The Multidimensional Battery of Prosody Perception (MBOPP)

Prosody can be defined as the rhythm and intonation patterns spanning words, phrases and sentences. Accurate perception of prosody is an important component of many aspects of language processing, such as parsing grammatical structures, recognizing words, and determining where emphasis may be placed. Prosody perception is important for language acquisition and can be impaired in language-related developmental disorders. However, existing assessments of prosodic perception suffer from some shortcomings. These include being unsuitable for use with typically developing adults due to ceiling effects and failing to allow the investigator to distinguish the unique contributions of individual acoustic features such as pitch and temporal cues. Here we present the Multi-Dimensional Battery of Prosody Perception (MBOPP), a novel tool for the assessment of prosody perception. It consists of two subtests: Linguistic Focus, which measures the ability to hear emphasis or sentential stress, and Phrase Boundaries, which measures the ability to hear where in a compound sentence one phrase ends, and another begins. Perception of individual acoustic dimensions (Pitch and Duration) can be examined separately, and test difficulty can be precisely calibrated by the experimenter because stimuli were created using a continuous voice morph space. We present validation analyses from a sample of 59 individuals and discuss how the battery might be deployed to examine perception of prosody in various populations.

Musicians upweight pitch during prosodic categorization

Speech perception requires the integration of evidence from acoustic cues across multiple dimensions. Individuals differ in their cue weighting strategies, i.e. the weight they assign to different acoustic dimensions during speech categorization. In two experiments, we investigate musical training as one potential predictor of individual differences in prosodic cue weighting strategies. Attentional theories of speech categorization suggest that prior experience with the task-relevance of a particular acoustic dimensions leads that dimension to attract attention. Therefore, Experiment 1 tested whether musicians and non-musicians differed in their ability to selectively attend to pitch and loudness in speech. Compared to non-musicians, musicians showed enhanced dimension-selective attention to pitch but not loudness. In Experiment 2, we tested the hypothesis that musicians would show greater pitch weighting during prosodic categorization due to prior experience with the task-relevance of pitch cues in music. In this experiment, listeners categorized phrases that varied in the extent to which pitch and duration signaled the location of linguistic focus and phrase boundaries. During linguistic focus categorization only, musicians up-weighted pitch compared to non-musicians. These results suggest that musical training is linked with domain-general enhancements of the salience of pitch cues, and that this increase in pitch salience may lead to to an up-weighting of pitch during some prosodic categorization tasks. These findings also support attentional theories of cue weighting, in which more salient acoustic dimensions are given more importance during speech categorization.

When Different Language Groups Meet Online: Covert and Overt Focus on Form in Text-Based Chats

Focus on form has been extensively studied in text-based online dyadic chats but much less has been explored in group chats with interlocutors from different language backgrounds. Additionally, there are very few studies investigating covert focus on form. This study investigated the effects of interlocutor types on errors and focus on form episodes, both covert and overt, in text-based online group chats. We collected chat logs from two collaborative online international learning projects. One project was developed for the collaboration between an English course at a Chinese university and an art history course at a U.S. university; the other between another cohort of the same English course and a cultural studies course at a Mexican university. We compared errors, feedback, and other characteristics of focus on form episodes between the two projects. Analyses revealed significant differences in characteristics such as overtness (overt, covert), linguistic focus (mechanical, lexical, and grammatical), and source (code, message). However, no significant differences were found for the type of focus on form (preemptive, reactive), presence of uptake, uptake quality (successful, unsuccessful), and repair provider (self, other). Students showed a preference for self-repair over other-repair and for lexical focus over mechanical and grammatical foci in both projects. Overall, only a small proportion of errors were followed by feedback. Therefore, a small amount of uptake and successful uptake occurred in both projects. The results can shed light on how instructors could provide effective scaffolding and tasks to make virtual exchange projects more rewarding.

Investigating the relationship between linguistic focus of recasts, learning styles and noticing

The efficacy of Corrective Feedback (CF) is contingent on various factors; conflicting results have been obtained regarding the roles of individual differences and the linguistic focus of CF. The current study investigated the relationship between the linguistic focus of recasts (the most common CF type) and noticing. It further explored the possible relationship between learning styles and recast noticing. The learning styles of 25 intermediate Iranian EFL learners were determined through the VARK questionnaire. During the participants’ story retelling tasks, the researchers provided recasts in response to their grammatical, lexical, and phonological errors. The class presentations were audiotaped, and recasts were highlighted. Online and retrospective methods of measuring noticing were used. Chi-Square tests indicated that there were significant differences among the participants’ noticing in general and in noticing of grammatical, lexical, and phonological recasts in particular. The results of post hoc analysis revealed that the auditory-style participants received the highest noticing rate and the kinesthetic style the least. The study further indicated that learners whose learning style was auditory better noticed grammatical recasts, learners whose learning style was mixed better noticed lexical recasts, and visual learners better noticed phonological recasts.

