scholarly journals Prosodic categories in speech are acoustically multidimensional: evidence from dimension-based statistical learning

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Jasmin ◽  
Adam Tierney ◽  
Lori Holt
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Adaptive Plasticity ◽  
List Type ◽  
Speech Input ◽  
Accented Speech ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Multiple Input ◽  
Primary Dimension ◽  
Prosodic Categories ◽  
Perceptual Weights

AbstractSegmental speech units (e.g. phonemes) are described as multidimensional categories wherein perception involves contributions from multiple acoustic input dimensions, and the relative perceptual weights of these dimensions respond dynamically to context. Can prosodic aspects of speech spanning multiple phonemes, syllables or words be characterized similarly? Here we investigated the relative contribution of two acoustic dimensions to word emphasis. Participants categorized instances of a two-word phrase pronounced with typical covariation of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration, and in the context of an artificial ‘accent’ in which F0 and duration covaried atypically. When categorizing ‘accented’ speech, listeners rapidly down-weighted the secondary dimension (duration) while continuing to rely on the primary dimension (F0). This clarifies two core theoretical questions: 1) prosodic categories are signalled by multiple input acoustic dimensions and 2) perceptual cue weights for prosodic categories dynamically adapt to local regularities of speech input.HighlightsProsodic categories are signalled by multiple acoustic dimensions.The influence of these dimensions flexibly adapts to changes in local speech input.This adaptive plasticity may help tune perception to atypical accented speech.Similar learning models may account for segmental and suprasegmental flexibility.

scholarly journals Adaptive Plasticity Under Adverse Listening Conditions is Disrupted in Developmental Dyslexia

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Yafit Gabay ◽  
Lori L. Holt
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Developmental Dyslexia ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Acoustic Noise ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Adaptive Plasticity ◽  
Signal Distortion ◽  
Language Recognition ◽  
Speech Input ◽  
Accented Speech

Abstract Objective: Acoustic distortions to the speech signal impair spoken language recognition, but healthy listeners exhibit adaptive plasticity consistent with rapid adjustments in how the distorted speech input maps to speech representations, perhaps through engagement of supervised error-driven learning. This puts adaptive plasticity in speech perception in an interesting position with regard to developmental dyslexia inasmuch as dyslexia impacts speech processing and may involve dysfunction in neurobiological systems hypothesized to be involved in adaptive plasticity. Method: Here, we examined typical young adult listeners (N = 17), and those with dyslexia (N = 16), as they reported the identity of native-language monosyllabic spoken words to which signal processing had been applied to create a systematic acoustic distortion. During training, all participants experienced incremental signal distortion increases to mildly distorted speech along with orthographic and auditory feedback indicating word identity following response across a brief, 250-trial training block. During pretest and posttest phases, no feedback was provided to participants. Results: Word recognition across severely distorted speech was poor at pretest and equivalent across groups. Training led to improved word recognition for the most severely distorted speech at posttest, with evidence that adaptive plasticity generalized to support recognition of new tokens not previously experienced under distortion. However, training-related recognition gains for listeners with dyslexia were significantly less robust than for control listeners. Conclusions: Less efficient adaptive plasticity to speech distortions may impact the ability of individuals with dyslexia to deal with variability arising from sources like acoustic noise and foreign-accented speech.

The relative contribution of segments and intonation to the perception of foreign-accented speech

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOAN SERENO ◽  
LYNNE LAMMERS ◽  
ALLARD JONGMAN
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Relative Impact ◽  
Accented Speech ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Accented English

