scholarly journals The Effects of Input Modality, Word Difficulty and Reading Experience on Word Recognition Accuracy

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Merel C. Wolf ◽  
Antje S. Meyer ◽  
Caroline F. Rowland ◽  
Florian Hintz
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Modality Effect ◽  
Input Modality ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Word Difficulty

Language users encounter words in at least two different modalities. Arguably, the most frequent encounters are in spoken or written form. Previous research has shown that – compared to the spoken modality – written language features more difficult words. An important question is whether input modality has effects on word recognition accuracy. In the present study, we investigated whether input modality (spoken, written, or bimodal) affected word recognition accuracy and whether such a modality effect interacted with word difficulty. Moreover, we tested whether the participants’ reading experience interacted with word difficulty and whether this interaction was influenced by modality. We re-analyzed data from 48 Dutch university students that were collected in the context of a vocabulary test development to assess in which modality test words should be presented. Participants carried out a word recognition task, where non-words and words of varying difficulty were presented in auditory, visual and audio-visual modalities. In addition, they completed a receptive vocabulary and an author recognition test to measure their exposure to literary texts. Our re-analyses showed that word difficulty interacted with reading experience in that frequent readers (i.e., with more exposure to written texts) were more accurate in recognizing difficult words than individuals who read less frequently. However, there was no evidence for an effect of input modality on word recognition accuracy, nor for interactions with word difficulty or reading experience. Thus, in our study, input modality did not influence word recognition accuracy. We discuss the implications of this finding and describe possibilities for future research involving other groups of participants and/or different languages.

scholarly journals The effects of input modality, word difficulty and reading experience on word recognition accuracy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Merel C. Wolf ◽  
antje meyer ◽  
Caroline F Rowland ◽  
Florian Hintz
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Modality Effect ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Input Modality ◽  
Reading Experience ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Word Difficulty

Language users encounter words in at least two different modalities. Arguably, the most frequent encounters are in spoken or written form. Previous research has shown that – compared to the spoken modality – written language features more difficult words. Thus, frequent reading might have effects on word recognition. In the present study, we investigated 1) whether input modality (spoken, written, or bimodal) has an effect on word recognition accuracy, 2) whether this modality effect interacts with word difficulty, 3) whether the interaction of word difficulty and reading experience impacts word recognition accuracy, and 4) whether this interaction is influenced by input modality. To do so, we re-analysed a dataset that was collected in the context of a vocabulary test development to assess in which modality test words should be presented. Participants had carried out a word recognition task, where non-words and words of varying difficulty were presented in auditory, visual and audio-visual modalities. In addition to this main experiment, participants had completed a receptive vocabulary and an author recognition test to measure their reading experience. Our re-analyses did not reveal evidence for an effect of input modality on word recognition accuracy, nor for interactions with word difficulty or language experience. Word difficulty interacted with reading experience in that frequent readers were more accurate in recognizing difficult words than individuals who read less frequently. Practical implications are discussed.

Talker Adaptation and Lexical Difficulty Impact Word Recognition in Adults with Cochlear Implants

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Terrin N. Tamati ◽  
Aaron C. Moberly
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Real World ◽  
Temporal Processing ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Individual Performance ◽  
Auditory Sensitivity ◽  
High Performing ◽  
Sentence Recognition ◽  
Talker Adaptation

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Talker-specific adaptation facilitates speech recognition in normal-hearing listeners. This study examined talker adaptation in adult cochlear implant (CI) users. Three hypotheses were tested: (1) high-performing adult CI users show improved word recognition following exposure to a talker (“talker adaptation”), particularly for lexically hard words, (2) individual performance is determined by auditory sensitivity and neurocognitive skills, and (3) individual performance relates to real-world functioning. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> Fifteen high-performing, post-lingually deaf adult CI users completed a word recognition task consisting of 6 single-talker blocks (3 female/3 male native English speakers); words were lexically “easy” and “hard.” Recognition accuracy was assessed “early” and “late” (first vs. last 10 trials); adaptation was assessed as the difference between late and early accuracy. Participants also completed measures of spectral-temporal processing and neurocognitive skills, as well as real-world measures of multiple-talker sentence recognition and quality of life (QoL). <b><i>Results:</i></b> CI users showed limited talker adaptation overall, but performance improved for lexically hard words. Stronger spectral-temporal processing and neurocognitive skills were weakly to moderately associated with more accurate word recognition and greater talker adaptation for hard words. Finally, word recognition accuracy for hard words was moderately related to multiple-talker sentence recognition and QoL. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> Findings demonstrate a limited talker adaptation benefit for recognition of hard words in adult CI users. Both auditory sensitivity and neurocognitive skills contribute to performance, suggesting additional benefit from adaptation for individuals with stronger skills. Finally, processing differences related to talker adaptation and lexical difficulty may be relevant to real-world functioning.

