Anticipation and Stuttering: A Pupillographic Study

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 833-839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth C. Gray ◽  
Dean E. Williams

Changes in pupil size were studied in 24 stuttering and 30 nonstuttering adults during a 4-sec period following the presentation of single-word auditory stimuli and before a signal to respond. Subjects were required first to respond with a single word which was the opposite of the word presented and later to give a one-word free-association response to words of both emotional and neutral connotations. Pupil size was measured also while subjects merely listened to the word stimuli. The process of attending to an auditory stimulus was associated with pupil dilation. Pupil response was significantly greater (in absolute diameter and in dilation) when subjects were required to give an oral response to the stimulus than when they simply listened to the stimulus. Furthermore, the extent of the pupil reaction was related to the nature of the stimulus presented. Such differences in arousal did not occur to any greater degree in stutterers than in nonstutterers. Moreover, among stutterers, measures of pupil size were not predictive of stuttering. Thus, the cues which the stutterer associates with the anticipation of stuttering do not appear to be reflected in the physiological changes associated with pupillary movement.

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-133 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Fougner Skaansar ◽  
Bruno Laeng ◽  
Anne Danielsen

The present study tested two assumptions concerning the auditory processing of microtiming in musical grooves (i.e., repeating, movement-inducing rhythmic patterns): 1) Microtiming challenges the listener's internal framework of timing regularities, or meter, and demands cognitive effort. 2) Microtiming promotes a “groove” experience—a pleasant sense of wanting to move along with the music. Using professional jazz musicians and nonmusicians as participants, we hypothesized that microtiming asynchronies between bass and drums (varying from −80 to 80 ms) were related to a) an increase in “mental effort” (as indexed by pupillometry), and b) a decrease in the quality of sensorimotor synchronization (as indexed by reduced finger tapping stability). We found bass/drums-microtiming asynchronies to be positively related to pupil dilation and negatively related to tapping stability. In contrast, we found that steady timekeeping (presence of eighth note hi-hat in the grooves) decreased pupil size and increased tapping performance, though there were no conclusive differences in pupil response between musicians and nonmusicians. However, jazz musicians consistently tapped with higher stability than nonmusicians, reflecting an effect of rhythmic expertise. Except for the condition most closely resembling real music, participants preferred the on-the-grid grooves to displacements in microtiming and bass-succeeding-drums-conditions were preferred over the reverse.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabell Hubert Lyall ◽  
Juhani Järvikivi

AbstractResearch suggests that listeners’ comprehension of spoken language is concurrently affected by linguistic and non-linguistic factors, including individual difference factors. However, there is no systematic research on whether general personality traits affect language processing. We correlated 88 native English-speaking participants’ Big-5 traits with their pupillary responses to spoken sentences that included grammatical errors, "He frequently have burgers for dinner"; semantic anomalies, "Dogs sometimes chase teas"; and statements incongruent with gender stereotyped expectations, such as "I sometimes buy my bras at Hudson's Bay", spoken by a male speaker. Generalized additive mixed models showed that the listener's Openness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism traits modulated resource allocation to the three different types of unexpected stimuli. No personality trait affected changes in pupil size across the board: less open participants showed greater pupil dilation when processing sentences with grammatical errors; and more introverted listeners showed greater pupil dilation in response to both semantic anomalies and socio-cultural clashes. Our study is the first one demonstrating that personality traits systematically modulate listeners’ online language processing. Our results suggest that individuals with different personality profiles exhibit different patterns of the allocation of cognitive resources during real-time language comprehension.


1984 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 212-214
Author(s):  
H. W. Craver

The reliability of an attention-focusing technique was assessed for 12 subjects over 4 sessions. Subjects' thought intrusions were counted while they were focusing on either visual or auditory stimuli. Digital temperatures were recorded and an experimental-situation questionnaire was administered. This technique provides extremely reliable self-reports across the sessions. The total number of intrusions was higher for the auditory stimulus than for the visual stimulus. The study's relevance to assessing self-monitoring techniques such as meditation is discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 172-177
Author(s):  
Łukasz Tyburcy ◽  
Małgorzata Plechawska-Wójcik

The paper describes results of comparison of reactions times to visual and auditory stimuli using EEG evoked potentials. Two experiments were used to applied. The first one explored reaction times to visual stimulus and the second one to auditory stimulus. After conducting an analysis of data, received results enable determining that visual stimuli evoke faster reactions than auditory stimuli.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Nella Carminati ◽  
Pia Knoeferle

Background: Prior visual-world research has demonstrated that emotional priming of spoken sentence processing is rapidly modulated by age. Older and younger participants saw two photographs of a positive and of a negative event side-by-side and listened to a spoken sentence about one of these events. Older adults’ fixations to the mentioned (positive) event were enhanced when the still photograph of a previously-inspected positive-valence speaker face was (vs. wasn’t) emotionally congruent with the event/sentence. By contrast, the younger adults exhibited such an enhancement with negative stimuli only. Objective: The first aim of the current study was to assess the replicability of these findings with dynamic face stimuli (unfolding from neutral to happy or sad). A second goal was to assess a key prediction made by socio-emotional selectivity theory, viz. that the positivity effect (a preference for positive information) displayed by older adults involves cognitive effort. Method: We conducted an eye-tracking visual-world experiment. Results: Most priming and age effects, including the positivity effects, replicated. However, against our expectations, the positive gaze preference in older adults did not co-vary with a standard measure of cognitive effort - increased pupil dilation. Instead, pupil size was significantly bigger when (both younger and older) adults processed negative than positive stimuli. Conclusion: These findings are in line with previous research on the relationship between positive gaze preferences and pupil dilation. We discuss both theoretical and methodological implications of these results.