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the relative impact of segments and intonation on accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility, specifically investigating the separate contribution of segmental and intonational information to perceived foreign accent in Korean-accented English. Two English speakers and two Korean speakers recorded 40 English sentences. The sentences were manipulated by combining segments from one speaker with intonation (fundamental frequency contour and duration) from another speaker. Four versions of each sentence were created: one English control (English segments and English intonation), one Korean control (Korean segments and Korean intonation), and two Korean–English combinations (one with English segments and Korean intonation; the other with Korean segments and English intonation). Forty native English speakers transcribed the sentences for intelligibility and rated their comprehensibility and accentedness. The data show that segments had a significant effect on accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility, but intonation only had an effect on intelligibility. Contrary to previous studies, the present study, separating segments from intonation, suggests that segmental information contributes substantially more to the perception of foreign accentedness than intonation. Native speakers seem to rely mainly on segments when determining foreign accentedness.

scholarly journals Facilitation and biodiversity jointly drive mutualistic networks

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gianalberto Losapio ◽  
Elizabeth Norton Hasday ◽  
Xavier Espadaler ◽  
Christoph Germann ◽  
Javier Ortiz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Ecosystem Functioning ◽  
Individual Species ◽  
List Type ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Nurse Plants ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Pollinator Community ◽  
Mutualistic Networks ◽  
Understorey Plant

ABSTRACTFacilitation by legume nurse plants increase understorey diversity and support diverse ecological communities. In turn, biodiversity shapes ecological networks and supports ecosystem functioning. However, whether and how facilitation and increased biodiversity jointly influence community structure and ecosystem functioning remains unclear.We performed a field experiment disentangling the relative contribution of nurse plants and increasing understorey plant diversity in driving pollination interactions to quantify the direct and indirect contribution of facilitation and diversity to ecosystem functioning. This includes analysing pollinator communities in the following treatment combinations: (i) absence and presence of nurse plants, and (ii) understorey richness with none, one and three plant species.Facilitation by legume nurse plants and understorey diversity synergistically increase pollinator diversity. Our findings reflect diverse assemblages in which complementarity and cooperation among different plants result in no costs for individual species but benefits for the functioning of the community and the ecosystem. Drivers of network change are associated with increasing frequency of visits and non-additive changes in pollinator community composition and pollination niches.Synthesis Plant–plant facilitative systems, where a nurse shrub increases understorey plant diversity, positively influences mutualistic networks via both direct nurse effects and indirect plant diversity effects. Supporting such nurse systems is crucial not only for plant diversity but also for ecosystem functioning and services.

scholarly journals Adaptive plasticity in plant traits increases time to hydraulic failure under drought in a foundation tree

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
A Challis ◽  
CJ Blackman ◽  
CW Ahrens ◽  
BE Medlyn ◽  
PD Rymer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Drought Tolerance ◽  
Water Deficit ◽  
Plant Traits ◽  
Stomatal Closure ◽  
Adaptive Plasticity ◽  
List Type ◽  
Environment Interaction ◽  
Forest Trees ◽  
Hydraulic Failure

SummaryThe viability of forest trees, in response to climate change-associated drought, will depend on their capacity to survive through genetic adaptation and phenotypic plasticity in drought tolerance traits. Genotypes with enhanced plasticity for drought tolerance (adaptive plasticity) will have a greater ability to persist and delay the onset of hydraulic failure.Corymbia calophylla populations from two contrasting climate-origins (warm-dry and cool-wet) were grown under well-watered and chronic soil water deficit treatments in large containers. Hydraulic and allometric traits were measured and then trees were dried-down to critical levels of drought stress.Significant plasticity was detected in the warm-dry population in response to water-deficit, with adjustments in drought tolerance traits that resulted in longer dry-down times from stomatal closure to 88% loss of stem hydraulic conductance (time to hydraulic failure, THF). Plasticity was limited in the cool-wet population, indicating a significant genotype-by-environment interaction in THF.Our findings contribute information on intraspecific variation in key drought tolerance traits and THF. It highlights the need to quantify adaptive capacity in populations of forest trees facing climate change-type drought to improve predictions of forest die-back. Corymbia calophylla may benefit from assisted gene migration by introducing adaptive warm-dry populations into vulnerable cool-wet population regions.