scholarly journals Effects of acute alcohol consumption on emotion recognition in social alcohol drinkers

2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasmine N Khouja ◽  
Angela S Attwood ◽  
Ian S Penton-Voak ◽  
Marcus R Munafò
Keyword(s):  
Placebo Group ◽  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Future Research ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Weak Support ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
N 93

Background: Research suggests that acute alcohol consumption alters recognition of emotional expressions. Extending this work, we investigated the effects of alcohol on recognition of six primary expressions of emotion. Methods: We conducted two studies using a 2 × 6 experimental design with a between-subjects factor of drink (alcohol, placebo) and a within-subjects factor of emotion (anger, disgust, sadness, surprise, happiness, fear). Study one ( n = 110) was followed by a direct replication study ( n = 192). Participants completed a six alternative forced choice emotion recognition task following consumption of 0.4 g/kg alcohol or placebo. Dependent variables were recognition accuracy (i.e. hits) and false alarms. Results: There was no clear evidence of differences in recognition accuracy between groups ( ps > .58). In study one, there were more false alarms for anger in the alcohol compared to placebo group ( n = 52 and 56, respectively; t(94.6) = 2.26, p = .024, d = .44) and fewer false alarms for happiness ( t(106) = –2.42, p = .017, d = –.47). However, no clear evidence for these effects was found in study two (alcohol group n = 96, placebo group n = 93, ps > .22). When the data were combined we observed weak evidence of an effect of alcohol on false alarms of anger ( t(295) = 2.25, p = .025, d = .26). Conclusions: These studies find weak support for biased anger perception following acute alcohol consumption in social consumers, which could have implications for alcohol-related aggression. Future research should investigate the robustness of this effect, particularly in individuals high in trait aggression.

Listener Expertise Enhances Intelligibility of Vocalizations in Death Metal Music

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-539 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirk N. Olsen ◽  
William Forde Thompson ◽  
Iain Giblin
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
Music Training ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
Fundamental Frequencies ◽  
Death Metal ◽  
Acoustic Conditions ◽  
Trial Participants

Death Metal music with violent themes is characterized by vocalizations with unnaturally low fundamental frequencies and high levels of distortion and roughness. These attributes decrease the signal to noise ratio, rendering linguistic content difficult to understand and leaving the impression of growling, screaming, or other non-linguistic vocalizations associated with aggression and fear. Here, we compared the ability of fans and non-fans of Death Metal to accurately perceive sung words extracted from Death Metal music. We also examined whether music training confers an additional benefit to intelligibility. In a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design (fans/non-fans, musicians/nonmusicians), four groups of participants (n = 16 per group) were presented with 24 sung words (one per trial), extracted from the popular American Death Metal band Cannibal Corpse. On each trial, participants completed a four-alternative forced-choice word recognition task. Intelligibility (word recognition accuracy) was above chance for all groups and was significantly enhanced for fans (65.88%) relative to non-fans (51.04%). In the fan group, intelligibility between musicians and nonmusicians was statistically similar. In the non-fan group, intelligibility was significantly greater for musicians relative to nonmusicians. Results are discussed in the context of perceptual learning and the benefits of expertise for decoding linguistic information in sub-optimum acoustic conditions.

OFFLINE YORÙBÁ HANDWRITTEN WORD RECOGNITION USING GEOMETRIC FEATURE EXTRACTION AND SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINE CLASSIFIER

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 504
Author(s):  
Matthias Omotayo Oladele ◽  
Temilola Morufat Adepoju ◽  
Olaide ` Abiodun Olatoke ◽  
Oluwaseun Adewale Ojo
Keyword(s):  
Support Vector Machine ◽  
Feature Extraction ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Support Vector Machine Classifier ◽  
Recognition Accuracy ◽  
Recognition System ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Geometric Features ◽  
Total Length ◽  
Yoruba Language

Yorùbá language is one of the three main languages that is been spoken in Nigeria. It is a tonal language that carries an accent on the vowel alphabets. There are twenty-five (25) alphabets in Yorùbá language with one of the alphabets a digraph (GB). Due to the difficulty in typing handwritten Yorùbá documents, there is a need to develop a handwritten recognition system that can convert the handwritten texts to digital format. This study discusses the offline Yorùbá handwritten word recognition system (OYHWR) that recognizes Yorùbá uppercase alphabets. Handwritten characters and words were obtained from different writers using the paint application and M708 graphics tablets. The characters were used for training and the words were used for testing. Pre-processing was done on the images and the geometric features of the images were extracted using zoning and gradient-based feature extraction. Geometric features are the different line types that form a particular character such as the vertical, horizontal, and diagonal lines. The geometric features used are the number of horizontal lines, number of vertical lines, number of right diagonal lines, number of left diagonal lines, total length of all horizontal lines, total length of all vertical lines, total length of all right slanting lines, total length of all left-slanting lines and the area of the skeleton. The characters are divided into 9 zones and gradient feature extraction was used to extract the horizontal and vertical components and geometric features in each zone. The words were fed into the support vector machine classifier and the performance was evaluated based on recognition accuracy. Support vector machine is a two-class classifier, hence a multiclass SVM classifier least square support vector machine (LSSVM) was used for word recognition. The one vs one strategy and RBF kernel were used and the recognition accuracy obtained from the tested words ranges between 66.7%, 83.3%, 85.7%, 87.5%, and 100%. The low recognition rate for some of the words could be as a result of the similarity in the extracted features.

