Functional Roles of Sensorimotor Alpha and Beta Oscillations in Overt Speech Production.

Power decreases, or desynchronization, of sensorimotor alpha and beta oscillations (i.e., alpha and beta ERD) have long been considered as indices of sensorimotor control in overt speech production.

Diadochokinesis Performance and Its Link to Cognitive Control: Alternating Versus Non-Alternating Diadochokinesis.

Purpose: In a previous publication, we observed that maximum speech performance in a nonclinical sample of young adult speakers producing diadochokinesis (DDK) sequences (e.g., rapidly repeating "pataka") was associated with cognitive control: Those with better cognitive switching abilities (i.

Speaking in the presence of noise: Consistency of acoustic properties in clear-Lombard speech over time.

Individual speakers are often able to modify their speech to facilitate communication in challenging conditions, such as speaking in a noisy environment. Such vocal "enrichments" might include reductions in speech rate or increases in acoustic contrasts. However, it is unclear how consistently speakers enrich their speech over time.

The relation between speaking-style categorization and speech recognition in adult cochlear implant users.

The current study examined the relation between speaking-style categorization and speech recognition in post-lingually deafened adult cochlear implant users and normal-hearing listeners tested under 4- and 8-channel acoustic noise-vocoder cochlear implant simulations. Across all listeners, better speaking-style categorization of careful read and casual conversation speech was associated with more accurate recognition of speech across those same two speaking styles. Findings suggest that some cochlear implant users and normal-hearing listeners under cochlear implant simulation may benefit from stronger encoding of indexical information in speech, enabling both better categorization and recognition of speech produced in different speaking styles.

Correction: Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Protocol of the Healthy Brain Study: An accessible resource for understanding the human brain and how it dynamically and individually operates in its bio-social context.

The endeavor to understand the human brain has seen more progress in the last few decades than in the previous two millennia. Still, our understanding of how the human brain relates to behavior in the real world and how this link is modulated by biological, social, and environmental factors is limited. To address this, we designed the Healthy Brain Study (HBS), an interdisciplinary, longitudinal, cohort study based on multidimensional, dynamic assessments in both the laboratory and the real world.

Maximum Speech Performance and Executive Control in Young Adult Speakers.

Purpose This study investigated whether maximum speech performance, more specifically, the ability to rapidly alternate between similar syllables during speech production, is associated with executive control abilities in a nonclinical young adult population. Method Seventy-eight young adult participants completed two speech tasks, both operationalized as maximum performance tasks, to index their articulatory control: a diadochokinetic (DDK) task with nonword and real-word syllable sequences and a tongue-twister task. Additionally, participants completed three cognitive tasks, each covering one element of executive control (a Flanker interference task to index inhibitory control, a letter-number switching task to index cognitive switching, and an operation span task to index updating of working memory).

The Effects of Word Frequency and Word Probability on Speech Rhythm in Dysarthria.

Purpose In healthy speakers, the more frequent and probable a word is in its context, the shorter the word tends to be. This study investigated whether these probabilistic effects were similarly sized for speakers with dysarthria of different severities. Method Fifty-six speakers of New Zealand English (42 speakers with dysarthria and 14 healthy speakers) were recorded reading the Grandfather Passage.

The impact of speaking style on speech recognition in quiet and multi-talker babble in adult cochlear implant users.

The current study examined sentence recognition across speaking styles (conversational, neutral, and clear) in quiet and multi-talker babble (MTB) for cochlear implant (CI) users and normal-hearing listeners under CI simulations. Listeners demonstrated poorer recognition accuracy in MTB than in quiet, but were relatively more accurate with clear speech overall. Within CI users, higher-performing participants were also more accurate in MTB when listening to clear speech.

Perceptual Discrimination of Speaking Style Under Cochlear Implant Simulation.

Objectives: Real-life, adverse listening conditions involve a great deal of speech variability, including variability in speaking style. Depending on the speaking context, talkers may use a more casual, reduced speaking style or a more formal, careful speaking style. Attending to fine-grained acoustic-phonetic details characterizing different speaking styles facilitates the perception of the speaking style used by the talker.

Effects of Word Frequency and Transitional Probability on Word Reading Durations of Younger and Older Speakers.

High-frequency units are usually processed faster than low-frequency units in language comprehension and language production. Frequency effects have been shown for words as well as word combinations. Word co-occurrence effects can be operationalized in terms of transitional probability (TP).

Perception of Emotion in Conversational Speech by Younger and Older Listeners.

This study investigated whether age and/or differences in hearing sensitivity influence the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (calm vs. aroused) and valence (positive vs. negative attitude) in conversational speech.

Speech rate effects on the processing of conversational speech across the adult life span.

This study investigates the effect of speech rate on spoken word recognition across the adult life span. Contrary to previous studies, conversational materials with a natural variation in speech rate were used rather than lab-recorded stimuli that are subsequently artificially time-compressed. It was investigated whether older adults' speech recognition is more adversely affected by increased speech rate compared to younger and middle-aged adults, and which individual listener characteristics (e.

