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Harel-Arbeli T, Shaposhnik H, Palgi Y, Ben-David BM. Taking the Extra Listening Mile: Processing Spoken Semantic Context Is More Effortful for Older Than Young Adults. Ear Hear 2024:00003446-990000000-00334. [PMID: 39219019 DOI: 10.1097/aud.0000000000001582] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/04/2024]
Abstract
OBJECTIVES Older adults use semantic context to generate predictions in speech processing, compensating for aging-related sensory and cognitive changes. This study aimed to gauge aging-related changes in effort exertion related to context use. DESIGN The study revisited data from Harel-Arbeli et al. (2023) that used a "visual-world" eye-tracking paradigm. Data on efficiency of context use (response latency and the probability to gaze at the target before hearing it) and effort exertion (pupil dilation) were extracted from a subset of 14 young adults (21 to 27 years old) and 13 older adults (65 to 79 years old). RESULTS Both age groups showed a similar pattern of context benefits for response latency and target word predictions, however only the older adults group showed overall increased pupil dilation when listening to context sentences. CONCLUSIONS Older adults' efficient use of spoken semantic context appears to come at a cost of increased effort exertion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tami Harel-Arbeli
- Department of Gerontology, Haifa University, Haifa, Israel
- Communication, Aging and Neuropsychology Lab, Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University (IDC), Herzliya, Israel
- Department of Communication Disorders, Achva Academic College, Arugot, Israel
| | - Hagit Shaposhnik
- Department of Software and Information Systems Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel
| | - Yuval Palgi
- Department of Gerontology, Haifa University, Haifa, Israel
| | - Boaz M Ben-David
- Communication, Aging and Neuropsychology Lab, Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University (IDC), Herzliya, Israel
- KITE, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, University Health Networks, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Department of Speech-Language Pathology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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Whitley A, Naylor G, Hadley LV. Used to Be a Dime, Now It's a Dollar: Revised Speech Perception in Noise Key Word Predictability Revisited 40 Years On. JOURNAL OF SPEECH, LANGUAGE, AND HEARING RESEARCH : JSLHR 2024; 67:1229-1242. [PMID: 38563688 PMCID: PMC11005954 DOI: 10.1044/2024_jslhr-23-00615] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/02/2023] [Revised: 12/11/2023] [Accepted: 01/12/2024] [Indexed: 04/04/2024]
Abstract
PURPOSE Almost 40 years after its development, in this article, we reexamine the relevance and validity of the ubiquitously used Revised Speech Perception in Noise (R-SPiN) sentence corpus. The R-SPiN corpus includes "high-context" and "low-context" sentences and has been widely used in the field of hearing research to examine the benefit derived from semantic context across English-speaking listeners, but research investigating age differences has yielded somewhat inconsistent findings. We assess the appropriateness of the corpus for use today in different English-language cultures (i.e., British and American) as well as for older and younger adults. METHOD Two hundred forty participants, including older (60-80 years) and younger (19-31 years) adult groups in the the United Kingdom and United States, completed a cloze task consisting of R-SPiN sentences with the final word removed. Cloze, as a measure of predictability, and entropy, as a measure of response uncertainty, were compared between culture and age groups. RESULTS Most critically, of the 200 "high-context" stimuli, only around half were assessed as highly predictable for older adults (United Kingdom: 109; United States: 107); and fewer still, for younger adults (United Kingdom: 75; United States: 81). We also found dominant responses to these "high-context" stimuli varied between cultures, with U.S. responses being more likely to match the original R-SPiN target. CONCLUSIONS Our findings highlight the issue of incomplete transferability of corpus items across English-language cultures as well as diminished equivalency for older and younger adults. By identifying relevant items for each population, this work could facilitate the interpretation of inconsistent findings in the literature, particularly relating to age effects.
