Search

This pupillometric study investigates the relevance of domain-final intonation for attention-orienting in German, employing a changing-state oddball paradigm with rising, falling and neutral intonation on deviant stimuli. Pupil dilation responses (PDR) to deviants were shown to be affected by their intonation contours, strengthening the case for the role of intonational edge tones in attention-orienting. Moreover, the magnitude and duration of the PDR response was higher for rises than falls, indicating the fundamental role of intonational rises for the activation of the attention-orienting mechanism in speech perception.

Face-to-face communication is highly complex, with information being transmitted via multiple channels simultaneously. Social gaze can regulate conversation, express emotions, and signal interest or disinterest, and eye contact, or a lack thereof, is a powerful visual cue that influences the dynamics of communication. While previous research has shed light on gaze in autism in general, there remains a lack of 1) evidence on interactions in dialogue between autistic adults (rather than mixed dialogues) and 2) investigations on the influence of gaze on conversational dynamics and interpersonal rapport. We have developed a novel setup with mobile dual eye-tracking glasses that allows for the automatic detection of mutual eye contact. Our exploratory analyses of conversations in homogeneous autistic dyads provide new insights into autistic gaze dynamics and their interrelation with rapport, ultimately helping to advance the current understanding of cognitive diversity and of the fundamental elements of social interaction.

Autosegmental-metrical phonology has shown itself to be a highly successful framework for the description, analysis and comparison of the prosody of many of the world’s languages. What has contributed to the success of this framework is the fact that there is widespread use of prepackaged units within the model – referred to as “complex primitives”. The intonation systems of languages are described as having edge tones and, in some cases, also (post-lexical) pitch accents. These are defined in terms of both their association properties and their cueing function within the prosodic system. Edge tones associate with an edge (or a tone bearing unit at the edge) and are a cue to the juncture between prosodic constituents. Pitch accents associate with a head (usually a stressed syllable) and are a cue to prominence. I shall argue that we need to unpack these definitions, providing evidence from Tashlhiyt Berber, Maltese and Italian, languages in which the association properties and cueing functions of intonational tones do not automatically line up in this way.

This study investigates the variation in phrase-final f0 movements found in dyadic unscripted conversations in Papuan Malay, an Eastern Indonesian language. This is done by a novel combination of exploratory and confirmatory classification techniques. In particular, this study investigates the linguistic factors that potentially drive f0 contour variation in phrase-final words produced in a naturalistic interactive dialogue task. To this end, a cluster analysis, manual labelling and random forest analysis are carried out to reveal the main sources of contour variation. These are: taking conversational interaction into account; turn transition, topic continuation, information structure (givenness and contrast), and context-independent properties of words such as word class, syllable structure, voicing and intrinsic f0. Results indicate that contour variation in Papuan Malay, in particular f0 direction and target level, is best explained by turn transitions between speakers, corroborating similar findings for related languages. The applied methods provide opportunities to further lower the threshold of incorporating intonation and prosody in the early stages of language documentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Backchannels (BCs; listener signals such as 'mmhm' or 'okay') are a ubiquitous and essential feature of spoken interaction. They are used by listeners predominantly to support the ongoing turn of their interlocutor and to signal understanding and agreement. Listeners seem to be highly sensitive to the exact realisations of BCs and to judge deviations from typical forms as negative. Very little is known about the use of BCs by speakers diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In dialogue recordings of 28 German adults in two groups of disposition-matched dyads (i.e., both interlocutors were either autistic or non-autistic), we found that the ASD group was characterised by (1) a lower rate of BCs per minute (particularly in the early stages of conversation), (2) less diversity in the lexical realisation of BCs and (3) a less diverse and flexible mapping of different intonation contours to different BC types. We interpret these results as reflecting more general characteristics of autistic as compared to non-autistic individuals, namely different strategies in signalling attention towards an interlocutor and less flexible behaviour in social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Chronic deep brain stimulation of the nucleus ventralis intermedius is an effective treatment for individuals with medication-resistant essential tremor. However, these individuals report that stimulation has a deleterious effect on their speech. The present study investigates one important factor leading to these effects: the coordination of oral and glottal articulation. Method: Sixteen native-speaking German adults with essential tremor, between 26 and 86 years old, with and without chronic deep brain stimulation of the nucleus ventralis intermedius and 12 healthy, age-matched subjects were recorded performing a fast syllable repetition task (/papapa/, /tatata/, /kakaka/). Syllable duration and voicing-to-syllable ratio as well as parameters related directly to consonant production, voicing during constriction, and frication during constriction were measured. Results: Voicing during constriction was greater in subjects with essential tremor than in controls, indicating a perseveration of voicing into the voiceless consonant. Stimulation led to fewer voiceless intervals (voicing-to-syllable ratio), indicating a reduced degree of glottal abduction during the entire syllable cycle. Stimulation also induced incomplete oral closures (frication during constriction), indicating imprecise oral articulation. Conclusion: The detrimental effect of stimulation on the speech motor system can be quantified using acoustic measures at the subsyllabic level.

Despite developments in phonology over the last few decades, models of verbal working memory make reference to phoneme-sized phonological units, rather than to the features of which they are composed. This study investigates the influence on short-term retention of such features by comparing the serial recall of lists of syllables with varying types and levels of similarity in their onset consonants. Lists are (a) dissimilar (/fa-na-ga/) (b) acoustically similar (/pa-ta-ka/) or (c) articulatorily similar (/da-la-za/). When no overt articulation is required, we find no decrease in performance for articulatorily similar items as compared to the dissimilar list. However, we are able to show that acoustic similarity clearly impairs recall. It is only when participants recall the lists orally, that performance is impaired for both types of similar lists. These results have implications for accounts of the phonological similarity effect in particular and of verbal working memory in general. (Contains 5 figures and 1 table.)