| 1. |
- F. Renner, Lena, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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When a Dog is a Cat and How it Changes Your Pupil Size : Pupil Dilation in Response to Information Mismatch
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - 9781510848764 ; , s. 674-678
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In the present study, we investigate pupil dilation as a measure of lexical retrieval. We captured pupil size changes in reaction to a match or a mismatch between a picture and an auditorily presented word in 120 trials presented to ten native speakers of Swedish. In each trial a picture was displayed for six seconds, and 2.5 seconds into the trial the word was played through loudspeakers. The picture and the word were matching in half of the trials, and all stimuli were common high-frequency monosyllabic Swedish words. The difference in pupil diameter trajectories across the two conditions was analyzed with Functional Data Analysis. In line with the expectations, the results indicate greater dilation in the mismatch condition starting from around 800 ms after the stimulus onset. Given that similar processes were observed in brain imaging studies, pupil dilation measurements seem to provide an appropriate tool to reveal lexical retrieval. The results suggest that pupillometry could be a viable alternative to existing methods in the field of speech and language processing, for instance across different ages and clinical groups.
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| 2. |
- Grigonyte, Gintare, et al.
(författare)
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Measuring Encoding Efficiency in Swedish and English Language Learner Speech Production
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 1779-1783
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We use n-gram language models to investigate how far language approximates an optimal code for human communication in terms of Information Theory [1], and what differences there are between Learner proficiency levels. Although the language of lower level learners is simpler, it is less optimal in terms of information theory, and as a consequence more difficult to process.
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| 3. |
- Keidel Fernández, Alejandra, et al.
(författare)
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Qualitative differences in L3 learners’ neurophysiological response to L1versus L2 transfer
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 1789-1793
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Third language (L3) acquisition differs from first language (L1) and second language (L2) acquisition. There are different views on whether L1 or L2 is of primary influence on L3 acquisition in terms of transfer. This study examines differences in the event-related brain potentials (ERP) response to agreement incongruencies between L1 Spanish speakers and L3 Spanish learners, comparing response differences to incongruencies that are transferrable from the learners’ L1 (Swedish), or their L2 (English). Whereas verb incongruencies, available in L3 learners’ L2 but not their L1, engendered a similar response for L1 speakers and L3 learners, adjective incongruencies, available in L3 learners’ L1 but not their L2, elicited responses that differed between groups: Adjective incongruencies engendered a negativity in the 450-550 ms time window for L1 speakers only. Both congruent and incongruent adjectives also engendered an enhanced P3 wave in L3 learners compared to L1 speakers. Since the P300 correlates with task-related, strategic processing, this indicates that L3 learners process grammatical features that are transferrable from their L1 in a less automatic mode than features that are transferrable from their L2. L3 learners therefore seem to benefit more from their knowledge of their L2 than their knowledge of their L1.
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| 4. |
- Marklund, Ellen, et al.
(författare)
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Computational simulations of temporal vocalization behavior in adult-child interaction
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 2208-2212
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The purpose of the present study was to introduce a computational simulation of timing in child-adult interaction. The simulation uses temporal information from real adult-child interactions as default temporal behavior of two simulated agents. Dependencies between the agents’ behavior are added, and how the simulated interactions compare to real interaction data as a result is investigated. In the present study, the real data consisted of transcriptions of a mother interacting with her 12- month-old child, and the data simulated was vocalizations. The first experiment shows that although the two agents generate vocalizations according to the temporal characteristics of the interlocutors in the real data, simulated interaction with no contingencies between the two agents’ behavior differs from real interaction data. In the second experiment, a contingency was introduced to the simulation: the likelihood that the adult agent initiated a vocalization if the child agent was already vocalizing. Overall, the simulated data is more similar to the real interaction data when the adult agent is less likely to start speaking while the child agent vocalizes. The results are in line with previous studies on turn-taking in parent-child interaction at comparable ages. This illustrates that computational simulations are useful tools when investigating parent-child interactions.
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| 5. |
- Marklund, Ellen, et al.
