Effects of Cognitive Load on the Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones

Author(s):  
Yan Feng ◽  
Yaru Meng ◽  
Hanfei Li ◽  
Gang Peng

Purpose This study investigated the effect of cognitive load (CL) on the categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical tones to discuss the application of the generalized pulse-skipping hypothesis. This hypothesis assumes that listeners might miss/skip temporal pulses and lose essential speech information due to CL, which consequently affects both the temporal and spectral dimensions of speech perception. Should CL decrease listeners' pitch sensitivity and impair the distinction of tone categories, this study would support the generalized pulse-skipping hypothesis. Method Twenty-four native Mandarin-speaking listeners were recruited to complete a dual-task experiment where they were required to identify or discriminate tone stimuli while concurrently memorizing six Chinese characters or graphic symbols. A no-load condition without a memory recall task was also included as a baseline condition. The position of categorical boundary, identification slope, between- and within-category discrimination, and discrimination peakedness were compared across the three conditions to measure the impact of CL on tone perception. The recall accuracy of Chinese characters and graphic symbols was used to assess the difficulty of memory recall. Results Compared with the no-load condition, both load conditions showed a boundary shift to Tone 3, shallower identification slope, poorer between-category discrimination, and lower discrimination peakedness. Within-category discrimination was negatively affected by CL in the graphic symbol condition only, not in the Chinese character condition. Conclusions CL degraded listeners' sensitivity to subtle fundamental frequency changes and impaired CP of Mandarin lexical tones. This provides support for the generalized pulse-skipping hypothesis. Besides, the involvement of lexical information modulated the effect of CL.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Paul Harrison

<p>Consumers have become the targets of a dual threat; more frequent requests for personal information and increased multitasking leading to distraction. This paper investigates the impact of cognitive load on the propensity to disclose personal information. A between-subjects experimental design was employed wherein participants completed a fictitious company questionnaire which asked for personal information whilst participants simultaneously remembered a 7-digit (Cognitive load condition) or 2-digit (Control condition) number. Upon completion of the questionnaire participants were asked to recall their number before answering several additional surveys and demographic questions. The results suggest that cognitive load influences the level of personal information disclosure in such a way that individuals tasked to remember a 7-digit number were more likely to disclose their personal information. Results also demonstrated the impact of information sensitivity, perceived risk, perceived worry, and need for cognition on three dependent variables: absolute disclosure, quality of disclosure, and response latency. The research adds greater nuance to the privacy paradox literature by proposing cognitive load as a key factor. Moreover, the results provide implications for marketing practitioners and policymakers regarding the acquisition of consumer’s personal information.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Paul Harrison

<p>Consumers have become the targets of a dual threat; more frequent requests for personal information and increased multitasking leading to distraction. This paper investigates the impact of cognitive load on the propensity to disclose personal information. A between-subjects experimental design was employed wherein participants completed a fictitious company questionnaire which asked for personal information whilst participants simultaneously remembered a 7-digit (Cognitive load condition) or 2-digit (Control condition) number. Upon completion of the questionnaire participants were asked to recall their number before answering several additional surveys and demographic questions. The results suggest that cognitive load influences the level of personal information disclosure in such a way that individuals tasked to remember a 7-digit number were more likely to disclose their personal information. Results also demonstrated the impact of information sensitivity, perceived risk, perceived worry, and need for cognition on three dependent variables: absolute disclosure, quality of disclosure, and response latency. The research adds greater nuance to the privacy paradox literature by proposing cognitive load as a key factor. Moreover, the results provide implications for marketing practitioners and policymakers regarding the acquisition of consumer’s personal information.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junzhou Ma ◽  
Jiaqiang Zhu ◽  
Yuxiao Yang ◽  
Fei Chen

This study investigated the developmental trajectories of categorical perception (CP) of segments (i.e., stops) and suprasegments (i.e., lexical tones) in an attempt to examine the perceptual development of phonological categories and whether CP of suprasegments develops in parallel with that of segments. Forty-seven Mandarin-speaking monolingual preschoolers aged four to six years old, and fourteen adults completed both identification and discrimination tasks of the Tone 1-2 continuum and the /pa/-/pha/ continuum. Results revealed that children could perceive both lexical tones and aspiration of stops in a categorical manner by age four. The boundary position did not depend on age, with children having similar positions to adults regardless of speech continuum types. The boundary width, on the other hand, reached the adult-like level at age six for lexical tones, but not for stops. In addition, the within-category discrimination score did not differ significantly between children and adults for both continua. The between-category discrimination score improved with age and achieved the adult-like level at age five for lexical tones, but still not for stops even at age six. It suggests that the fine-grained perception of phonological categories is a protracted process, and the improvement and varying timeline of the development of segments and suprasegments are discussed in relation to statistical learning of the regularities of speech sounds in ambient language, ongoing maturation of perceptual systems, the memory mechanism underlying perceptual learning, and the intrinsic nature of speech elements.