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Affiliation(s)
- Alexina Whitley
- Hearing Sciences – Scottish Section, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
| | - Graham Naylor
- Hearing Sciences – Scottish Section, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
| | - Lauren V. Hadley
- Hearing Sciences – Scottish Section, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom
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Meßmer JA, Bader R, Mecklinger A. Schema-congruency supports the formation of unitized representations: Evidence from event-related potentials. Neuropsychologia 2024; 194:108782. [PMID: 38159798 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2023.108782] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/28/2023] [Revised: 12/06/2023] [Accepted: 12/27/2023] [Indexed: 01/03/2024]
Abstract
The main goal of the present study was to investigate whether schema-based encoding of novel word pairs (i.e., novel compound words) supports the formation of unitized representations and thus, associative familiarity-based recognition. We report two experiments that both comprise an incidental learning task, in which novel noun-noun compound words were presented in semantically congruent contexts, enabling schema-supported processing of both constituents, contrasted with a schema-neutral condition. In Experiment 1, the effects of schema congruency on memory performance were larger for associative memory performance than for item memory performance in a memory test in which intact, recombined, and new compound words had to be discriminated. This supports the view that schema congruency boosts associative memory by promoting unitization. When contrasting event-related potentials (ERPs) for hits with correct rejections or associative misses, an N400 attenuation effect (520-676 ms) indicating absolute familiarity was present in the congruent condition, but not in the neutral condition. In line with this, a direct comparison of ERPs on hits across conditions revealed more positive waveforms in the congruent than in the neutral condition. This suggests that absolute familiarity contributes to associative recognition memory when schema-supported processing is established. In Experiment 2, we tested whether schema congruency enables the formation of semantically overlapping representations. Therefore, we included semantically similar lure compound words in the test phase and compared false alarm rates to these lures across conditions. In line with our hypothesis, we found higher false alarm rates in the congruent as compared to the neutral condition. In conclusion, we provide converging evidence for the view that schema congruency enables the formation of unitized representations and supports familiarity-based memory retrieval.
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Affiliation(s)
- Julia A Meßmer
- Experimental Neuropsychology Unit, Saarland University, Campus A2 4, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Regine Bader
- Experimental Neuropsychology Unit, Saarland University, Campus A2 4, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Axel Mecklinger
- Experimental Neuropsychology Unit, Saarland University, Campus A2 4, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
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Fitzgerald LP, DeDe G, Shen J. Effects of linguistic context and noise type on speech comprehension. Front Psychol 2024; 15:1345619. [PMID: 38375107 PMCID: PMC10875108 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1345619] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/28/2023] [Accepted: 01/17/2024] [Indexed: 02/21/2024] Open
Abstract
Introduction Understanding speech in background noise is an effortful endeavor. When acoustic challenges arise, linguistic context may help us fill in perceptual gaps. However, more knowledge is needed regarding how different types of background noise affect our ability to construct meaning from perceptually complex speech input. Additionally, there is limited evidence regarding whether perceptual complexity (e.g., informational masking) and linguistic complexity (e.g., occurrence of contextually incongruous words) interact during processing of speech material that is longer and more complex than a single sentence. Our first research objective was to determine whether comprehension of spoken sentence pairs is impacted by the informational masking from a speech masker. Our second objective was to identify whether there is an interaction between perceptual and linguistic complexity during speech processing. Methods We used multiple measures including comprehension accuracy, reaction time, and processing effort (as indicated by task-evoked pupil response), making comparisons across three different levels of linguistic complexity in two different noise conditions. Context conditions varied by final word, with each sentence pair ending with an expected exemplar (EE), within-category violation (WV), or between-category violation (BV). Forty young adults with typical hearing performed a speech comprehension in noise task over three visits. Each participant heard sentence pairs presented in either multi-talker babble or spectrally shaped steady-state noise (SSN), with the same noise condition across all three visits. Results We observed an effect of context but not noise on accuracy. Further, we observed an interaction of noise and context in peak pupil dilation data. Specifically, the context effect was modulated by noise type: context facilitated processing only in the more perceptually complex babble noise condition. Discussion These findings suggest that when perceptual complexity arises, listeners make use of the linguistic context to facilitate comprehension of speech obscured by background noise. Our results extend existing accounts of speech processing in noise by demonstrating how perceptual and linguistic complexity affect our ability to engage in higher-level processes, such as construction of meaning from speech segments that are longer than a single sentence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Laura P. Fitzgerald
- Speech Perception and Cognition Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, College of Public Health, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Gayle DeDe
- Speech, Language, and Brain Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, College of Public Health, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Jing Shen
- Speech Perception and Cognition Laboratory, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, College of Public Health, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, United States
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Rann JC, Almor A. Effects of verbal tasks on driving simulator performance. Cogn Res Princ Implic 2022; 7:12. [PMID: 35119569 PMCID: PMC8817015 DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00357-x] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/11/2021] [Accepted: 01/08/2022] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
We report results from a driving simulator paradigm we developed to test the fine temporal effects of verbal tasks on simultaneous tracking performance. A total of 74 undergraduate students participated in two experiments in which they controlled a cursor using the steering wheel to track a moving target and where the dependent measure was overall deviation from target. Experiment 1 tested tracking performance during slow and fast target speeds under conditions involving either no verbal input or output, passive listening to spoken prompts via headphones, or responding to spoken prompts. Experiment 2 was similar except that participants read written prompts overlain on the simulator screen instead of listening to spoken prompts. Performance in both experiments was worse during fast speeds and worst overall during responding conditions. Most significantly, fine scale time-course analysis revealed deteriorating tracking performance as participants prepared and began speaking and steadily improving performance while speaking. Additionally, post-block survey data revealed that conversation recall was best in responding conditions, and perceived difficulty increased with task complexity. Our study is the first to track temporal changes in interference at high resolution during the first hundreds of milliseconds of verbal production and comprehension. Our results are consistent with load-based theories of multitasking performance and show that language production, and, to a lesser extent, language comprehension tap resources also used for tracking. More generally, our paradigm provides a useful tool for measuring dynamical changes in tracking performance during verbal tasks due to the rapidly changing resource requirements of language production and comprehension.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jonathan C Rann
- Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, 1512 Pendelton Street, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA. .,Institute for Mind and Brain, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA.