scholarly journals Cognitive Predictors of Spoken Word Recognition in Children With and Without Developmental Language Disorders

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (6) ◽  
pp. 1409-1425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia L. Evans ◽  
Ronald B. Gillam ◽  
James W. Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Target Word ◽  
Cognitive Processing ◽  
Maternal Education ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Receptive Vocabulary ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Word Knowledge ◽  
Attention Shifting

Purpose This study examined the influence of cognitive factors on spoken word recognition in children with developmental language disorder (DLD) and typically developing (TD) children. Method Participants included 234 children (aged 7;0–11;11 years;months), 117 with DLD and 117 TD children, propensity matched for age, gender, socioeconomic status, and maternal education. Children completed a series of standardized assessment measures, a forward gating task, a rapid automatic naming task, and a series of tasks designed to examine cognitive factors hypothesized to influence spoken word recognition including phonological working memory, updating, attention shifting, and interference inhibition. Results Spoken word recognition for both initial and final accept gate points did not differ for children with DLD and TD controls after controlling target word knowledge in both groups. The 2 groups also did not differ on measures of updating, attention switching, and interference inhibition. Despite the lack of difference on these measures, for children with DLD, attention shifting and interference inhibition were significant predictors of spoken word recognition, whereas updating and receptive vocabulary were significant predictors of speed of spoken word recognition for the children in the TD group. Conclusion Contrary to expectations, after controlling for target word knowledge, spoken word recognition did not differ for children with DLD and TD controls; however, the cognitive processing factors that influenced children's ability to recognize the target word in a stream of speech differed qualitatively for children with and without DLDs.

Early occipito-parietal activity in a word recognition task: an EEG and MEG study

1999 ◽  
Vol 110 (8) ◽  
pp. 1378-1387 ◽  
Author(s):  
P Walla ◽  
W Endl ◽  
G Lindinger ◽  
W Lalouschek ◽  
L Deecke ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Recognition Task

Classroom Noise and Children Learning Through a Second Language

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy Nelson ◽  
Kathryn Kohnert ◽  
Sabina Sabur ◽  
Daniel Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Recognition Task ◽  
English Word ◽  
Noise Condition ◽  
English Only ◽  
Task Behavior ◽  
The Impact

Purpose: Two studies were conducted to investigate the effects of classroom noise on attention and speech perception in native Spanish-speaking second graders learning English as their second language (L2) as compared to English-only-speaking (EO) peers. Method: Study 1 measured children’s on-task behavior during instructional activities with and without soundfield amplification. Study 2 measured the effects of noise (+10 dB signal-to-noise ratio) using an experimental English word recognition task. Results: Findings from Study 1 revealed no significant condition (pre/postamplification) or group differences in observations in on-task performance. Main findings from Study 2 were that word recognition performance declined significantly for both L2 and EO groups in the noise condition; however, the impact was disproportionately greater for the L2 group. Clinical Implications: Children learning in their L2 appear to be at a distinct disadvantage when listening in rooms with typical noise and reverberation. Speech-language pathologists and audiologists should collaborate to inform teachers, help reduce classroom noise, increase signal levels, and improve access to spoken language for L2 learners.

scholarly journals The development of lexical competition in written- and spoken-word competition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith S Apfelbaum ◽  
Christina Blomquist ◽  
Bob McMurray
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Target Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Developmental Changes ◽  
Lexical Competition ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Input Modality ◽  
Developmental Continuity ◽  
Input Format ◽  
Temporal Overlap

Efficient word recognition depends on the ability to overcome competition from overlapping words. The nature of the overlap depends on the input modality: spoken words have temporal overlap from other words that share phonemes in the same positions, whereas written words have spatial overlap from other words with letters in the same places. It is unclear how these differences in input format affect the ability to recognize a word and the types of competitors that become active while doing so. This study investigates word recognition in both modalities in children between 7 and 15. Children complete a visual-world paradigm eye-tracking task that measures competition from words with several types of overlap, using identical word lists between modalities. Results showed correlated developmental changes in the speed of target recognition in both modalities. Additionally, developmental changes were seen in the efficiency of competitor suppression for some competitor types in the spoken modality. These data reveal some developmental continuity in the process of word recognition independent of modality, but also some instances of independence in how competitors are activated. Stimuli, data and analyses from this project are available at: https://osf.io/eav72

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