2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Mueller ◽  
John C. Anderson

An auditor generating potential explanations for an unusual variance in analytical review may utilize a decision aid, which provides many explanations. However, circumstances of budgetary constraints and limited cognitive load deter an auditor from using a lengthy list of explanations in an information search. A two-way between-subjects design was created to investigate the effects of two complementary approaches to trimming down the lengthy list on the number of remaining explanations carried forward into an information search. These two approaches, which represent the same goal (reducing the list) but framed differently, are found to result in a significantly different number of remaining explanations, in both low- and high-risk audit environments. The results of the study suggest that the extent to which an auditor narrows the lengthy list of explanations is important to the implementation of decision aids in analytical review.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110072
Author(s):  
Pieter Van Dessel ◽  
Jeremy Cone ◽  
Anne Gast

We sometimes learn about certain behaviors of others that we consider diagnostic of their character (e.g., that they did immoral things). Recent research has shown that such information trumps the impact of other (less diagnostic) information both on self-reported evaluations and on more automatic evaluations as probed with indirect measures such as the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP). We examined whether facilitating memory recall of alternative information moderates the impact of diagnostic information on evaluation. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants learned one diagnostic positive and one diagnostic negative behavior of two unfamiliar people. Presenting a cue semantically related to this information during evaluation influenced AMP scores but not self-reported liking scores. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that elaborative rehearsal of low diagnostic information eliminated diagnosticity effects on AMP scores and reduced them on self-reported liking scores. These findings help elucidate the role of memory recall and diagnosticity in evaluation.


Author(s):  
Laura J. Bianchi ◽  
Alan Kingstone ◽  
Evan F. Risko

Abstract The effect of cognitive load on social attention was examined across three experiments in a live pedestrian passing scenario (Experiments 1 and 2) and with the same scenario presented as a video (Experiment 3). In all three experiments, the load was manipulated using an auditory 2-back task. While the participant was wearing a mobile eye-tracker, the participant’s fixation behavior toward a confederate was recorded and analyzed based on temporal proximity from the confederate (near or far) and the specific regions of the confederate being observed (i.e., head or body). In Experiment 1 we demonstrated an effect of cognitive load such that there was a lower proportion of fixations and time spent fixating toward the confederate in the load condition. A similar pattern of results was found in Experiment 2 when a within-subject design was used. In Experiment 3, which employed a less authentic social situation (i.e., video), a similar effect of cognitive load was observed. Collectively, these results suggest attentional resources play a central role in social attentional behaviors in both authentic (real-world) and less authentic (video recorded) situations.


Author(s):  
Ana Guerberof Arenas ◽  
Joss Moorkens ◽  
Sharon O’Brien

AbstractThis paper presents results of the effect of different translation modalities on users when working with the Microsoft Word user interface. An experimental study was set up with 84 Japanese, German, Spanish, and English native speakers working with Microsoft Word in three modalities: the published translated version, a machine translated (MT) version (with unedited MT strings incorporated into the MS Word interface) and the published English version. An eye-tracker measured the cognitive load and usability according to the ISO/TR 16982 guidelines: i.e., effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction followed by retrospective think-aloud protocol. The results show that the users’ effectiveness (number of tasks completed) does not significantly differ due to the translation modality. However, their efficiency (time for task completion) and self-reported satisfaction are significantly higher when working with the released product as opposed to the unedited MT version, especially when participants are less experienced. The eye-tracking results show that users experience a higher cognitive load when working with MT and with the human-translated versions as opposed to the English original. The results suggest that language and translation modality play a significant role in the usability of software products whether users complete the given tasks or not and even if they are unaware that MT was used to translate the interface.


2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110263
Author(s):  
Philippe Blondé ◽  
Marco Sperduti ◽  
Dominique Makowski ◽  
Pascale Piolino

Mind wandering, defined as focusing attention toward task unrelated thoughts, is a common mental state known to impair memory encoding. This phenomenon is closely linked to boredom. Very few studies, however, have tested the potential impact of boredom on memory encoding. Thus, the present study aimed at manipulating mind wandering and boredom during an incidental memory encoding task, to test their differential impact on memory encoding. Thirty-two participants performed a variant of the n-back task in which they had to indicate if the current on-screen object was the same as the previous one (1-back; low working memory load) or the one presented three trials before (3-back; high working memory load). Moreover, thought probes assessing either mind wandering or boredom were randomly presented. Afterward, a surprise recognition task was delivered. Results showed that mind wandering and boredom were highly correlated, and both decreased in the high working memory load condition, while memory performance increased. Although both boredom and mind wandering predicted memory performance taken separately, we found that mind wandering was the only reliable predictor of memory performance when controlling for boredom and working memory load. Model comparisons also revealed that a model with boredom only was outperformed by a model with mind wandering only and a model with both mind wandering and boredom, suggesting that the predictive contribution of boredom in the complete model is minimal. The present results confirm the high correlation between mind wandering and boredom and suggest that the hindering effect of boredom on memory is subordinate to the effect of mind wandering.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document