| | - Amit Almor
- Department of Psychology, University of South Carolina, 1512 Pendelton Street, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA.,Institute for Mind and Brain, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA.,Linguistics Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA
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The more you know: Schema-congruency supports associative encoding of novel compound words. Evidence from event-related potentials. Brain Cogn 2021; 155:105813. [PMID: 34773860 DOI: 10.1016/j.bandc.2021.105813] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/25/2021] [Revised: 10/16/2021] [Accepted: 10/17/2021] [Indexed: 11/23/2022]
Abstract
We aimed to investigate the neurocognitive mechanisms of event congruency with prior (schema) knowledge for the learning of novel compound words. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during an incidental learning task, in which novel noun-noun compounds were presented in a semantically congruent context, enabling schema-supported processing, or in a neutral context. As expected, associative memory performance was better for compounds preceded by a congruent context. Although the N400 was attenuated in the congruent condition, subsequent memory effects (SMEs) in the N400 time interval did not differ across conditions, suggesting that the processes reflected in the N400 cannot account for the memory advantage in the congruent condition. However, a parietal SME was obtained for compounds preceded by a congruent context, only, which we interpret as reflecting the schema-supported formation of a conceptual compound representation. A late frontal SME was obtained in both conditions, presumably reflecting the more general inter-item associative encoding of compound constituents.
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Lemke R, Reich I, Schäfer L, Drenhaus H. Predictable Words Are More Likely to Be Omitted in Fragments-Evidence From Production Data. Front Psychol 2021; 12:662125. [PMID: 34366979 PMCID: PMC8341074 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.662125] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2021] [Accepted: 05/18/2021] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Instead of a full sentence like Bring me to the university (uttered by the passenger to a taxi driver) speakers often use fragments like To the university to get their message across. So far there is no comprehensive and empirically supported account of why and under which circumstances speakers sometimes prefer a fragment over the corresponding full sentence. We propose an information-theoretic account to model this choice: A speaker chooses the encoding that distributes information most uniformly across the utterance in order to make the most efficient use of the hearer's processing resources (Uniform Information Density, Levy and Jaeger, 2007). Since processing effort is related to the predictability of words (Hale, 2001) our account predicts two effects of word probability on omissions: First, omitting predictable words (which are more easily processed), avoids underutilizing processing resources. Second, inserting words before very unpredictable words distributes otherwise excessively high processing effort more uniformly. We test these predictions with a production study that supports both of these predictions. Our study makes two main contributions: First we develop an empirically motivated and supported account of fragment usage. Second, we extend previous evidence for information-theoretic processing constraints on language in two ways: We find predictability effects on omissions driven by extralinguistic context, whereas previous research mostly focused on effects of local linguistic context. Furthermore, we show that omissions of content words are also subject to information-theoretic well-formedness considerations. Previously, this has been shown mostly for the omission of function words.
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Affiliation(s)
- Robin Lemke
- Collaborative Research Center 1102, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.,Department of Modern German Linguistics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Ingo Reich
- Collaborative Research Center 1102, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.,Department of Modern German Linguistics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Lisa Schäfer
- Collaborative Research Center 1102, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.,Department of Modern German Linguistics, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
| | - Heiner Drenhaus
- Collaborative Research Center 1102, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany.,Department of Language Science and Technology, Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany
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