(författare)
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MMN responses in adults after exposure to bimodal and unimodal frequency distributions of rotated speech
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 1804-1808
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The aim of the present study is to further the understanding of the relationship between perceptual categorization and exposure to different frequency distributions of sounds. Previous studies have shown that speech sound discrimination proficiency is in- fluenced by exposure to different distributions of speech sound continua varying along one or several acoustic dimensions, both in adults and in infants. In the current study, adults were presented with either a bimodal or a unimodal frequency distri- bution of spectrally rotated sounds along a continuum (a vowel continuum before rotation). Categorization of the sounds, quantified as amplitude of the event-related potential (ERP) component mismatch negativity (MMN) in response to two of the sounds, was measured before and after exposure. It was expected that the bimodal group would have a larger MMN amplitude after exposure whereas the unimodal group would have a smaller MMN amplitude after exposure. Contrary to expectations, the MMN amplitude was smaller overall after exposure, and no difference was found between groups. This suggests that either the previously reported sensitivity to frequency distributions of speech sounds is not present for non-speech sounds, or the MMN amplitude is not a sensitive enough measure of categorization to detect an influence from passive exposure, or both.
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| 6. |
- Oertel, Catharine, et al.
(författare)
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Crowd-Sourced Design of Artificial Attentive Listeners
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH. - : International Speech Communication Association. - 9781510848764 ; , s. 854-858
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Feedback generation is an important component of humanhuman communication. Humans can choose to signal support, understanding, agreement or also sceptiscism by means of feedback tokens. Many studies have focused on the timing of feedback behaviours. In the current study, however, we keep the timing constant and instead focus on the lexical form and prosody of feedback tokens as well as their sequential patterns. For this we crowdsourced participant's feedback behaviour in identical interactional contexts in order to model a virtual agent that is able to provide feedback as an attentive/supportive as well as attentive/sceptical listener. The resulting models were realised in a robot which was evaluated by third-party observers.
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| 7. |
- Pokorny, Florian B., et al.
(författare)
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Earlier Identification of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder : An Automatic Vocalisation-based Approach
- 2017
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Ingår i: 18Th Annual Conference Of The International Speech Communication Association (INTERSPEECH 2017), Vols 1-6. - 9781510848764 ; , s. 309-313
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder usually diagnosed in or beyond toddlerhood. ASD is defined by repetitive and restricted behaviours, and deficits in social communication. The early speech-language development of individuals with ASD has been characterised as delayed. However, little is known about ASD-related characteristics of pre-linguistic vocalisations at the feature level. In this study. we examined pre-linguistic vocalisations of 10-month-old individuals later diagnosed with ASD and a matched control group of typically developing individuals (N = 20). We segmented 684 vocalisations from parent-child interaction recordings. All vocalisations were annotated and signal-analytically decomposed. We analysed ASD-related vocalisation specificities on the basis of a standardised set (eGeMAPS) of 88 acoustic features selected for clinical speech analysis applications. 54 features showed evidence for a differentiation between vocalisations of individuals later diagnosed with ASD and controls. In addition, we evaluated the feasibility of automated, vocalisation-based identification of individuals later diagnosed with ASD. We compared linear kernel support vector machines and a 1-layer bidirectional long short-term memory neural network. Both classification approaches achieved an accuracy of 75% for subject-wise identification in a subject-independent 3-fold cross-validation scheme. Our promising results may be an important contribution en-route to facilitate earlier identification of ASD.
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| 8. |
- Schwarz, Iris-Corinna, et al.
(författare)
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The LENATM system applied to Swedish : Reliability of the Adult Word Count estimate
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 2088-2092
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Language Environment Analysis system LENATM is used to capture day-long recordings of children’s natural audio environment. The system performs automated segmentation of the recordings and provides estimates for various measures. One of those measures is Adult Word Count (AWC), an approximation of the number of words spoken by adults in close proximity to the child. The LENA system was developed for and trained on American English, but it has also been evaluated on its performance when applied to Spanish, Mandarin and French. The present study is the first evaluation of the LENA system applied to Swedish, and focuses on the AWC estimate. Twelve five-minute segments were selected at random from each of four day-long recordings of 30-month-old children. Each of these 48 segments was transcribed by two transcribers,and both number of words and number of vowels were calculated (inter-transcriber reliability for words: r = .95,vowels: r = .93). Both counts correlated with the LENA system’s AWC estimate for the same segments (words: r = .67, vowels: r = .66). The reliability of the AWC as estimated by the LENA system when applied to Swedish is therefore comparableto its reliability for Spanish, Mandarin and French.
