Lexical stress awareness and orthographic stress in Spanish

Neuronal and behavioral affective perceptions of human and naturalness-reduced emotional prosodies

Artificial voices are nowadays embedded into our daily lives with latest neural voices approaching human voice consistency (naturalness). Nevertheless, behavioral, and neuronal correlates of the perception of less naturalistic emotional prosodies are still misunderstood. In this study, we explored the acoustic tendencies that define naturalness from human to synthesized voices. Then, we created naturalness-reduced emotional utterances by acoustic editions of human voices. Finally, we used Event-Related Potentials (ERP) to assess the time dynamics of emotional integration when listening to both human and synthesized voices in a healthy adult sample. Additionally, listeners rated their perceptions for valence, arousal, discrete emotions, naturalness, and intelligibility. Synthesized voices were characterized by less lexical stress (i.e., reduced difference between stressed and unstressed syllables within words) as regards duration and median pitch modulations. Besides, spectral content was attenuated toward lower F2 and F3 frequencies and lower intensities for harmonics 1 and 4. Both psychometric and neuronal correlates were sensitive to naturalness reduction. (1) Naturalness and intelligibility ratings dropped with emotional utterances synthetization, (2) Discrete emotion recognition was impaired as naturalness declined, consistent with P200 and Late Positive Potentials (LPP) being less sensitive to emotional differentiation at lower naturalness, and (3) Relative P200 and LPP amplitudes between prosodies were modulated by synthetization. Nevertheless, (4) Valence and arousal perceptions were preserved at lower naturalness, (5) Valence (arousal) ratings correlated negatively (positively) with Higuchi’s fractal dimension extracted on neuronal data under all naturalness perturbations, (6) Inter-Trial Phase Coherence (ITPC) and standard deviation measurements revealed high inter-individual heterogeneity for emotion perception that is still preserved as naturalness reduces. Notably, partial between-participant synchrony (low ITPC), along with high amplitude dispersion on ERPs at both early and late stages emphasized miscellaneous emotional responses among subjects. In this study, we highlighted for the first time both behavioral and neuronal basis of emotional perception under acoustic naturalness alterations. Partial dependencies between ecological relevance and emotion understanding outlined the modulation but not the annihilation of emotional integration by synthetization.

Linguistic and non-linguistic prosodic skills in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia

BACKGROUND

The deficit on segmental phonology in developmental dyslexia is well established and according to recent studies this deficit extends to suprasegmental phonology or prosody. However, these studies have focused on word-level prosody. Further research is needed concerning prosodic deficit in dyslexia, especially with a Spanish-speaking population.

AIMS

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of linguistic (word and phrase-level) and non-linguistic prosodic skills in Spanish children with developmental dyslexia.

METHOD AND PROCEDURE

48 Spanish children (8-9 years of age) from ten primary education schools were selected (24 children with developmental dyslexia and 24 chronological age-control children). Non-linguistic rhythm, word and phrase-level prosody, phonological awareness, nonverbal intelligence and reading aloud were assessed.

RESULTS

The results obtained show that children with developmental dyslexia scored lower than typically developing readers on non-linguistic rhythm and word and phrase-level prosody tasks. The differences remained statistically significant at the phrase level after controlling for word-level processing (phonological or prosodic), phonological awareness, non-linguistic rhythm and reading skills.

CONCLUSIONS

Children with developmental dyslexia in Spanish exhibit a core deficit in suprasegmental phonology, at linguistic and non-linguistic levels. The implications of suprasegmental phonology skills for reading acquisition disabilities are discussed.