Presentations

Abstract

Listeners are known to use contextual speech rate in processing temporally ambiguous speech sounds. For instance, a fast adjacent speech context makes a vowel sound relatively long, whereas a slow context makes it sound relatively short (Reinisch & Sjerps, 2013). Besides the local contextual speech rate, listeners also track talker-specific habitual speech rates (Reinisch, 2016; Maslowski et al., in press). However, effects of one’s own speech rate on the perception of another talker’s speech are yet unexplored. Such effects are potentially important, given that, in dialogue, a listener’s own speech often constitutes the context for the interlocutor’s speech. Three experiments tested the contribution of self-produced speech on perception of the habitual speech rate of another talker. In Experiment 1, one group of participants was instructed to speak fast (high-rate group), whereas another group had to speak slowly (low-rate group; 16 participants per group). The two groups were compared on their perception of ambiguous Dutch /A/-/a:/ vowels embedded in neutral rate speech from another talker. In Experiment 2, the same participants listened to playback of their own speech, whilst evaluating target vowels in neutral rate speech as before. Neither of these experiments provided support for the involvement of self-produced speech in perception of another talker's speech rate. Experiment 3 repeated Experiment 2 with a new participant sample, who did not know the participants from the previous two experiments. Here, a group effect was found on perception of the neutral rate talker. This result replicates the finding of Maslowski et al. that habitual speech rates are perceived relative to each other (i.e., neutral rate sounds fast in the presence of a slower talker and vice versa), with naturally produced speech. Taken together, the findings show that self-produced speech is processed differently from speech produced by others. They carry implications for our understanding of the perceptual and cognitive mechanisms involved in rate-dependent speech perception and the link between production and perception in dialogue settings.

Abstract

Interlocutors perceive phonemic category boundaries relative to talkers’ produced speech rates. For instance, a temporally ambiguous vowel between Dutch short /A/ and long /a:/ sounds short (i.e., as /A/) in a slow speech context, but long in a fast context. Besides the local contextual speech rate, listeners also track talker-specific habitual speech rates (Maslowski et al., in press). However, it is yet unclear whether self-produced speech rate modulates perception of another talker’s habitual rate. Such effects are potentially important, given that, in dialogue, a listener’s own speech often constitutes the context for the interlocutor’s speech. Three experiments addressed this question. In Experiment 1, one group of participants was instructed to speak fast, whereas another group had to speak slowly (16 participants per group). The two groups were then compared on their perception of ambiguous Dutch /A/-/a:/ vowels embedded in neutral rate speech from another talker. In Experiment 2, the same participants listened to playback of their own speech, whilst evaluating target vowels in neutral rate speech as before. Neither of these experiments provided support for the involvement of self-produced speech in perception of another talker's speech rate. Experiment 3 repeated Experiment 2 with a new participant sample, who were unfamiliar with the participants from the previous two experiments. Here, a group effect was found on perception of the neutral rate talker. This result replicates the finding of Maslowski et al. that habitual speech rates are perceived relative to each other (i.e., neutral rate sounds fast in the presence of a slower talker and vice versa), with naturally produced speech. Taken together, the findings show that self-produced speech is processed differently from speech produced by others. They carry implications for our understanding of the link between production and perception in dialogue.

Abstract

That speakers can vary their speaking rate is evident, but how they accomplish this has
hardly been studied. The effortful experience of deviating from one's preferred speaking rate
might result from shifting between different regimes (system configurations) of the speech
planning system. This study investigates control over speech rate through simulations of a
new connectionist computational model of the cognitive process of speech production, derived
from Dell, Burger and Svec’s (1997) model to fit the temporal characteristics of observed
speech. We draw an analogy from human movement: the selection of walking and running
gaits to achieve different movement speeds. Are the regimes of the speech production system
arranged into multiple ‘gaits’ that resemble walking and running?
During training of the model, different parameter settings are identified for different speech
rates, which can be conflated with the regimes of the speech production system. The
parameters can be considered to be dimensions of a high-dimensional ‘regime space’, in
which different regimes occupy different parts of the space.
In a single gait system, the regimes are qualitatively similar, but quantitatively different.
They are arranged along a straight line through regime space. Different points along this axis
correspond directly to different speaking rates. In a multiple gait system, the arrangement of
the regimes is more disperse, with no obvious relationship between the regions associated
with each gait.
After training, the model achieved good fits in all three speaking rates, and the parameter
settings associated with each speaking rate were different. The broad arrangement of the
parameter settings for the different speaking rates in regime space was non-axial, suggesting
that ‘gaits’ may be present in the speech planning system.

Abstract

In recent years, the theory that prediction is an important part of language processing has gained considerable attention (see Huettig, 2015, for overview). There is a large body of empirical evidence which suggests that language users’ ability to anticipate interlocutors’ upcoming utterances is one of the reasons why interactive speech can be so effortless, smooth, and efficient in nature (e.g. Wicha et al., 2004; van Berkum et al., 2005). The present study aimed to investigate whether the language production module is affected by prediction of another individual’s utterances using a joint language production task designed to establish whether simulation of an interlocutor’s utterance occurs automatically, even if this hinders one’s own speech production. The experiment aimed to replicate the finding of an interference effect in a joint naming task (Gambi et al., 2015), and investigate whether the same patterns could be found within a clearer social context where a partner was co-present in the same room. Participants named pictures of objects while their partners concurrently named or categorised congruent or incongruent stimuli. Analyses of naming onset latencies indicate that individuals may partially co-represent their partner’s utterances and that this shared representation influences language production. Congruency in task and stimuli display facilitated naming compared to incongruent trials which showed a tendency to impede production latencies. This finding of a social effect in a setting where simulation of language content is not necessary may suggest that some kind of anticipatory processing is an underlying feature of comprehension.

Abstract

Previous work on memory phenomena shows that pictures and words lead to a production effect, i.e. better memory for aloud than silent items, and that this interacts with the picture superiority effect, i.e. better memory for pictures than words (Fawcett, Quinlan and Taylor, 2012). We investigated the role of the generation effect, i.e. improved memory for generated words, in picture naming. As picture naming requires participants to think of an appropriate label, a generation effect might be elicited for pictures but not words. Forty-two participants named pictures silently or aloud and were given the correct picture name or an unreadable label; all conditions included pictures to control for the picture superiority effect. Memory was then tested using a yes/no recognition task. We found a production effect (p < 0.001) showing the role of articulation in memory, a generation effect (p < 0.001) showing the role of lexical access in memory, and an interaction (p <0.05) between the two suggesting the non-independence of the effects. Ongoing work further tests the role of label reliability in eliciting these effects. This research demonstrates a role for the generation effect in picture naming, with implications for memory asymmetries at different stages in language production.