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| 9. |
- Skarnitzl, Radek, et al.
(författare)
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The Acoustics of Word Stress in Czech as a Function of Speaking Style
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 3221-3225
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The study is part of a series of studies which examine the acoustic correlates of lexical stress in several typologically different languages, in three speech styles: spontaneous speech, phrase reading, and wordlist reading. This study focuses on Czech, a language with stress fixed on the first syllable of a prosodic word, with no contrastive function at the level of individual words. The acoustic parameters examined here are F0-level, F0-variation, Duration, Sound Pressure Level, and Spectral Emphasis. Values for over 6,000 vowels were analyzed.Unlike the other languages examined so far, lexical stress in Czech is not manifested by clear prominence markings on the first, stressed syllable: the stressed syllable is neither higher, realized with greater F0 variation, longer; nor does it have a higher SPL or higher Spectral Emphasis. There are slight, but insignificant tendencies pointing to a delayed rise, that is, to higher values of some of the acoustic parameters on the second, post-stressed syllable. Since lexical stress does not serve a contrastive function in Czech, the absence of acoustic marking on the stressed syllable is not surprising.
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| 10. |
- Strömbergsson, Sofia, et al.
(författare)
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Approximating phonotactic input in children’s linguistic environments from orthographic transcripts
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 2214-2217, s. 2213-2217
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Child-directed spoken data is the ideal source of support for claims about children’s linguistic environments. However, phonological transcriptions of child-directed speech are scarce,compared to sources like adult-directed speech or text data. Acquiring reliable descriptions of children’s phonological environments from more readily accessible sources would mean considerable savings of time and money. The first step towards this goal is to quantify the reliability of descriptions derived from such secondary sources. We investigate how phonological distributions vary across different modalities (spoken vs. written), and across the age of the intended audience (children vs. adults). Using a previously unseen collection of Swedish adult- and child-directed spoken and written data, we combine lexicon look-up and grapheme-to-phonemeconversion to approximate phonological characteristics. The analysis shows distributional differences across datasets both for single phonemes and for longer phoneme sequences. Some of these are predictably attributed to lexical and contextual characteristics of text vs. speech.The generated phonological transcriptions are remarkably reliable. The differences in phonological distributions between child-directed speech and secondary sources highlight a need for compensatory measures when relying on written data or onadult-directed spoken data, and/or for continued collection ofactual child-directed speech in research on children’s language environments.
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| 11. |
- Wirén, Mats, 1954-, et al.
(författare)
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Modelling the Informativeness of Non-Verbal Cues in Parent–Child Interaction
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 2203-2207
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Non-verbal cues from speakers, such as eye gaze and hand positions, play an important role in word learning. This is consistent with the notion that for meaning to be reconstructed, acoustic patterns need to be linked to time-synchronous patterns from at least one other modality. In previous studies of a multimodally annotated corpus of parent–child interaction, we have shown that parents interacting with infants at the early word-learning stage (7–9 months) display a large amount of time-synchronous patterns, but that this behaviour tails off with increasing age of the children. Furthermore, we have attempted to quantify the informativeness of the different nonverbal cues, that is, to what extent they actually help to discriminate between different possible referents, and how critical the timing of the cues is. The purpose of this paper is to generalise our earlier model by quantifying informativeness resulting from non-verbal cues occurring both before and after their associated verbal references.
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| 12. |
- Włodarczak, Marcin, 1984-, et al.
(författare)
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Improving Prediction of Speech Activity Using Multi-Participant Respiratory State
- 2017
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Ingår i: Proceedings of Interspeech 2017. - Stockholm : The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). - 9781510848764 ; , s. 1666-1670
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- One consequence of situated face-to-face conversation is the co- observability of participants’ respiratory movements and sounds. We explore whether this information can be exploited in pre- dicting incipient speech activity. Using a methodology called stochastic turn-taking modeling, we compare the performance of a model trained on speech activity alone to one additionally trained on static and dynamic lung volume features. The method- ology permits automatic discovery of temporal dependencies across participants and feature types. Our experiments show that respiratory information substantially lowers cross-entropy rates, and that this generalizes to unseen data.
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