerged, differing in their overall ratings of need for training. A given worker tended to report similar needs for training across all training goals.

Conclusions.

In this study, workers' ratings of need for training may reflect an overall interest in training rather than need for training in a particular area. Caution should be exercised in interpretation when generic goals and self-assessment are used to measure need for training. Future assessments of training needs may be more effective if they use objective measures of specific local plans.
Tobacco Use among American Indians in Oklahoma: An Epidemiologic View
Authors: Eichner June E. , Cravatt Kymberly , Beebe Laura A. , Blevins Kathleen S. , Stoddart Martha L. , Bursac Zoran , Yeh Fawn , Lee Elisa T. , Moore William E.
Published: July 2017

Objectives.

With the exception of national surveys that sample the entire U.S. population, little information exists on tobacco habits among American Indians. This study is a comparison of tobacco use findings in the 1990s among American Indians in Oklahoma, a state with a large and diverse American Indian population (39 tribes).

Methods.

Data on current tobacco use are presented from two statewide surveys, the Oklahoma Youth Tobacco Survey and the Native American Behavioral Risk Factor Survey, as well as two large epidemiologic studies of chronic disease among American Indians—the Cherokee Diabetes Study and the Strong Heart Study. Three of these four sources of data involve research/surveys exclusively about American Indians.

Results.

Nontraditional use of tobacco by American Indians occurs frequently, according to each instrument. Initiation to this habit begins in middle school and increases dramatically during high school. After age 50, reporting by individuals that they currently smoke declines steadily.

Conclusions.

Despite sampling different individuals for the surveys and different tribes for the epidemiologic research, results were comparable in age groups that overlapped. These findings support national data indicating that American Indians have higher prevalence rates of smoking than other racial/ethnic groups. American Indians report smoking on average about a half a pack of cigarettes per day. Individuals reporting using tobacco solely for ceremonial purposes were far fewer than habitual users. Buying tobacco products in American Indian smoke shops helps tribal economies; this fact needs to be considered for prevention programs to succeed.
Health and Housing Collaboration at LAST: The Philadelphia Lead Abatement Strike Team
Authors: Campbell Carla , Himmelsbach Robert , Palermo Peter , Tobin Richard
Published: July 2017

The Lead Abatement Strike Team (LAST) was developed in 2002 by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health (PDPH) in response to community concern about management of children with elevated blood lead levels (EBLLs). Fourteen hundred backlog properties (housing at least one child with EBLLs) were identified through inspection as having housing-based lead hazards for which no satisfactory environmental remediation (control of lead hazards) had been achieved. In the first two years of LAST, 834 new housing cases also were identified. The heightened awareness of this problem, sparked in part by community advocacy efforts, led to the appropriation of $1.5 million for environmental remediation. A collaborative group of health, housing, and other officials was convened. Enforcement for remediation of properties with lead hazards was strengthened with the development of the Lead Court, a special judicial court devoted exclusively to hearing cases where owners had violated local lead poisoning prevention laws. Identifying a group of Pennsylvania-certified lead abatement contractors, expanding the health department's abatement team, creating temporary relocation capacity, and providing funding for basic housing system repair work were crucial to obtaining rapid remediation of homes. In the first two years of the LAST program, 1,037 properties (both backlog and new properties) that housed 1,476 children were remediated, representing a significant increase in remediation capacity.