The Processing of Synthetic Speech by Older and Younger Adults

1992 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 190-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janan Al-Awar Smither

This experiment investigated the demands synthetic speech places on short term memory by comparing performance of old and young adults on an ordinary short term memory task. Items presented were generated by a human speaker or by a text-to-speech computer synthesizer. Results were consistent with the idea that the comprehension of synthetic speech imposes increased resource demands on the short term memory system. Older subjects performed significantly more poorly than younger subjects, and both groups performed more poorly with synthetic than with human speech. Findings suggest that short term memory demands imposed by the processing of synthetic speech should be investigated further, particularly regarding the implementation of voice response systems in devices for the elderly.

1989 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 239-241
Author(s):  
Margaret Thomas ◽  
Richard Gilson ◽  
Sharon Ziulkowski ◽  
Stephen Gibbons

The purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the demands placed on the short term memory system by synthetic speech. We compared performance in a typical auditory short term memory task as a function of whether the items were presented by a human voice or by a text-to-speech computer voice generator. Immediate serial recall of digit strings was significantly poorer when presented by synthetic speech than when presented by natural speech. The results are consistent with the idea that comprehension of synthetic speech imposes increased resource demands on the short term memory system.


Author(s):  
Francesco Panico ◽  
Stefania De Marco ◽  
Laura Sagliano ◽  
Francesca D’Olimpio ◽  
Dario Grossi ◽  
...  

AbstractThe Corsi Block-Tapping test (CBT) is a measure of spatial working memory (WM) in clinical practice, requiring an examinee to reproduce sequences of cubes tapped by an examiner. CBT implies complementary behaviors in the examiners and the examinees, as they have to attend a precise turn taking. Previous studies demonstrated that the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is activated during CBT, but scarce evidence is available on the neural correlates of CBT in the real setting. We assessed PFC activity in dyads of examiner–examinee participants while completing the real version of CBT, during conditions of increasing and exceeding workload. This procedure allowed to investigate whether brain activity in the dyads is coordinated. Results in the examinees showed that PFC activity was higher when the workload approached or reached participants’ spatial WM span, and lower during workload conditions that were largely below or above their span. Interestingly, findings in the examiners paralleled the ones in the examinees, as examiners’ brain activity increased and decreased in a similar way as the examinees’ one. In the examiners, higher left-hemisphere activity was observed suggesting the likely activation of non-spatial WM processes. Data support a bell-shaped relationship between cognitive load and brain activity, and provide original insights on the cognitive processes activated in the examiner during CBT.


2016 ◽  
Vol 127 (6) ◽  
pp. 2423-2435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Chapman ◽  
Margaret N. Gardner ◽  
Mark Mapstone ◽  
Rafael Klorman ◽  
Anton P. Porsteinsson ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (6) ◽  
pp. 925-925
Author(s):  
A Guerra ◽  
J Moses ◽  
J Rivera ◽  
M Davis ◽  
K Hakinson

Abstract Objective Examine whether verbal abilities may help explain the learning strategies people employ when completing a short-term verbal memory task. Methods The assessment records of 296 American Veterans with diverse neuropsychiatric conditions were analyzed using Exploratory Factor Analyses. There were no exclusion criteria. All participants completed the Benton Serial Digit Learning Test – 9 Digits (SDL-9) and Visual Naming (VisNam), Sentence Repetition (SenRep), Controlled Word Association (COWA), and Token Tests of the Multilingual Aphasia Examination (MAE). Individual assessment instruments were factored using Principal Component Analyses (PCA). A three-factor solution of the SDL-9 was co-factored with the verbal components of the MAE to identify common sources of variance. Results A three-factor solution of the SDL-9 separated trials into three overlapping factors consisting of early (SDL-9_Early), middle (SDL-9_Middle), and late (SDL-9_Late) trials. Co-factoring the three new scales with the verbal components of the MAE produced a four-factor model explaining 67.85% of the shared variance: 1) SenRep loaded with SDL-9_Early, 2) COWAT loaded with SDL-9_Middle and SDL-9_Late, 3) Token loaded with SDL-9_Late, and 4) Vis Nam loaded with SDL-9_Late. Conclusions The results suggest that individuals may engage verbal abilities differently as they progress from simpler to more difficult verbal short-term memory tasks. It appears performance in early trials is mostly associated with rote repetition and performance on middle trials is mostly associated with verbal fluency, while performance on the late trials is associated with a combination of verbal fluency, auditory comprehension, and conceptual organization/naming. This may therefore indicate a shift in learning strategy to meet increased cognitive demands.


1972 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila Jones

Author(s):  
Jennifer H. Coane ◽  
Dawn M. McBride ◽  
Bascom A. Raulerson III ◽  
J. Scott Jordan

The Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM; Roediger & McDermott, 1995 ) paradigm reliably elicits false memories for critical nonpresented words in recognition tasks. The present studies used a Sternberg (1966) task with DRM lists to determine whether false memories occur in short-term memory tasks and to assess the contribution of latency data in the measurement of false memories. Subjects studied three, five, or seven items from DRM lists and responded to a single probe (studied or nonstudied). In both experiments, critical lures were falsely recognized more often than nonpresented weak associates. Latency data indicated that correct rejections of critical lures were slower than correct rejections of weakly related items at all set sizes. False alarms to critical lures were slower than hits to list items. Latency data can distinguish veridical and false memories in a short-term memory task. Results are discussed in terms of activation-monitoring models of false memory.


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