Investigating the relationship between linguistic focus of recasts, learning styles and noticing

The efficacy of Corrective Feedback (CF) is contingent on various factors; conflicting results have been obtained regarding the roles of individual differences and the linguistic focus of CF. The current study investigated the relationship between the linguistic focus of recasts (the most common CF type) and noticing. It further explored the possible relationship between learning styles and recast noticing. The learning styles of 25 intermediate Iranian EFL learners were determined through the VARK questionnaire. During the participants’ story retelling tasks, the researchers provided recasts in response to their grammatical, lexical, and phonological errors. The class presentations were audiotaped, and recasts were highlighted. Online and retrospective methods of measuring noticing were used. Chi-Square tests indicated that there were significant differences among the participants’ noticing in general and in noticing of grammatical, lexical, and phonological recasts in particular. The results of post hoc analysis revealed that the auditory-style participants received the highest noticing rate and the kinesthetic style the least. The study further indicated that learners whose learning style was auditory better noticed grammatical recasts, learners whose learning style was mixed better noticed lexical recasts, and visual learners better noticed phonological recasts.

Effects of contrastive focus on lexical predictability during sentence reading: The case of not only. . .but also constructions

Previous research suggests that language comprehenders are sensitive to the presence of focus-sensitive particles—words like only and not that are effective at marking the focus of the sentence. In addition to signalling linguistic focus, these words can also establish a semantic contrast between the focused element and an alternate set. For example, the phrase not only the bride places linguistic focus on the bride and may also prompt comprehenders to anticipate a set of upcoming entities that stand in semantic contrast to the bride. We tested this possibility in an eyetracking-while-reading experiment that systematically crossed structure (focus vs. noun-phrase coordination) with predictability of an upcoming target noun (predictable vs. unpredictable). Whereas first-pass reading time showed a robust predictability effect for the coordination condition, the effect was eliminated for the focus condition. Later eyetracking measures revealed main effects of both predictability and syntactic structure. Overall, the results suggest that language comprehenders rapidly make use of the cue not only and may use this cue to begin anticipating a set of upcoming sentence continuations during online sentence processing.

Investigating the relationship between linguistic focus of recasts, learning styles and noticing

The efficacy of Corrective Feedback (CF) is contingent on various factors; conflicting results have been obtained regarding the roles of individual differences and the linguistic focus of CF. The current study investigated the relationship between the linguistic focus of recasts (the most common CF type) and noticing. It further explored the possible relationship between learning styles and recast noticing. The learning styles of 25 intermediate Iranian EFL learners were determined through the VARK questionnaire. During the participants’ story retelling tasks, the researchers provided recasts in response to their grammatical, lexical, and phonological errors. The class presentations were audiotaped, and recasts were highlighted. Online and retrospective methods of measuring noticing were used. Chi-Square tests indicated that there were significant differences among the participants’ noticing in general and in noticing of grammatical, lexical, and phonological recasts in particular. The results of post hoc analysis revealed that the auditory-style participants received the highest noticing rate and the kinesthetic style the least. The study further indicated that learners whose learning style was auditory better noticed grammatical recasts, learners whose learning style was mixed better noticed lexical recasts, and visual learners better noticed phonological recasts.

Integrating Morphological Awareness in a Multilinguistic Structured Literacy Approach to Improve Literacy in Adolescents With Reading and/or Language Disorders

Purpose Reading and writing are language-based skills, and effective literacy instruction/intervention practices should include an explicit linguistic focus. A multilinguistic structured literacy approach that integrates morphological awareness is proven beneficial to improve reading and writing for students with language literacy deficits. The key components of this approach are explored. Method An intensive 2-week clinical summer camp, Camp CHRONICLE, which utilizes a multilinguistic structured literacy intervention model that integrates morphological awareness for adolescents with literacy deficits, is reviewed, and three case examples are included. Conclusion Multilinguistic structured literacy intervention with a morphological awareness focus is an ideal approach to improve literacy skills of children and adolescents with language literacy deficits. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.12291029

The role of non-categorical relations in establishing focus alternative sets

ABSTRACTCategorisation is arguably the most important organising principle in semantic memory. However, elements that are not in a categorical relation can be dynamically grouped together when the context provides a common theme for these elements. In the field of sentence (and discourse) comprehension, alternatives to a focused element can be thought of as a set of elements determined by a theme given in the utterance context. According to Alternative Semantics (Rooth, 1985, 1992), the main function of linguistic focus is to introduce a set of alternatives to the focused element within an utterance. Here, we will investigate the contribution of the utterance context to the composition of focus alternative sets. Specifically, we test whether a focus alternative set can contain elements that belong to different taxonomic categories (i.e., that are not closely semantically related). Using a behavioural probe recognition experiment, we show that participants activate elements from another taxonomic category than the focused element as part of sentence comprehension. This finding suggests that the composition of a focus alternative set is not simply based on semantic relations between the members of the set and the focused element, but that contextual relations also play a crucial role.