scholarly journals WEVar: a novel statistical learning framework for predicting noncoding regulatory variants

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ye Wang ◽  
Yuchao Jiang ◽  
Bing Yao ◽  
Kun Huang ◽  
Yunlong Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Learning ◽  
Association Studies ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Genome Wide Association Studies ◽  
Scoring Methods ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Regulatory Variants ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Functional Scores

AbstractUnderstanding the functional consequence of noncoding variants is of great interest. Though genome-wide association studies (GWAS) or quantitative trait locus (QTL) analyses have identified variants associated with traits or molecular phenotypes, most of them are located in the noncoding regions, making the identification of causal variants a particular challenge. Existing computational approaches developed for for prioritizing non-coding variants produce inconsistent and even conflicting results. To address these challenges, we propose a novel statistical learning framework, which directly integrates the precomputed functional scores from representative scoring methods. It will maximize the usage of integrated methods by automatically learning the relative contribution of each method and produce an ensemble score as the final prediction. The framework consists of two modes. The first “context-free” mode is trained using curated causal regulatory variants from a wide range of context and is applicable to predict noncoding variants of unknown and diverse context. The second “context-dependent” mode further improves the prediction when the training and testing variants are from the same context. By evaluating the framework via both simulation and empirical studies, we demonstrate that it outperforms integrated scoring methods and the ensemble score successfully prioritizes experimentally validated regulatory variants in multiple risk loci.

scholarly journals DNA metabarcoding successfully quantifies relative abundances of arthropod taxa in songbird diets: a validation study using camera-recorded diets

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne I. Verkuil ◽  
Marion Nicolaus ◽  
Richard Ubels ◽  
Maurine M. Dietz ◽  
Jelmer M. Samplonius ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Validation Study ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Taxonomic Resolution ◽  
List Type ◽  
Nest Boxes ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Quantitative Accuracy ◽  
Dna Metabarcoding ◽  
Relative Abundances ◽  
Diet Analyses

AbstractEcological research is often hampered by the inability to quantify animal diets. Large-scale changes in arthropod diversity, abundance and phenologies urge the need to understand the consequences for trophic interactions. Diet composition of insectivorous predators can be tracked through DNA metabarcoding of faecal samples, but to validate the quantitative accuracy of metabarcoding, validation using free-living animals for which their diet can be approximated, is needed.This validation study assesses the use of DNA metabarcoding in quantifying diets of an insectivorous songbird. Using camera footage, we documented food items delivered to nestling Pied Flycatchers Ficedula hypoleuca, and subsequently sequenced the Cytochrome Oxidase subunit I (COI) in their faeces. Our special interest was to retrieve the relative contribution of arthropod taxa with a PCR-based protocol.Assessment of taxonomic coverage of the invertebrate COI primers LCO1490 and HCO1777, previously applied in insectivorous songbirds, demonstrated that COI barcodes were predominantly assigned to arthropod taxa, however, substantial amounts of reads (2–60%) were assigned to flycatchers. Modified primers reduced vertebrate reads to 0.03%, and yielded more spider DNA without significant changing the recovery of other arthropod taxa.To explore digestive biases, contents of stomachs and lower intestines were compared in eight adult male flycatchers, victims of competitors for nest boxes. Similarity in arthropod community composition between stomach and intestines confirmed limited digestive bias.With nest box cameras in 2013, 2015 and 2016, size-adjusted counts of prey items fed to nestlings were recorded, to approximate provided biomass of arthropod orders and families which allowed comparison with abundance of COI barcode reads in nestling faeces. The relative abundances of size-adjusted prey counts and COI reads correlated at R = 0.85 (CI:0.68-0.94) at order level and at R=0.75 (CI:0.67-0.82) at family level. Each common order and all common taxa within Lepidoptera, Diptera and Coleoptera were retrieved in similar proportions, while the taxonomic resolution was higher in barcodes than in camera records.This DNA metabarcoding validation demonstrates that quantitative arthropod diet analyses is possible in songbirds. We discuss the ecological application of our approach in approximating the arthropod diets in insectivorous birds.