1989 ◽  
Vol 69 (3-2) ◽  
pp. 1351-1367
Author(s):  
Robert S. Sturgeon ◽  
Leslie M. Cooper ◽  
Robert J. Howell

15 highly aroused snake phobics individually constructed fear hierarchies by selecting colored photographs of snakes. Subjects either imagined fear scenes based on their photographs or were exposed to duplicate projected slides during desensitization. Pupillary responses of the Slide Group were also recorded before, during, and after desensitization. Fear of snakes was significantly reduced for both groups within five or fewer desensitization sessions. Changes in pupil size of the Slide Group appear to reflect arousal of fear as well as reduction of fear after treatment. Current technology makes pupillary response a viable psychophysiological measure of fear.


2002 ◽  
Vol 55 (1b) ◽  
pp. 61-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Pearce ◽  
David N. George ◽  
Aydan Aydin

Rats received Pavlovian conditioning in which food was signalled by a visual stimulus, A+, an auditory stimulus, B+, and a compound composed of different visual and auditory stimuli, CD+. Test trials were then given with the compound AB. Experiments 1 and 2A revealed stronger responding during AB than during CD. In Experiment 2B, there was no evidence of a summation of responding during AB when A+ B+ training was conducted in the absence of CD+ trials. A further failure to observe abnormally strong responding during ABwas found in Experiment 3 for which the training trials with A+ B+ CD+ were accompanied by trials in which C and D were separately paired with food. The results are explained in terms of a configural theory of conditioning, which assumes that responding during a compound is determined by generalization from its components, as well as from other compounds to which it is similar.


1989 ◽  
Vol 69 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 1351-1367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Sturgeon ◽  
Leslie M. Cooper ◽  
Robert J. Howell

15 highly aroused snake phobics individually constructed fear hierarchies by selecting colored photographs of snakes. Subjects either imagined fear scenes based on their photographs or were exposed to duplicate projected slides during desensitization. Pupillary responses of the Slide Group were also recorded before, during, and after desensitization. Fear of snakes was significantly reduced for both groups within five or fewer desensitization sessions. Changes in pupil size of the Slide Group appear to reflect arousal of fear as well as reduction of fear after treatment. Current technology makes pupillary response a viable psychophysiological measure of fear.


1963 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul M. Kjeldergaard ◽  
John B. Carroll

The first 50 stimuli from the K-R list, two personality tests (the MCI and the GZTS), and 26 verbal ability paper-and-pencil tests were given to a large number of senior high school students. Two response categories for the K-R, opposites and non-opposite primaries, and the personality tests had low correlations, most of which did not differ significantly from zero. This finding is consistent with that of previous investigators. The correlations between the K-R response classes and the 26 verbal tests, however, yielded different results. The non-opposite primaries tended to exhibit low positive (significant) correlations with the verbal tests, whereas the opposite scores showed essentially zero correlations with these same tests. These findings were interpreted as further supporting the contention that commonality scores do not represent a unitary verbal habit.


2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (9) ◽  
pp. 1253-1263 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAMNI GOEL ◽  
GLENDA R. ETWAROO

Background. Bright light and high-density negative air ion exposure are efficacious for winter and non-seasonal depression compared with a low-density negative ion placebo. Similarly, auditory stimuli improve mood in clinical populations. This study compared the short-term effects of bright light, an auditory stimulus, and high- and low-density negative ions on mood and alertness in mildly depressed and non-depressed adults.Method. One hundred and eighteen subjects, 69 women and 49 men (mean age±S.D., 19·4±1·7 years), participated once across the year. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: bright light (10000 lux; n=29), auditory stimuli (60 dB; n=30), or high-density (4·5×1014 ions/s flow rate; n=29) or low-density (1·7×1011 ions/s; n=30; placebo control) negative ions. Exposure was for 30 min on three consecutive evenings between 1900 and 2100 hours. Mood and alertness assessments, using standardized scales, occurred before, and 15 and 30 min during exposure. The Beck Depression Inventory classified subjects as depressed ([ges ]10; n=35) or non-depressed (<10; n=83).Results. The three active stimuli, but not the low-density placebo, reduced depression, total mood disturbance (a global affect measure) and/or anger within 15–30 min. Neither testing season nor degree of depressive symptoms affected response to stimuli.Conclusions. The auditory stimulus, bright light and high-density ions all produced rapid mood changes – with small to medium effect sizes – in depressed and non-depressed subjects, compared with the low-density placebo, despite equivalent pre-study expectations. Thus, these stimuli improve mood acutely in a student sample, including a subset with depressive symptoms.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document