Do Hearing Aids Improve Affect Perception?

Normal-hearing listeners use acoustic cues in speech to interpret a speaker's emotional state. This study investigates the effect of hearing aids on the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (aroused/calm) and valence (positive/negative attitude) in older adults with hearing loss. More specifically, we investigate whether wearing a hearing aid improves the correlation between affect ratings and affect-related acoustic parameters.

Type of Speech Material Affects Acceptable Noise Level Test Outcome.

The acceptable noise level (ANL) test, in which individuals indicate what level of noise they are willing to put up with while following speech, has been used to guide hearing aid fitting decisions and has been found to relate to prospective hearing aid use. Unlike objective measures of speech perception ability, ANL outcome is not related to individual hearing loss or age, but rather reflects an individual's inherent acceptance of competing noise while listening to speech. As such, the measure may predict aspects of hearing aid success.

Age and hearing loss and the use of acoustic cues in fricative categorization.

This study examined the use of fricative noise information and coarticulatory cues for categorization of word-final fricatives [s] and [f] by younger and older Dutch listeners alike. Particularly, the effect of information loss in the higher frequencies on the use of these two cues for fricative categorization was investigated. If information in the higher frequencies is less strongly available, fricative identification may be impaired or listeners may learn to focus more on coarticulatory information.

The role of attentional abilities in lexically guided perceptual learning by older listeners.

This study investigates two variables that may modify lexically guided perceptual learning: individual hearing sensitivity and attentional abilities. Older Dutch listeners (aged 60+ years, varying from good hearing to mild-to-moderate high-frequency hearing loss) were tested on a lexically guided perceptual learning task using the contrast [f]-[s]. This contrast mainly differentiates between the two consonants in the higher frequencies, and thus is supposedly challenging for listeners with hearing loss.

Relationship between perceptual learning in speech and statistical learning in younger and older adults.

Within a few sentences, listeners learn to understand severely degraded speech such as noise-vocoded speech. However, individuals vary in the amount of such perceptual learning and it is unclear what underlies these differences. The present study investigates whether perceptual learning in speech relates to statistical learning, as sensitivity to probabilistic information may aid identification of relevant cues in novel speech input.

What do verbal fluency tasks measure? Predictors of verbal fluency performance in older adults.

This study examined the contributions of verbal ability and executive control to verbal fluency performance in older adults (n = 82). Verbal fluency was assessed in letter and category fluency tasks, and performance on these tasks was related to indicators of vocabulary size, lexical access speed, updating, and inhibition ability. In regression analyses the number of words produced in both fluency tasks was predicted by updating ability, and the speed of the first response was predicted by vocabulary size and, for category fluency only, lexical access speed.

Identifying nonwords: effects of lexical neighborhoods, phonotactic probability, and listener characteristics.

Listeners find it relatively difficult to recognize words that are similar-sounding to other known words. In contrast, when asked to identify spoken nonwords, listeners perform better when the nonwords are similar to many words in their language. These effects of sound similarity have been assessed in multiple ways, and both sublexical (phonotactic probability) and lexical (neighborhood) effects have been reported, leading to models that incorporate multiple stages of processing.

Working memory affects older adults' use of context in spoken-word recognition.

Many older listeners report difficulties in understanding speech in noisy situations. Working memory and other cognitive skills may modulate older listeners' ability to use context information to alleviate the effects of noise on spoken-word recognition. In the present study, we investigated whether verbal working memory predicts older adults' ability to immediately use context information in the recognition of words embedded in sentences, presented in different listening conditions.

Comparing lexically guided perceptual learning in younger and older listeners.

Numerous studies have shown that younger adults engage in lexically guided perceptual learning in speech perception. Here, we investigated whether older listeners are also able to retune their phonetic category boundaries. More specifically, in this research we tried to answer two questions.

Predicting foreign-accent adaptation in older adults.

We investigated comprehension of and adaptation to speech in an unfamiliar accent in older adults. Participants performed a speeded sentence verification task for accented sentences: one group upon auditory-only presentation, and the other group upon audiovisual presentation. Our questions were whether audiovisual presentation would facilitate adaptation to the novel accent, and which cognitive and linguistic measures would predict adaptation.

A non-auditory measure of interference predicts distraction by competing speech in older adults.

In this study, older adults monitored for pre-assigned target sounds in a target talker's speech in a quiet (no noise) condition and in a condition with competing-talker noise. The question was to which extent the impact of the competing-talker noise on performance could be predicted from individual hearing loss and from a cognitive measure of inhibitory abilities, i.e.

Comprehension of a novel accent by young and older listeners.

The authors investigated perceptual learning of a novel accent in young and older listeners through measuring speech reception thresholds (SRTs) using speech materials spoken in a novel-unfamiliar-accent. Younger and older listeners adapted to this accent, but older listeners showed poorer comprehension of the accent. Furthermore, perceptual learning differed across groups: The older listeners stopped learning after the first block, whereas younger listeners showed further improvement with longer exposure.