Adult L2 Acquisition of Two Distinct Phonetic Forms of Anaphora

1989 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-443 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Flynn
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Study ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
First Language ◽  
List Type ◽  
Unified Theory ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Theory Of Language

Perhaps the most pervasive issue in the study of adult second language (L2) acquisition concerns the relative contribution of prior first language (L1) experience — the contrastive component — and universal grammatical principles — the constructive component — to this language learning process. Concern with this issue stems in part from basic linguistic and psychological questions about the nature of language learning in the adult and in part from the desire to integrate these two components within a framework that can provide for a unified theory of language learning in general. Current research within the field endeavors to isolate and quantify each of these two components in the adult L2 learning process.Within this context, this paper reports results of an experimental study of the acquisition of anaphora in structures such as in (1) and (2). (1) Alice helped Mary when she walked through the garden.(2) Alice helped Mary when walking through the garden.

scholarly journals Exploring the relationship between functional structure and ecosystem multifunctionality requires intraspecific trait variability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Zhang ◽  
Bill Shipley ◽  
Shurong Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Intraspecific Variability ◽  
Nitrogen Addition ◽  
High Threshold ◽  
List Type ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ecosystem Multifunctionality ◽  
Intraspecific Trait Variability ◽  
Trait Variability

AbstractRecent studies have shown that intraspecific trait variability is an important source of total trait variation in the face of global change. However, the contribution of intraspecific variability to ecosystem multifunctionality remains unknown.We calculated the mean and variability of four functional traits in an alpine meadow under long-term nitrogen addition and experimental warming and split them into interspecific and intraspecific variabilities. We then investigated their net effects and relative importance in determining ecosystem multifunctionality.We found that the effect of trait variability on multifunctionality depended not only on the number of functions, but also on the thresholds considered. Trait variability dominating ecosystem multifunctionality switched from interspecific to intraspecific when the thresholds of multifunctionality varied from low to high levels. When more functions were considered to interpret multifunctionality above high threshold levels, the relative contribution of intraspecific variability would be more important.

scholarly journals How Dynamic is the Private Sector? Job Creation and Insights from Workplace-Level Data

2013 ◽  
Vol 225 ◽  
pp. F4-F14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Butcher ◽  
Matt Bursnall
Keyword(s):  
Private Sector ◽  
Aggregate Demand ◽  
Job Creation ◽  
List Type ◽  
Job Destruction ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Accounting Terms

Private sector employment rose by over a million in the past three years. Commentators often interpret this number – which is a net figure – as ‘job creation’. But how many jobs really are created each year, and conversely how many are lost? How has this changed with the downturn and what does it imply for the recovery?This article uses findings from business and workplace-level data to map i) job creation and destruction over recent years, ii) its components in accounting terms, iii) the relative contribution by firms of different size and age, and iv) the reallocation of resource between firms and to workplaces within firms. There are four main points: a)Job churn far outweighs net change. Before the downturn, an average of 4.0 million jobs were created each year and a slightly smaller number lost (3.7m), resulting in a net increase of about 300,000 per year.b)Most job creation (over 70 per cent) is within existing firms; but within that, over a third comes from the creation of new workplaces set up within those firms.c)The net reduction in jobs in 2008–11 was not, in contrast to earlier recessions, due to higher rates of job loss; instead it reflects a sustained period of lower job creation in new workplaces, especially in SMEs (figure 1). This is consistent with ongoing credit constraints hitting SMEs particularly hard, as discussed in Armstrong et al. (2013), or could simply be in line with lack of confidence to invest at this time.d)Looking at the years 2008–11 individually, the downturn begins with reduced levels of entry, followed by a peak of job destruction in 2009 in line with reduced aggregate demand, and then a continuation of low levels of entry of new SMEs, and lower levels of destruction too (figure 2).

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